What kind of people are we? In favour of open cooperation and 80 years of a united Radebeul

What kind of people are the Saxons? The Saxons are a people created through immigration and coexistence! Without this long tradition of constant immigration and colonisation, the Free State we know would not exist, with its wealth of historical treasures, diverse culture and medium-sized businesses.

The origins of the earliest colonisation date back to a tribe from Bohemia. The Germanic tribes then migrated from the north and merged with them to form the Hermundur tribe. Next came the Slavic Sorbs from Eastern Europe. None of these ethnic groups had conquest goals in mind, rather they lived in a symbiotic process of mutual integration. The large number of Sorbian castles, some of which still exist today, also testifies to their political supremacy as a unified ethnic and linguistic area. Although the Sorbs were eventually conquered and annexed by the Germans, as a result of which they lost their political clout, Sorbian folk life was obviously not disrupted by the German occupation of the castles." The Sorbian economic and social order was also preserved. In this joint team of mutual harmonisation, an initial period of economic, commercial and cultural prosperity developed in Saxony. At the same time, this marked the beginning of a centuries-long immigration of various population groups from neighbouring territories as well as from further afield, which shaped the character of the state until the 19th century. Their importance was not only enormous for agriculture and the development of mining, but also for urban development and the development of trade and crafts.

In the second half of the 19th century, the flow of immigrants into the prospering towns and communities did not stop, just as it did not stop after the Second World War (the END of which is being commemorated for the 70th time this year) and Saxony benefited greatly in both cases: "The economic, social and intellectual-cultural stimuli brought into the country by these different population groups had a decisive influence on and helped shape social development."

80 years ago, the inhabitants of Lößnitz also had to come together and put aside resentments. The people of Kötzschenbroda, who felt that they were being appropriated by the people of Radebeul, were supposedly threatened with losing their traditional identity. Today, nobody questions the merger of the two remaining Lößnitz villages into a united Radebeul. The result of a merger process that has long since been completed. Life is change. Stagnation leads to decay.

Maren Gündel, town archive

Source: Sächs. Landeszentr. f. polit. EDUCATION

Published in: Official Gazette Radebeul, February 2015