What is "lusatia"

Lusatia (, , , ) is an historical region in Central Europe. The region is the home of the ethnic group of Lusatian Sorbs, a small Western Slavic nation. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg and the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland.

Historically, Lusatia belonged to several different countries. Being one of the so-called Czech Lands for three hundred years, alongside them it passed to form part of the Austrian Empire and from it to Prussia and later Germany. After the conquest of Eastern Germany by the Soviet Army and the partition in 1945, the eastern part of Lusatia along the Lusatian Neisse river was given to Poland where the boundary is called the Oder–Neisse line. In the Polish part Polish is spoken, and in the German part German, Upper- and Lower Sorbian. The biggest Lusatian town is Cottbus/ Chóśebuz.

The name derives from the Sorbian word łužicy meaning "swamps" or "water-hole".