About Nowy Casnik

Nowy Casnik

The Nowy Casnik — "The New Newspaper" — is the weekly newspaper of the Lower Sorbs (Wends) of Lusatia, published in Cottbus in Lower Sorbian and German. It is the only newspaper in the Lower Sorbian language, the Slavic minority language spoken in the Spreewald and the Cottbus region of Brandenburg, and one of the smallest-circulation newspapers in Germany, with around 700 to 1,100 copies. Published by the Domowina-Verlag GmbH, the publishing house of the Domowina — the federation of Lusatian Sorbs — the paper has appeared as an independent weekly since 1954, continuing a journalistic tradition that reaches back to the Bramborski Serbski Casnik of 1848, the first newspaper ever published in Lower Sorbian. For the Sorbian community, the paper is far more than a news source: it is a central institution of language maintenance and cultural identity.

Overview

The Nowy Casnik is a weekly newspaper published in Cottbus (Lower Sorbian: Chóśebuz), Brandenburg, appearing once a week in Lower Sorbian and German. It is the successor paper of the Bramborski Serbski Casnik, the first Lower Sorbian newspaper, first published in 1848 — and thus the journalistic voice of the Lower Sorbs, the Slavic minority of Lower Lusatia, for more than 175 years. The paper is published by the Domowina-Verlag GmbH (Ludowe nakładnistwo Domowina), the publishing house of the Domowina, the Federation of Lusatian Sorbs.

The Lower Sorbs (also called Wends) are one of Germany's four recognized national minorities, alongside the Danes, the Frisians, and the Sinti and Roma. Their language, Lower Sorbian, is spoken in the region around Cottbus and the Spreewald — though the number of active speakers has declined sharply over the 20th century, and the language is now classified as severely endangered. In this context, the Nowy Casnik's mission is existential: it is the only regularly published newspaper in Lower Sorbian, the medium in which the language lives in print week after week.

The paper's circulation is tiny by any conventional measure: around 1,100 copies in 2004, around 800 in 2013, and currently around 700 copies. Besides subscriptions, the paper can be bought in Cottbus and some neighboring towns to the north. Its website is nowycasnik.de. The editor-in-chief since 2023 has been Katalin Poráczki; her predecessors were Stefanie Krautz (2021–2023), Viktor Zakar (2020–2021), Gregor Wieczorek (2006–2020), and Horst Adam. The paper's ISSN is 0029-5418.

History

The Nowy Casnik's lineage begins on 5 July 1848, when the first issue of the Bramborski Serbski Casnik appeared on the initiative of the Catholic priest Mato Nowka (Mata Nowek), with the support of German landowners. It was the first newspaper to publish contributions in Lower Sorbian, addressed to the Wends of Lower Lusatia and the city of Cottbus. The editorship passed from Nowka (1848–1852) to Kito Pank (1852–1863) and then to Kito Šwjela (1863–1915), the teacher who shaped the paper for over five decades — the defining editor of Lower Sorbian journalism. The Lower Sorbian poet Mato Kosyk served as co-editor from 1880 to 1883. The paper appeared under changing names — Bramborske Nowiny (1881–1885), Bramborski Casnik (1886–1918), Serbski Casnik (1921–1933) — and under Mina Witkojc's editorship (1923–1933) reached a circulation of 1,200 copies.

The Nazi period brought the tradition to a violent halt. From 1933 the paper fell under the control of organizations that printed nationalist propaganda on its pages, and in the summer of 1941 the publication of the Bramborske Nowiny was banned. Sorbian media as a whole were suppressed under National Socialism.

After the Second World War, the paper was revived: on the initiative of Bogumił Šwjela, publication resumed in December 1947 under the new name Nowy Casnik, under the patronage of the Domowina, the Sorbian cultural-national organization — initially as a supplement to the Upper Sorbian newspaper Nowa doba. In 1954 the Nowy Casnik became an independent weekly publication, the status it has held ever since. During the GDR era it appeared as an organ of the state-supervised Domowina; after 1989 it continued under the Domowina and its publishing house as the free press of the Sorbian minority. In 1977 Wylem Bjero retired — the last editor-in-chief of the paper for whom Lower Sorbian was his mother tongue, a symbolic moment in the language's decline.

