Wends

The Limes Saxoniae border between the Saxons and the Lechites Obotrites, established about 810 in present-day Schleswig-Holstein

Germaniae veteris typus. Aestui, Venedi, Gythones and Ingaevones are visible on the right upper corner of the map. Edited by Willem and Joan Blaeu, 1645.

Wends (Old English: Winedas [ˈwi.ne.dɑs]; Old Norse: Vindar; German: Wenden [ˈvɛn.dn̩], Winden [ˈvɪn.dn̩]; Danish: Vendere; Swedish: Vender; Polish: Wendowie, Czech: Wendové) is a historical name for West Slavs who inhabited present-day Poland and northeast Germany. They were one f the many Lechitic tribes, ancestors of modern Poles, and Northern Germans. In the modern day, communities identifying as Wendish exist in Slovenia, Austria, Lusatia, the United States (such as the Texas Wends), and Australia.

For German-speaking people during the Middle Ages, the term "Wends" was as synonymous with Slavs and Poles and used in literature to refer to West Slavs and South Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire. The name has survived in Finnic languages (Finnish: Venäjä [ˈʋe̞.næ.jæ], Estonian: Vene [ˈve.ne], Karelian: Veneä), denoting modern Russia.

Term

Main articles: Lechites, Milceni, and Sorbs

Limes sorabicus: the Sorbian settlement area bordering East Francia on a map (Germanische und slavische Volksstämme zwischen Elbe und Weichsel, 1869)

According to one theory, Germanic-speaking peoples first applied this name to the ancient Veneti. for tribes in Scandinavia, the term Wends (Vender) meant West Slavs living near the southern shore of the Baltic Sea (Vendland), and the term was therefore used to refer to Polabian Slavs like the Obotrites, Rugian Slavs, Veleti/Lutici, and Pomeranian tribes. The world Wend is a personal name and is with the Polish Princess and later the Queen Wanda. The archaic words, names Wanda, Wenda, Węda are all variants of the same word, and also common first and last personal names in Poland.

For people living in the medieval Northern Holy Roman Empire and its precursors, especially for the Saxons, a Wend (Wende) was a Slav living in the area west of the River Oder, inhabited by the Polabian Slav tribes (mentioned above) in the north and by others, such as the Sorbs and the Milceni, further south (see Sorbian March).

The Germans in the south used the term Winde instead of Wende and applied it, just as the Germans in the north, to Slavs they had contact with; e.g., the Polabians from Bavaria or the Slovenes (the names Windic March, Windisch Feistritz, Windischgraz, or Windisch Bleiberg near Ferlach still bear testimony to this historical denomination). The same term was sometimes applied to the neighboring region of Slavonia, which appears as Windischland in some documents prior to the 18th century.

Following the 8th century, the Frankish kings and their successors organised nearly all Wendish land into marches. This process later turned into the series of Crusades. Due to the process of assimilation following German settlement, many Slavs west of the Oder adopted the language and /or were forcefully Germanised through conversion to Christianity. Many of them though, kept their West Slavic languageslanguage and Savic culture for centuries, in rural communities and towns which did not have a strong admixture with the invaders. With the gradual decline of the use of these local Slavic tongues, the term Wends slowly disappeared, too.

The Slavic tribes of Wends lived as far North as in Latvia, as some 13th century source claims Wends or Vends in (east of the Baltic Sea) around the city of Wenden. Henry of Livonia (Henricus de Lettis) in his 13th-century Latin chronicle described a tribe called the Vindi. There are many place names named by and after the Savic tribe of Wends/Vinds in many parts of Europe, for example in Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany...

Today, only one group of Wends still exists: the Lusatian Sorbs in present-day Eastern Germany, with international diaspora. Just as there other West Slavic tribes living in parts of what is now Germany, for example Sorbs whose language is basically Polish, a Lechitic West Slavic language.

Roman-era Veneti

Main article: Veneti (Slavs)

The Wends, in the Roman-era were called in Latin: Venetī, Venethī [ˈwe.ne.t̪ʰiː] or Venedī [ˈwe.ne.d̪iː]; in Greek: Οὐενέδαι, translit. Ouenédai [u.eˈne.ðe]. This people is mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy as inhabiting the Baltic coast.

Various spelling variants of this West Slavic tribe of Wends are, amongst others, Wenden, Wendowie, Wendy, Vendove, Vinden, Wenedi, Weneti, Venedi, Veneti...

