http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTihsJQHt48
I've spent a good deal of the week delivering variations on it to a lot of people. People are stupid.
In other news.
Lately my attention has turned to researching the part of my family I hadn't previously paid as much attention to as the rest: the Wendish branch. They're my maternal grandmother's mother's side, and my grandmother still cooks traditional foods (Wendish noodles *drool*) and knows a small bit of the language.
From texascultures.utsa.edu:
The Wends of Texas represent a small Slavic group of people who have never
had an independent nation and who have undergone a double assimilation in Texas.
Known as Sorbs or Lusatian Serbs, Wends have lived in Lusatia, Eastern
Germany, as a recognizable group from the Middle Ages until today. Just before
1850 some Wendish families emigrated to Australia; then, hearing of German
settlement in Texas, a few Wends came to Austin County. In 1853 about 35 Wends
entered Galveston to settle in New Ulm and Industry.
The only larger group of Wends ever
to leave Europe was a congregation of Lutherans led by Johann Kilian. This
group, decimated by cholera in Liverpool and yellow fever in Galveston,
eventually settled in present Lee County, where Johann Dube and Carl Lehmann had
purchased a league of land. Johann Kilian's two-room house served as the church,
and the settlers initially lived in dugouts. By 1860 a community named Serbin
warranted a post office. The settlement grew until 1871, when a new railroad
turned Giddings into the population center for the area.
Life for the first generation was
hard, and the Wends were conservative. Dancing and secular music were considered
inappropriate activities; the main job in life was making a living, not
preserving tradition. Since they came from Germany, most Wends considered it
natural to live among already-established Germans in Texas.
Even in Europe, the Wends were largely “Germanized” by the 19th
century. In Texas they became more so; Wendish families living in German
settlement areas were quickly assimilated. Those Wends who spoke only Sorbian
learned German as their second language, then English. By World War I most of
the Wends in the state had adopted German. The Giddings Deutsches
Volksblatt contained a few columns of Wendish for a number of years, then
shifted entirely to German.
Many Texas Wends simply consider
themselves German, but in the Serbin area, considerable identity has been
maintained through a revival of interest in earlier Wendish characteristics.
Some individuals today maintain that
no intermarriage has taken place in their families since the main Wendish
arrival in 1854. But for the most part, intermarriage and an acceptance of
German, then Anglo, customs has meant a thorough acculturation for most
families.
The Texas Wendish Heritage Society was founded in 1971, when the group
began its annual participation in the Texas Folklife Festival of the Institute
of Texan Cultures, and the membership maintains a Wendish museum at Serbin. The
group has revived interest in European costume, foods, and crafts and is
attempting to collect, translate, and publish early Wendish documents. Many were
lost during the first years in Texas.
The community at Serbin holds an
annual Wendish Fest and extends a welcome, Witajcže K'nam, to visitors. During
the affair church services are conducted in German and English, a Czech band may
play, and corn-shucking contests are held. Some of the local descendants dress
in European Wendish costume.
The Wends of Texas represent one of the strongest examples of cultural
revival by later generations.
I'm thinking the next time we go out to my grandparent's farm we need to stop by
the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum. The culture seems interesting and I'm not
sure why I've never researched that side of my heritage much. It's a small branch, yet probably actually more visible in my family today than the German.
