Peter Jan Joachim Kroh, The "Sorbian questions" and Jan Skala's answers

The "Sorbian question" is: How should Germans (as a majority) and Sorbs (as a minority) live to-gether in one country? For Skala, this question had two sides. The one: What do the Sorbs, their leading personalities, organizations and institutions have to do, so that Sorbs can live with equal rights and equal respect in the German State? The other: What does the German State have to im-plement on a political and juridical basis, so that its Sorbian citizens can own the same rights as German citizens? Skala demanded from the German State a juridical guarantee of equal rights for the minority, their language and culture as well as politically ensured governmental support for their ethnical characteristics. He called upon the Sorbs to take their affairs into their own hands. For that, according to Skala, the Sorbs needed a Sorbian-Slavic self-confidence based on their knowledge about their own history. Because: Especially this knowledge increases the collective power of the many individuals. And: Only if everybody supports the mission with his/her own heart, can the commitment for the rights of the own people be stable.

Skala's concept for the settlement of the "Sorbian Question" looked as follows: if something needs to be said, do not remain silent; act yourself and not only ask others to act on your behalf; work together with like-minded people; accept interim solutions; never give up.

He followed Rousseau's idea, that in the relation between strong and weak, the "law" liberates and "freedom" oppresses. If strong people are not limited by set boundaries, they oppress the weak and create a system of dependence.

For this way to settle the "Sorbian Question", Skala worked his whole life with word and deed: Jan Skala

• was a crucial agent in founding the Serbski Sokoł in November 1920, his first starosta and understood the Sokoł as a way for Sorbs to express the willingness for independence as well as the supra-denominational commitment to the national idea;
• in 1922, he wrote seminal und up until today worth reading ideas in the script Wo serbskich praÅ¡enjach, that were neither publicly discussed during his lifetime nor later;
exposed the anti-Sorbian causes and goals of the disposition of the "Wendische Seminar" in Prague and publically criticized the responsible German bishop, who did not comprehend the motives of catholic Sorbs to preserve the Seminar, because he foremost acted as German catholic;
• fought the attacks against Sorbs, such as the chauvinistic lies of nationalistic Germans (for ex-ample Prof. Laubert, who demanded publicly the forced emigration of Sorbs to southern Ger-many and accused Skala of high treason), as well as the hurried obedience of some members of his people (for example Dr. ArnoÅ¡t Herman, who – at an official meeting – evaluated the rela-tions between the Sorbs and other Slavic people as treasonous);
• worked most intensively for the settlement of the "Sorbian Question" as the chef editor of the "Kulturwehr," where he published between 1925 and 1936 numerous articles, in which he demanded constitutional rights for national minorities, criticized the educational policy that penalized the Sorbs, analyzed governmental elections, published statements of the Domowina, protested against the "Bund Deutscher Osten" (BDO) and against the forced transfer of Sorbian teachers and priest, and commented on current events with short and precise polemics;
demanded continuously in public speeches equal rights for the Sorbs, bravely and based on facts criticized numerous grievances in the life of national minorities which was why he was continuously spied on and prosecuted by the conspirative "Wendenabteilung" created under Reichspresident Ebert, and finally was prohibited to work under Goebbels, as well as arrested and tortured by Hitler's Gestapo;
• fend off the Nazi's attempt to integrate the Domowina into the fascist system as "Bund wendischsprechender Deutscher" through a forced statute, because he bravely raised his voice, together with the catholic theologian Alois Andricki, for the dismissal of the statute at the seminal meeting;
participated in the antifascist resistance of Armia Krajowa in Silesia, because he was deeply convinced, that the destruction of Fascism was the prerequisite for human dealings of the powerful with national minorities

Even though, Skala has not reached many of his goals, his never ending dedication to the settlement of the "Sorbian Question" was not in vain. Completely dead is a person only if nobody re-members his actions and his leading ideals. But Skala lives on with us and in us as this conference proves.