Wendish-German Gravestones
Wendish-German gravestones

In Texas, as had been the case in Germany previously, the Wends used German as their official language. Therefore it is not surprising that their grave inscriptions were also in German. Until recently I believed that there were no Wendish-language gravestones at Serbin. The only use of Wendish I had found at all was on a bilingual German and Wendish stone in the Old Warda (Holy Cross) cemetery. The bilingual Old Warda inscription reads as follows:

Maria Schoppa

geb. 23. Jan. 1840
gest. 15. Jan. 1881

Wie sohl ist mir, o Freund der Seelen, wen (n) ich in deiner Liebe ruh'. Kak Bbozny Bym, dyz wotpoczuju, moj Jesu, w Twojej luboszi

Here the verse, first given in German, then in Wendish, is from hymn 262 of the German hymnbook and 441 of the Wendish hymnbook. In this case there is an English equivalent, hymn 362 in The Lutheran Hymnal, where these lines are rendered:

"My soul's best friend, what joy and blessing, my spirit ever finds in Thee."

A more literal translation of the Wendish would be:

"How blessed I am when I rest, my Jesus, in thy love."

It is noteworthy that this Wendish-language inscription, probably only one of two in Texas, (the other marker at St. Paul's Lutheran Cemetery, Serbin, Texas) are from the 1880's, a generation after the arrival here. The oldest stones in Serbin are from the 1860's, and are all in German. We unfortunately know nothing about the grave-markers of the first few years, which have all been lost. We can only assume that they, too, were in German. The factionalism of the 1860's, which was based partly on language preferences, was, by the 1880's, long past, so there seems to have been no external reason for the use of Wendish in these two cases; the motivation was, no doubt, simply the individual devotion of this family to Wendish.

by Prof. Joseph B. Wilson, Professor of German, Rice University

Information from page 8 of the Michael Schoppa Family Album published in 2000 by Mary Schultz Guggisberg and Kenneth W. Schoppa.

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