Mina Witkojc, German name: Wilhelmine Wittka, (* May 28 1893 in Burg/Spreewald; † November 11 1975 in Papitz, Niederlausitz) was a Lower Sorbian poet and publicist.

Youth

From 1899-1907 Mina Witkojc attended the elementary school in Burg (Spreewald). From 1907-1917 she worked in Berlin as a maid, flower binder and in the armaments industry. 1918-1921 she was a day labourer in Burg.

A return to Wendish culture

In August 1921 she happened to meet a group of Czech and Upper Sorbian intellectuals who were traveling through the Spreewald. This encounter, which she described in one of her first poems, led her to become aware of her Wendish / Lower Sorbian nationality. She moved to Bautzen where she worked from 1923 to 1933 at the Lower Sorbian newspaper "Serbski casnik". There she made acquaintance with Sorbian intellectuals, particularly with Arnošt Muka and Jan Cyž.

In 1926 she took part in the European Minority Congress in Geneva, in 1930 Mina Witkojc attended the All-Slavic Sokol meeting in Yugoslavia. In the 20s and 30s she also translated other Slavic authors into Sorbian language, such as Božena Němcová and Petr Bezruč.

In 1933 she was banned from writing by the new National Socialist government. She remained unemployed in Bautzen until 1936, only to move back to Burg in the same year. 1936 - 1941 she made a living as a day labourer in agriculture. Since her texts and poems had exposed her very much to the Wendish / Sorbian cultural life and because she was suspected of (pan) Slavic nationalism due to her contacts with other Slavic intellectuals, the Nazis did to her what had already started 1937 with the deportation of Sorbian cultural workers and clergy from Lusatia: Mina Witkojc was banned, first in 1941 from staying in the Dresden administrative district, later in 1942 from the Frankfurt (Oder) administrative district. She had to leave the Lusatia area.

Exile

From 1942 to 1945 she lived in Erfurt, where she worked as an employee in a nursery garden. In 1945, in her epic poem "Erfurtske spomnjeśa" ("Erfurt Memories"), she took stock of her previous life, not meant as a self-reflection, but as a resolution with her previous work for the Sorbs.

In 1946 she lived again in Bautzen as an employee of the „Domowina“. In 1947 she moved to Prague where she lived until 1954. Nothing is known about the reasons for her self-chosen exile while many Sorbian writers, teachers and clergymen who had been expelled by the National Socialists had just returned to Lusatia. However, it can be assumed that there is a connection with the events surrounding the Sorbian National Council (Serbska narodna rada) in Prague, which campaigned for the annexation of Upper and Lower Lusatia to Czechoslovakia. These efforts were fiercely fought against in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and followed by arrests of Sorbian patriots, especially in Lower Lusatia.

Last years in Burg

In 1954 Mina Witkojc settled again in her home village Burg (Spreewald), where she lived until shortly before the end of her life.

She appeared as a co-author of an anthology and with individual poems and contributions in "Nowy casnik", the Sorbian weekly. In 1955 another edition of poems "K swětłu a słyńcu" ("To light, to the sun") was published, which partly consists of poems of the 20s and 30s, reworked in the sense of the prescribed farewell to the Slavic community idea. The title of her first poem from 1921 was "Memories of the First Meeting with Czech and Upper Sorbian Brothers", but the 1955 version only mentions "Upper Sorbian Brothers". She spent her last months at her retirement home in Papitz.