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Wends
Wends is a historical name for Slavs who inhabited present-day northeast Germany. It refers not to a homogeneous people, but to various people, tribes or groups depending on where and when it was used. In the modern day, communities identifying as Wendish exist in Slovenia, Austria, Lusatia, the United States (such as the Wends of Texas, Texas Wends), and in Australia. In German-speaking Europe during the Middle Ages, the term "Wends" was interpreted as synonymous with "Slavs" and sporadically used in literature to refer to West Slavs and South Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire. The name has possibly survived in Finnic languages ( ; ; ), denoting modern Russia. Term According to one theory, Germanic peoples first applied this name to the Vistula Veneti, ancient Veneti. For the North Germanic peoples, medieval Scandinavians, the term Wends (''Vender'') meant Slavs living near the southern shore of the Baltic Sea (''Vendland''), and the term was therefore used to refer ...
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Wends Of Texas
The Texas Wends or Wends of Texas are a group of people descended from a congregation of 558 Sorbs, Sorbian/Wends, Wendish people under the leadership and pastoral care of John Kilian (, ) who emigrated from Lusatia (part of modern-day Germany) to Texas in 1854. The term also refers to the other emigrations (and all descendants) occurring before and after this group. However, none came close to the size or importance of the Wendish culture in Texas. History Nineteenth century Lusatia In 1817, Frederick William III of Prussia, King Frederick William III of Prussia ordered the Lutheran and Reformed church, Reformed churches in his territory to unite, forming the Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church), Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union. The unification of the two branches of German Protestantism sparked a great deal of controversy. Many Lutherans, termed Old Lutherans, chose to leave the established churches and form independent church bodies. Many left for America an ...
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West Slavs
The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages. They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries. Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Silesians, Kashubians, and Sorbs. From the ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism, thus coming under the cultural influence of the Latin Church, adopting the Latin alphabet, and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs, who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet. Linguistically, the West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups: Lechitic, including Polish, Silesian, Kashubian, and the extinct Polabian and Po ...
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Sorbs
Sorbs (; ; ; ; ; also known as Lusatians, Lusatian Serbs and Wends) are a West Slavs, West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting the parts of Lusatia located in the German states of Germany, states of Saxony and Brandenburg. Sorbs traditionally speak the Sorbian languages (also known as "Wendish" and "Lusatian"), which are closely related to Czech language, Czech and Lechitic languages. Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian are officially recognized minority languages in Germany. In the Early Middle Ages, the Sorbs formed their own principality, which later shortly became part of the early West Slavic Samo's Empire and Great Moravia, as were ultimately conquered by the East Francia (Sorbian March) and Holy Roman Empire (Saxon Eastern March, Margravate of Meissen, March of Lusatia). From the High Middle Ages, they were ruled at various times by the closely related History of Poland during the Piast dynasty, Poles and Kingdom of Bohemia, Czechs, as well as the more distant Germa ...
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Saxons
The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including the inland Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians and Angles to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul. To their east were Obotrites and other Slavic-speaking peoples. The political history of these continental Saxons is unclear until the 8th century and the conflict between their semi-legendary hero Widukind and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. They do not appear to have been politically united until the generations leading up to that conflict, and before then they were reportedly ruled by regional "satraps". Previous Frankish rulers of Austrasia ...
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Lutici
The Lutici or Liutizi (known by various spelling variants) were a federation of West Slavic Polabian tribes, who between the 10th and 12th centuries lived in what is now northeastern Germany. Four tribes made up the core of the federation: the Redarians (Redari, Redarii), Circipanians (Circipani), Kessinians (Kessini, Kycini, Chizzini) and Tollensians (Tholenzi). At least in part, the Lutici were a continuation of the Veleti. In contrast to the former and the neighboring peoples, the Lutici were not led by a Christian monarch or duke, rather power was asserted through consensus formed in central assemblies of the social elites, and the Lutici worshipped nature and several deities. The political and religious center was Radgosc (also referred to by several other names, e.g. Riedegost or Rethra). The Lutici were first recorded by written sources in the context of the uprising of 983, by which they annihilated the rule of the Holy Roman Empire in the Billung and Norther ...
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Germania Slavica
''Germania Slavica'' is a historiographic term used since the 1950s to denote the landscape of the medieval language border (roughly east of the Elbe-Saale line) zone between Germanic people and Slavs in Central Europe on the one hand and a 20th-century scientific working group to research the conditions in that area during the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages on the other. The historian Klaus Zernack divides Germania Slavica into: Christian Lübke, ''Struktur und Wandel im Früh- und Hochmittelalter: eine Bestandsaufnahme aktueller Forschungen zur Germania Slavica'', Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998, p.14, * ''Germania Slavica I'' between the Elbe and Saale rivers in the west and the Oder in the east, which had formed part of the Frankish and later Holy Roman Empires as marches * ''Germania Slavica II'' east of ''Germania Slavica I'' and west of the Kingdom of Poland, comprising the Silesian, Pomeranian, and Prussian duchies as well as the Neumark. From the late fi ...