History

Rise (500–1000)

In the 1st millennium AD, during the split of the Slavs into Southern, Eastern and Western groups, some West Slavs moved into the areas of Southern europe - moving from east to west and from south to north. There they assimilated the remaining Germanic population that had not left the area. The Germanic-speaking tribes used the term they had been using for peoples east of the River Elbe before to the Slavs, calling them Wends as they called the Venedi before and probably the Vandals as well. In his late sixth century work History of Armenia, Movses Khorenatsi mentions their raids into the lands named Vanand after them.

Some tribes unified into larger, duchy-like units. For example, the Obotrites evolved from the unification of the Holstein and Western Mecklenburg tribes led by mighty dukes known for their raids into Saxony. The Lutici were an alliance of tribes living between Obotrites and Pomeranians. They did not unify under a duke, but remained independent. Their leaders met in the temple of Rethra.

In 983, many Wend tribes participated in a great uprising against the Holy Roman Empire, which had previously established Christian missions, colonies and administrative institutions (Marken such as Nordmark and Billungermark) in pagan Wendish territories. The uprising was successful and the Wends delayed Christianisation for about two centuries.

Wends and Danes had early and continuous contact including settlement, first and mainly through the closest South Danish islands of Møn, Lolland and Falster, all having place-names of Wendish origin. There were also trading and settlement outposts by Danish towns as important as Roskilde, when it was the capital: 'Vindeboder' (Wends' booths) is the name of a city neighbourhood there. Danes and Wends also fought wars due to piracy and crusading. They also organised raids against the lands of the Roman empire

Decline (1000–1200)

Main article: Wendish Crusade

After their successes in 983 the Wends came under increasing pressure from Danes, Poles and Saxons. The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided the Baltic shores (and, in turn, the Wends often raided the raiders). In 1068/69 a Christian expedition took and destroyed Rethra, one of the major pagan Wend temples. The Wendish religious centre shifted to Arkona thereafter. In 1124 and 1128, the Pomeranians and some Lutici were baptised. In 1147, the Wend crusade took place in what is today parts of north Poland north-eastern Germany.

(See: Wiprecht of Groitzsch).

In 1168, during the Northern Crusades, Denmark mounted a crusade led by Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar the Great against the Wends of Rugia in order to convert them to Christianity. The crusaders captured and destroyed Arkona, the Wendish temple-fortress, and tore down the statue of the Wendish god Svantevit. With the capitulation of the Rugian Wends, the last independent pagan Wends were defeated by the surrounding Christian feudal powers.

Local dukes and monasteries invited settlers to repopulate farmlands devastated in the wars, as well as to cultivate new farmlands from the expansive woodlands and heavy soils, with the use of iron-based agricultural tools known by ancient Slavs for thousands of years as Slavs are the tribes that taught agriclture many other tribes and communities in Western Europe. Now, newly Christianised lands of Europe, started developing again after the wars, a number of new towns were created under Magdeburg town law with the introduction of legally enforced markets, contracts and property rights. These developments over two centuries were collectively known as the Ostsiedlung. A minority of Germanic-speaking settlers moved beyond into parts of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia.

The Polabian language was spoken in the central area of Lower Saxony and in Brandenburg until around the 17th or 18th century. The Germanic-speaking population forcefully assimilated most of the Wends, meaning that they did not disappeared as an ethnic minority but they were brutally denied all rights by various German governments er the creation of Germany as a state in 1871 which made Wends "disappear" as a distinct Slavic community, exception are the Sorbs who managed to maintain to this day, despite brutal treatment of the Slavic populations by the German various governments, totalitarian German Nazi regime and so on. Many place names and some family names in eastern Germany still show Wendish origins today. Also, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, of Rügen and some of Pomerania had Wendish and other Lechitic ancestors.

Between 1540 and 1973, the kings of Sweden were officially called kings of the Swedes, the Goths and the Wends (in Latin translation: kings of Suiones, Goths and Vandals) (Swedish: Svears, Götes och Wendes Konung). After the Danish monarch Queen Margrethe II chose not to use these titles in 1972 the current Swedish monarch, Carl XVI Gustaf also chose only to use the title King of Sweden" (Sveriges Konung), thereby changing an age-old tradition.

