04/01/2026
About those eggs…
Believed to ward off evil spirits and misfortune, decorating eggs has been a tradition in the Sorbian community for thousands of years, a part of Germany's Slavic-speaking ethnic minority's culture.
Circles and radiating lines are symbols of the sun, light, warmth and spring. Triangles arranged in rows, and often white, represent wolves' teeth and used to repel evil. Or wolves symbolise the connection between father, mother and child, as they are family orientated animals. Living in packs, usually made up of a male and female, offspring from previous years who are "helper" wolves, together with the current year's litter of pups.
While dots and triangles are often arranged in groups of three symbolising the family unit, father, mother, and child, or the Holy Trinity. And a honeycomb pattern, formed with dots, represents the importance of diligence and good work ethic.
Spring, renewal and fertility, are symbolised with stylised flowers, tendrils, p***y willows and stars.
White often stands for the last snow of spring, protecting the emerging flowers, Red - life, fertility, and love, Yellow - youth and a rich, future harvest, Blue - health and clear, sunny skies
And in Sorbian culture each egg is thought of as a fertility symbol, with the complex techniques and designs for decorating them passed down the generations for centuries.
Another of the Spreewald's many rich traditions.
Present day Sorbs are descended from Slavic tribes in Central and Eastern Europe who settled in Germany some 1,500 years ago, where about 60,000 Sorbs now live split between the states of Saxony and Brandenburg in eastern Germany.
One Sorb tradition was rolling eggs over fields, making the earth fertile and bringing in a good harvest, but once Christianity arrived each egg, "jago" in Sorbian, had to be blessed before being rolled.
And this remains a part of their cultural heritage today.
The photo is of Petra Hanusch, an Easter egg painter, in her Sorbian Tracht... Photo credit: sachsensdoerfer.de
