Wittichenau is a bilingual town in the district of Bautzen

Bautzen (district)

Bautzen is a district in the Free State of Saxony in Germany including the former districts of Bischofswerda and Kamenz. It is bounded by the Czech Republic, the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge, the district-free city Dresden and the districts of Meißen and Görlitz...

 in the Free State of Saxony, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is situated on the river Schwarze Elster

Schwarze Elster

The Black Elster or Schwarze Elster is a 179 km long river in eastern Germany, in the states Saxony, Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, right tributary of the Elbe. Its source is in the Upper Lusatia region, near Elstra....

, 6 km south of Hoyerswerda

Hoyerswerda

Hoyerswerda is the largest city in the district of Bautzen in the German state of Saxony. It is located in Lusatia, a region where many people speak the Sorbian languages in addition to German.-Geography:...

.

This small municipality is situated in the heart of bilingual Lusatia

Lusatia

Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. 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 as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...

 region which was for long centuries part of the Kingdom of Bohemia

Kingdom of Bohemia

The Kingdom of Bohemia was a country located in the region of Bohemia in Central Europe, most of whose territory is currently located in the modern-day Czech Republic. The King was Elector of Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, whereupon it became part of the Austrian Empire, and...

. Wittichenau has 6,300 inhabitants of whom the Sorbian-speaking, Slavic

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

 Lusatian population compose about 35-40%; the other 60-65% speak German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

.

Wittichenau is the birthplace of the following:

• Georg August Swotlick / Jurij Hawštyn Swětlik (translated the Bible
  Bible
  The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
  
   into Sorbish)
• Matthias Wenzel Jaeckel
• Xavier Jakub Ticin (creator of Upper Sorbian
  Upper Sorbian
  Upper Sorbian is a minority language spoken by Sorbs in Germany in the historical province of Upper Lusatia , which is today part of Saxony...
  
   grammar)
• Ulrich Pogoda (Sorbian musician and composer)
• Günther Särchen (Roman Catholic social pedagogue)