Czorneboh

About

Czorneboh (German pronunciation: [ˈtʃɔʁnəboː]; Upper Sorbian: Čornobóh, pronounced [ˈtʃɔʁnɔbʊx]) is a mountain between Hochkirch and Cunewalde in Upper Lusatia. Czorneboh is located 10 km from the German-Czech border north of Šluknov and 8 km southeast of Bautzen with an altitude of 555.7 m. It is the highest point of this foothill of the Lusatian Highlands. The peak of the Czorneboh is located in the district of Meschwitz (municipality Hochkirch). There is a mountain hostel and an observation tower on the top.

The name Czorneboh as the name of the highest mountain range between the municipalities of Cunewalde and Hochkirch, formerly known as Schleifberg or Praschwiza, is probably an 18th century invention. It starts with the mention of Helmold of Bozow in the Chronica Slavorum around 1168, in which he tells about the wealth of holy groves and gods among Slavs. In one fragment he writes: "Also, the Slavs have a strange delusion. At their feasts and carousals, they pass about a bowl over which they utter words, I should not say of consecration but of execration, in the name of two gods—of the good one, as well as of the bad one—professing that all propitious fortune is arranged by the good god, adverse, by the bad god. Hence, also, in their language, they call the bad god Diabol, or Zcerneboch, that is, the black god". The Pirnaic chronicler and Dominican Johannes Lindner in 1530 transferred the cult of the Chernobog to the Sorbs, but his chronicle is considered faulty and therefore unbelievable. Around 1690, the deputy headmaster of the grammar school in Bautzen, master Martin Grünewald, wrote a brief historical description of Upper Lusatia, in which he mentioned the cult of the god Chernebog and the remains of altars on various mountains near Bautzen, but without mentioning the names of specific mountains. Karl Gottlob von Anton describes a mountain named "after Chernebog" "near Wuißke" in Erste Linien eines Versuchs über der Alten Slaven Ursprung, Sitten, Gebräuche, Meinungen und Kenntnisse (Leipzig, 1783). Completely independently of this, however, Anton mentions Schleifberg and its Slavic name Praschwiza in another part of his work. Seven years later, in the Lausizisches Wochenblatt, the mountain Czernebog is mentioned for the first time, also here as an undefined mountain near Wuißke and with an obvious reference to Anton's writing. In 1791, in the 6th issue of the Lausizische Monatsschrif, today's Chernebog is clearly marked in this way. The contemporary Adolf Traugott von Gersdorff first described this mountain as "Mount of Meschwitz or Zschernebug" in his topographical drawings in 1789 and kept the name (later written Tschernebog). In 1780-1806, the Saxon series of military maps was created. In it, the mountain was inscribed with the double name "Schleifenberg / Zschernebog". The rocks of the mountain peak were called "Hell" and "Devil's Stones". A protocol from 1804 in which the mountain is called "Zschorna-Bogk" comes from Meschwitz (in 1885, 94% of the Sorbian inhabitants), also as the direction of the road. In the records of the town of Bautzen, which was the owner of the mountain, until the 19th century only the names Schleifberg, Exanberg or Finsterwald can be found.

Carried by the spirit of romanticism, the name Czorneboh became the only name of the mountain until the mid-19th century. Devilish stories and legends about alleged Slavic place of worship on Czorneboh are well associated with the name. Karl Benjamin Preusker mentioned in his Ober-Lausitzische Altertümer from 1828 various legends and many folk tales that took place around the rocks of Czorneboh. For example, the oracle of the gods, places of devils, pilgrimages and victims of "pagan reactions," as well as speculation on the destruction and burial of "ancient objects". In his later, more extensive work from 1841, he even showed a detailed map with various legendary places such as the "devil's pulpit", "devil's window", "hell", and a "cauldron" (sacrificial cauldron). The first detailed legends appeared in 1839 in Heinrich Gottlob Gräve's Volkssagen und volksthümliche Denkmale der Lausitz, and by the middle of the century, there is more than half a dozen of them. In 1927, the Bautzen priest, historian and chronicler Erwin Wienecke criticized the discussion about the name of the mountain: "The public opinion was more interested in the bootless "will to prove" than in a logical, definitive solution". He initiated the change of the German name Czorneboh to Schleifberg, which was documented in 1571 and was in his opinion the only correct name. His strong emphasis met with the support of the movements of National Socialist decision-makers and became binding during the Germanization of town names. In 1937, due to a conflict over the name change, Wl. Schütze, Friedrich Sieber and Pawel Nedo interviewed the elderly Sorbs in the Czorneboh area in secret. It turned out that some of the interviewees said "Na Čornyboh" and meant "on the Black god" but sometimes they also said "Na Čornyboku" and meant "on the black side" of the mountain in the sense of the shaded or northern side. It is possible that the similarity of the words led to confusion. The term Schleifberg was until now completely unknown to all interrogated Sorbs. The name change to Schleifberg was withdrawn after 1945. Apart from Anton, the Slavic name "Prašwica" was mentioned in 1712 by the Sorbian priest, historian and linguist Abraham Frencel, who named the northern part of the mountain in this way. He took it out of the Upper Sorbian word prašca ("to ask"; German: "fragen") and translated it as "Frageort" or "Frageberg. For a long time, this interpretation was regarded as evidence of a former place of worship with an oracle on top of the mountain, typical of the Slavic religion. In 1910, the Sorbian folklore scholar Jan Awgust Jenč denied Frenzel's interpretation, assuming that it originated from the lesser-used Upper Sorbian prašiwy ("mangy"). Today, this interpretation dominates and it is believed that it may have meant a difficult climb up a mountain or stones that were not suitable for processing.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.