page_title: Upper Lusatia
section_title: Inhabitants
hierarchical_section_title: Upper Lusatia / Inhabitants
caption_attribution_description: Hornjoserbsce: Wjesna tafla w Lubjencu
context_page_description: Upper Lusatia is a historical region in Germany and Poland. Along with Lower Lusatia to the north, it makes up the region of Lusatia, named after the Slavic Lusici tribe. Both Lusatias are home to the West Slavic minority group of the Sorbs.
  The major part of Upper Lusatia belongs to the German state of Saxony, roughly comprising the Bautzen and Görlitz districts. The northwestern extremity around Ruhland and Tettau is incorporated into the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district of Brandenburg. The Polish part, east of the Neisse River, belongs to Lower Silesian Voivodeship. A small strip of land in the north around Łęknica, together with the Polish part of Lower Lusatia, is incorporated into Lubusz Voivodeship.
  The historic capital of Upper Lusatia is Bautzen, while the largest city in the region is Görlitz/Zgorzelec, halved between Germany and Poland since 1945. The name Lusatia superior was first recorded in a 1474 deed, derived from the adjacent Lower Lusatian lands in the north, which originally were just called the March of Lusatia.
context_section_description: Today approximately 780,000 people live in Upper Lusatia, nearly 157,000 of them in the Polish part to the east of the Neisse river. A part of the country belongs to the settlement area of the Sorbs. Between Kamenz, Bautzen and Hoyerswerda, about 20,000 people speak Sorbian. However, the German population is not culturally homogeneous, and the cultural borders can be quite well identified by the different dialect groups. While in the region around Bautzen a good deal of High German is spoken, in the south the Upper Lusatian dialect of German (Oberlausitzisch), is common. In the east, Silesian is still spoken by some. The greatest density of population can be found in the German-Polish twin city of Görlitz/Zgorzelec. Currently 91,000 inhabitants, 33,000 in the Polish part, live there.
  In the German part of Upper Lusatia, the population has been declining for almost 20 years. Young people leave the region because the unemployment in Eastern Saxony is particularly high. This and the low birth rate have led to severe aging of the population. In the absence of available jobs, minimal influx of foreigners is noticeable.  The Polish part of Upper Lusatia is, apart from Zgorzelec, Lubań and Bogatynia, only sparsely populated. The area belongs to an economically weak region of Poland. Only the coal-fired power plant in Turów offers a larger number of industrial jobs.
caption: Bilingual sign in Mehltheuer/Lubjenc near Bautzen
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