arja Kubašec 

(German: Maria Kubasch; 7 March 1890 – 13 April 1976) was a German writer who is
considered by literary historians to be the first woman to write novels in Upper Sorbian.[1] Working as
a schoolteacher, she wrote theatre plays, short stories, biographies, and novels dealing with the
history of the Sorbian people.
Born into a family of farmers in a village near Bautzen in the German Empire, she completed
her teacher training in 1911 with a focus on history and foreign languages at the Ursulinenkloster
Erfurt [de]. Save for a brief period after the Second World War, she taught in a succession of schools
in Saxony until the end of her working life in 1956. During her retirement, Kubašec focused
increasingly on her writing.
Her first literary work was Wusadny, a serial novella published in a newspaper between 1922 and
1923. She published her first dramatic work in 1925, a historical play entitled Chodojta ('The Witch').
A collection of short stories, Row w serbskej holi ('The Grave in the Sorbian Heath') appeared in
1949. The collection's eponymous story relates the execution of a Polish forced labourer who had
fallen in love with a Sorbian woman during the war. Her later works include two biographies of
Sorbian members of the resistance to the Third Reich. Her writings were honoured with several
prizes, among which the 1975 Johannes-R.-Becher-Medaille.

Contents

 1Life
 2Literary work
 3Recognition
 4References
 5Bibliography

Life[edit]
Marja Kubašec was born in March 1890 in Quoos [de], a village near Bautzen in the Kingdom of
Saxony (then part of the German Empire). Her parents were catholic farmers and members of
the Sorbian minority, a West Slavic ethnic group living in the German-Polish border region
of Lusatia.[2] From 1902 to 1909, after attending a school in Radibor, she received her teacher
training with a focus on history and foreign languages at the Ursulinenkloster Erfurt [de].[3] She then
moved to Duisburg, where she taught the children of impoverished factory workers.[2] Kubašec was
the first Sorbian woman to attain a full teacher's education.[3]
Having returned to Lusatia in 1911, she began teaching at a Sorbian school in Crostwitz, a position
she held until 1925. While working in Crostwitz, she engaged in various literary pursuits: she would
write an annual theatre play for her pupils, wrote articles for the Sorbian newspaper Lužica, and
edited the student journal Serbski student. From 1925 to 1939, she taught at school in Pulsnitz. In
1933, after Adolf Hitler's rise to power, she followed her school's entire teaching staff in joining
Hitler's Nazi Party. In 1939, she was transferred to a school in Großröhrsdorf; according to the
journalist Andreas Kirschke, the transfer came about as a punishment for her rejection of the
government's persecution of Jews and Sorbs.[2]
After the end of the Second World War, Kubašec was suspended from her teaching post because of
her membership in the Nazi Party[3] and instead began working for Domowina, an organisation
promoting the interest of the Sorbs. Her suspension ended in 1949 when she took up a post at a
school in Bautzen. In 1952, she was appointed a lecturer for Sorbian and German literature at a
Sorbian institute for teacher education at Radibor. She held this post until the end of her working life
in 1956. Living in her hometown of Quoos, she devoted her retirement to writing. Kubašec died on
13 April 1976 in Bautzen.[3]

Literary work[edit]
When Kubašec returned from her stint in Duisburg, she joined Maćica Serbska, an organisation for
the promotion of Sorbian cultural life. Through the company of many Sorbian intellectuals she
became interested in choral music and theatre. Her first literary work was Wusadny,
a serial novella published in the newspaper Lužica during 1922 and 1923. She published her first
dramatic work, a historical play entitled Chodojta ('The Witch') in 1925. There followed a break in
publishing until after the end of the Second World War.[3]
After the war, her work focused on issues of the recent past and the history of the Sorbian people.
[3]
 In 1949,[3] she published Row w serbskej holi ('The Grave in the Sorbian Heath'), a collection
of short stories. The collection's eponymous story relates the execution of a Polish forced
labourer who had fallen in love with a Sorbian woman during the war.[4] In the 1960s, she engaged
with the lives of two Sorbs who had resisted the government of Adolf Hitler:[2] her biographies of the
writer Maria Grollmuß [de] (1960) and the catholic priest Alojs Andritzki (1967) went through several
editions in Sorbian and German.[3]
During her retirement, Kubašec published several narrative works. Her trilogy Bosćij
Serbin ('Sebastian the Sorb', 1963–1965) follows the life of an illegal Sorbian schoolteacher in the
18th century.[1] The topic of education also featured in a set of novels, Lěto wulkich wohenjow ('The
Summer of the Great Fire', 1970) and Nalětnje wětry ('Spring Winds', 1978),[1] about the origin of
formal education among the Sorbs.[3]

Recognition[edit]
In 1962, Kubašec was awarded the Ćišinski Prize [de], an award given to those who work to promote
the language, culture, and literature of the Sorbian people. After winning the literate prize of
Domowina (1965), she was the 1975 recipient of the Johannes-R.-Becher-Medaille, given by
the Cultural Association of the GDR.[3] Kubašec is considered by literary historian as the first woman
to write novels in Upper Sorbian, the language of the Sorbs in Germany.[1]

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Wilson 1991, p. 674.
2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Kirschke 2015.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j Scholze 2007.
4. ^ Schönbach