Geschichte der Sorben by Jan Brankačk; Frido MětškReview by: Gerald StoneThe American Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Jun., 1978), p. 743Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1861924 .

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Modern Europe 743

Following Kreuger's suicide-"the shot in Paris" as it is described (2: 3)-Ericsson was sal- vaged by the Swedish government and by the banks, so that by 1940, with much reorganization, the company regained its stability and in the post- war period was in a strong position to help rebuild Europe. I.T.T. sold its shares in I960, and since then the company has increased its strength from a Swedish base. At the same time, the major reasons given for the outstanding failure of Ericsson in the U.S. are poor long-range planning and badly syn- chronized factory processes in Buffalo, rather than the domination of the Bell system, which receives scant notice.

The glossy volumes abound in statistics and col- orful charts drawn from the Ericsson archives and the Official Statistics of Sweden (full documenta- tion is only in the Swedish edition). Business pro- files spring from the pages-there are forty-four tables in volume i alone, which detail such facts as the drop in letters per foreign traffic telegram be- tween 1901-05 and I906-I0 from 30 to 28 (i: 15). At the end of volume 2 we are treated to some mini- biographies, including one of the fifty-year veteran "Sharper-Kalle," a photogenic shaping operator. Indeed, this is a history written from the point of view of individuals, be they directors or machin- ists.

The celebratory quality of the volumes some- times sits awkwardly with the close attention given to a myriad of facts. One learns much about the Ericsson company, its contacts abroad, business infighting, and the role of the Swedish banks, yet the final impression is one of a vast report which concludes that Ericsson is, indeed, a world-wide enterprise.

E. JOHN B. ALLEN

Plymouth State College

JAN BRANKACK and FRIDO METSK. Geschichte der Sor- ben. Volume i, Von den Anfdngen bis I789. (Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Schriftenreihe des Instituts fuir Sorbische Volksforschung.) Bautzen: VEB Domowina-Verlag. 1977. Pp. 331. 15 M.

The Slavonic tribes which in the early Middle Ages were settled, roughly speaking, between the rivers Saale and Bober have been allotted an ob- scure place in the subsequent history of Central Europe. Having succumbed to German invaders by the beginning of the eleventh century, they were condemned thenceforward to a condition of bond- age and degeneration. Their entire history is one of decline. By the end of the eighteenth century, as we learn from this book (p. 307), the territory they

occupied had shrunk to less than half of what it was around I 500. In three hundred years the num- ber of their villages had fallen from i ,850 to about 1,000. Nevertheless, they have managed to survive into the second half of the twentieth century. Known in English as Wends or Sorbs, they now number perhaps 70,000 and occupy parts of the Bezirke of Cottbus and Dresden. Their existence and rights are acknowledged in the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and they have their own ethnological research institute at Baut- zen, linked to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. It is thanks to this institute, the Institut za serbski ludospyt, that we now have volume one of a new comprehensive and reasonably scholarly his- tory of the Sorbs. The one-volume Historija serb- skeho naroda by W. Boguslawski and M. Hornik, published in I884, will not even bear comparison with its successor, so different are its scope and methods. Volumes two and three of the present work were published in j975 and 1976 respectively. The fourth and final volume is expected in 1979.

All four volumes will eventually be available in both German and Sorbian versions.

Volume one is divided into two main parts, the first of which is principally the work of Jan Brankack. It covers the period from the Volker- wanderung to the end of the fifteenth century and deals with the establishment of feudalism in Lus- atia, the process whereby the great majority of Sorbs became the bondsmen of German lords. The second part, which traces the decline of the feudal order from 1500 to 1789, is by Frido Metsk, a scholar whose published work on this period, espe- cially in the field of historical demography, has already put him in a position of unrivalled author- ity.

For the most part, the book has been compiled and condensed from a mass of work previously published in articles and monographs. The effects of compression are sometimes apparent, and they are not alleviated by the fact that references are stinted throughout. It is, for example, stated boldly (p. 2 i6) that the Slovene grammarian Adam Bohoric took the Lower Sorbian text of the Lord's Prayer, published in his Arcticae horulae . . . (1584), from Albin Moller's hymnbook and catechism of 1574. Fairness would surely demand reference to the alternative explanation given by Jan Petr (Le- topis Instituta za serbski ludospyt, Series A, 12/I, pp. 6-7).

Whatever its shortcomings, however, this book has no rivals, and no one interested in the subject can afford to be without it.

GERALD STONE

Hertford College, Oxford

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