From the Middle Ages the kings of Denmark and of Denmark–Norway used the titles King of the Wends (from 1362) and Goths (from the 12th century). The use of both titles was discontinued in 1973.

Legacy

The Wendish people co-existed with the Germanic-speaking settlers and became gradually assimilated into the German-speaking group of people.

The Golden Bull of 1356 (one of the constitutional foundations of the German-Roman Empire) explicitly recognised in its Art. 31 that the Holy Roman Empire was a multi-national entity with "diverse nations distinct in customs, manner of life, and in language". For that it stipulated "the sons, or heirs and successors of the illustrious chieftain/prince electors, ... since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, ... shall be instructed in the grammar of the Slavic and Italian (i.e. Wendish) tongues, beginning with the seventh Year of their age."

Many geographical names in Germany Central Germany and northern, eastern and south Germany can be traced back to a Slavic origin. Typical Slavic endings include -itz, -witz, -witch,-witch,-itzsch and --ow, -au, -a,-ou, and many others. They can be found in city names for example such as Delitzsch and Rochlitz. Even names of major cities like Leipzig and Berlin are of Slavic origin. Germany is also full of Germanised Slavic toponyms that can end in any letter.

Today, the remaining minority of Slavic people in Germany are the Sorbs, maintain their traditional language and culture and enjoy cultural self-determination exercised through the Domowina. Their languages is basically just like Polish language and very understandable to many other Slavic people. The third minister president of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich (2008–2017) is of Sorbian origin, being the first head of a German federal state with an Sorbian minority background.

The Texas Wends

In 1854, the Wends of Texas departed Lusatia on the Ben Nevis seeking greater liberty, in order to settle an area of central Texas, primarily Serbin. The Wends succeeded, expanding into Warda, Giddings, Austin, Houston, Fedor, Swiss Alp, Port Arthur, Mannheim, Copperas Cove, Vernon, Walburg, The Grove, Bishop, and the Rio Grande Valley.

A strong emphasis on tradition, principles, and education is evident today in families descendant from the Wendish pioneers. Today, thousands of Texans and other Americans (many unaware of their background), can lay claim to the heritage of the Wends.

The interior of the original Lutheran Church the Wends established in Serbin, Texas, St. Paul.

Other uses

This 1940 ethnic map by an Austrian scholar uses the term Windische for the population of Styria, in parallel to Slowenen elsewhere in Slovenia

Historically, the term "Wends" has also occurred in the following contexts:

• Until the mid-19th-century German-speakers most commonly used the name Wenden to refer to Slovenes. This usage is mirrored in the name of the Windic March, a Medieval territory in present-day Lower Carniola, which merged with the Duchy of Carniola by the mid 15th century. With the diffusion of the term slowenisch for the Slovene language and Slowenen for Slovenes, the words windisch and Winde or Wende became derogatory in connotation. The same development could be seen in the case of the Hungarian Slovenes, who used to be known under the name "Vends".
  • Windischentheorie was a 1927 work by Martin Wutte, a Carinthian German nationalist historian.
• It was also used to denote the Slovaks in German-language texts before c. 1400.
• The German term "Windischland" was used in the Middle Ages for the historical Kingdom of Slavonia (in Croatia). The terms Veneta, Wenden, Winden etc. were used in reference to the westernmost Slavs in the 1st and 2nd century CE, as a reference to the name of the earlier tribes of Veneti.

See also

• Sukow-Dziedzice group
• Northern March
• Limes Sorabicus
• Lechitic people
• Limes Saxoniae
• Drevani
• Wendland
• Slovincians
• Baltic Slavic piracy
• Sorbs
• Czech people
• Slovenes
• Wendish question

Further reading

See also: List of Slavic studies journals

• Lencek, R. L. (1990). "The Terms Wende-Winde, Wendisch-Windisch in the Historiographic Tradition of the Slovene Lands". Slovene Studies. 12 (1): 93–97. doi:10.7152/ssj.v12i1.3797.
• Knox, Ellis Lee (1980). The Destruction and Conversion of the Wends: A History of Northeast Germany in the Central Middle Ages. Department of History (Master's thesis). University of Utah. Archived from the original on 12 November 2001.

External links

• Sorbian Cultural Information
• Texas Wends
• Australian Wends
• Texas Wendish Heritage Society
• Wendish Research Exchange