‘Die Ungleichheit des Gleichzeitigen’: Life stories, historical transitions and the social self in generational perspective

Referent/in: Mary Fulbrook, London

Notions of ‘collective memory’ or ‘collected memories’ or ‘acts of remembrance’ tend to be related to the level of the state – focussing on topics such as ‘war stories’ in 1950s West Germany, or official constructions of the ‘anti-fascist state’ in the GDR. The political state unit of analysis may be essential as far as forms of ‘public memory’ are concerned, where dominant voices – whether achieved through command of political, cultural or economic resources – provide the key elements for analysis; and where degrees of contention across different social and political groups (left-liberal versus conservative-nationalist narratives, for example) is one of the major issues of concern. But when narratives of the self, or life stories, are analysed in generational terms, quite different patterns of multi-layered, often conflicting narrations of the past begin to emerge. The ‘same’ time period can thus be construed in very different ways, depending both on age-related challenges, experiences and opportunities, and on later contexts of narration. Plotting individual life stories against the broad canvas of historical events, with a particular focus on the generations which were mobilised, respectively, by Nazism and Communism, can lead to some surprising insights into the character and longer-term consequences of the two German dictatorships, and can help to illuminate transformations in patterns of behaviour, attitude and mentality in twentieth-century Germany. Such an approach also raises wider questions about how best to write histories and stories.