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Vistula Veneti
The Vistula Veneti, also called Baltic Veneti, Venedi or Venethi, were an Indo-European people that inhabited the lands of central Europe east of the Vistula River and the Bay of Gdańsk. Ancient Roman geographers first mentioned in the 1st century AD, differentiating a group of peoples whose manner and language differed from those of the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes. In the 6th century AD, Byzantine historians described the Veneti as the ancestors of the Slavs who, during the second phase of the Migration Period, crossed the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. Alexander M. Schenker, ''The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology'' (1995), 1.4., including a reference to J. Ochmański, Ochmański, ''Historia Litwy'', 2nd ed. (Wrocław, 1982) Roman historical sources Pliny the Elder places the Veneti along the Baltic coast. He calls them the Sarmatian Venedi (Latin: ''Sarmatae Venedi''). Thereafter, the 2nd century Greco-Roman geographer Ptol ...
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Rani (Slavic Tribe)
The Rani or Rujani (, ''Rujanen'') were a West Slavic tribe based on the island of Rugia (Rügen) and the southwestern mainland across the Strelasund in what is today northeastern Germany. The Rani tribe emerged after the Slavic settlement of the region in the ninth century,Ole Harck, Christian Lübke, Zwischen Reric und Bornhöved: Die Beziehungen zwischen den Dänen und ihren slawischen Nachbarn vom 9. Bis ins 13. Jahrhundert: Beiträge einer internationalen Konferenz, Leipzig, 4.-6. Dezember 1997, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001, p.15, and ranked among the most powerful of several small Slav tribes between the Elbe and lower Vistula rivers before the thirteenth century. They were among the last tribes to hold to Slavic paganism, and the influence of their religious center at Arkona reached far beyond their tribal borders. In 1168, the Rani were defeated by King Valdemar I of Denmark, and his adviser Absalon, Bishop of Roskilde, resulting in the conversion of the regio ...
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North Germanic Peoples
North Germanic peoples, Nordic peoples and in a medieval context Norsemen, were a Germanic peoples, Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North Germanic languages of today. The North Germanic peoples are thought to have emerged as a distinct people in what is now southern Sweden in the early centuries AD. Several North Germanic tribes are mentioned by Classical antiquity, classical writers in antiquity, in particular the Swedes (Germanic tribe), Swedes, Danes (Germanic tribe), Danes, Geats, Gutes and Rugii. During the subsequent Viking Age, seafaring North Germanic adventurers, commonly referred to as Vikings, raided and settled territories throughout Europe and beyond, founding several important political entities and exploring ...
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Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs, also known as Elbe Slavs and more broadly as Wends, is a collective term applied to a number of Lechites, Lechitic (West Slavs, West Slavic) tribes who lived scattered along the Elbe river in what is today eastern Germany. The approximate territory stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north, the Saale and the ''Limes Saxoniae''Christiansen, 18 in the west, the Ore Mountains and the Western Sudetes in the south, and medieval History of Poland (966–1385), Poland in the east. The Polabian Slavs, largely conquered by Saxons and Danish people, Danes from the 9th century onwards, were included and gradually cultural assimilation, assimilated within the Holy Roman Empire. The tribes became gradually Germanization, Germanized and assimilated in the following centuries; the Sorbs are the only descendants of the Polabian Slavs to have retained their identity and culture. The Polabian language is now extinct. However, the two Sorbian languages are spoken by approximate ...
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Slavs
The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe. Early Slavs lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th century AD), and came to control large parts of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe between the sixth and seventh centuries. Beginning in the 7th century, they were gradually Christianized. By the 12th century, they formed the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus', South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire, the Principality of Serbia, the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of B ...
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Lusatia
Lusatia (; ; ; ; ; ), otherwise known as Sorbia, is a region in Central Europe, formerly entirely in Germany and today territorially split between Germany and modern-day Poland. Lusatia stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Pulsnitz and Black Elster rivers in the west, and is located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Polish voivodeships of Lower Silesia and Lubusz. Major rivers of Lusatia are the Spree and the Lusatian Neisse, which defines the border between Germany and Poland. The Lusatian Mountains of the Western Sudetes separate Lusatia from Bohemia (Czech Republic) in the south. Lusatia is traditionally divided into Upper Lusatia, the hilly southern part, and Lower Lusatia, the flat northern part. The areas east and west along the Spree in the German part of Lusatia are home to the Slavic Sorbs, one of Germany’s four officially recognized indigenous ethnic minorities. The Upper Sorbs inhabit Saxon U ...
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