Coverage and Content

The Nowy Casnik's content is published predominantly in Lower Sorbian, with contributions also in German — a bilingual strategy that serves both fluent speakers and the larger circle of readers with passive or learning knowledge of the language. The paper covers the life of the Sorbian community in Lower Lusatia: the work of the Domowina and its local groups, Sorbian cultural events, the Sorbian schools and kindergartens (including the Lower Sorbian Gymnasium in Cottbus), church life in the Sorbian parishes, and the traditions of the Wendish villages — the Fastnacht (Zapust) customs, the Easter riding processions, the harvest festivals.

Language policy is a standing topic: the paper reports on the efforts to preserve and revitalize Lower Sorbian — the School for Lower Sorbian Language and Culture in Cottbus, bilingual signage, Sorbian media projects — and on the political decisions affecting the minority, from state funding to the lignite mining that has devoured Sorbian villages in the Lusatian coalfields. The paper also covers general regional news from the Cottbus area insofar as it touches Sorbian life, and it serves the community functions of the minority press: announcements, obituaries, cultural calendars, and the literary contributions — poems, stories, essays — that make the weekly paper a forum of Sorbian intellectual life.

For children, the Domowina-Verlag publishes the monthly Lower Sorbian children's magazine Płomje (around 850 copies), complementing the Nowy Casnik's adult readership. Together with the Upper Sorbian daily Serbske Nowiny of Bautzen, the cultural magazine Rozhlad, and the Sorbian radio and television programs, the Nowy Casnik forms the media infrastructure of one of Europe's smallest Slavic peoples.

Organization and Ownership

The Nowy Casnik is published by the Domowina-Verlag GmbH (Ludowe nakładnistwo Domowina), the publishing house of the Domowina — Zwězk Łužyskich Serbow, the Federation of Lusatian Sorbs. The Domowina is the umbrella organization of the Sorbian people, representing both the Upper Sorbs of Saxony and the Lower Sorbs/Wends of Brandenburg; its publishing house in Bautzen produces the Sorbian press, including the Nowy Casnik, the Serbske Nowiny, Rozhlad, and Płomje, as well as books in Sorbian.

The paper's editorial office is in Cottbus, at Straße der Jugend 54. The editor-in-chief since 2023 has been Katalin Poráczki. Her predecessors in the post-reunification era were Stefanie Krautz (2021–2023), Viktor Zakar (2020–2021) — who came from North Macedonia — Gregor Wieczorek (2006–2020), the Polish Silesian who led the paper for fourteen years, and Horst Adam. The succession of editors from outside the traditional Sorbian community reflects the demographic reality of the language: with ever fewer native speakers, the paper's leadership has increasingly come from committed linguists and journalists who learned the language.

The paper's financing rests on the German system of minority support: the Sorbian institutions, including the press, are funded through the Foundation for the Sorbian People, jointly financed by the federal government and the states of Saxony and Brandenburg. The Nowy Casnik's tiny circulation could never sustain it commercially; its existence is a political commitment to the survival of the Lower Sorbian language and culture.

Digital Presence

The Nowy Casnik's digital home is nowycasnik.de, the paper's website, which presents the weekly's content online in Lower Sorbian. The site extends the paper's reach beyond its few hundred print subscribers: Sorbian speakers and learners scattered across Germany and beyond can follow the paper digitally, and the website serves as a showcase of the living Lower Sorbian language on the internet — a language whose digital presence is otherwise minimal.

The paper's digital strategy must be understood in the context of language revitalization: every Lower Sorbian text published online — every article, every headline — is a contribution to the language's visibility and viability in the digital age. The website complements the print weekly without replacing it; for many of the paper's older readers, the printed paper remains the primary medium.

In the Lusatian media environment, the Nowy Casnik's website stands alongside the portals of the Upper Sorbian press, the Sorbian programs of the public broadcasters — the RBB's Lower Sorbian radio, the monthly television magazine Łužyca — and the growing, if still small, ecosystem of Sorbian digital initiatives. For the Lower Sorbian language, classified as severely endangered, the Nowy Casnik — in print since 1954, online at nowycasnik.de — remains what it has been for generations: the weekly proof that the language is still written, still read, and still alive.