Rewriting Memories: Family Recollections of the National Socialist Past in Germany

Abstract

This article deals with the question of how personal memories of the national socialist past in Germany are passed on to younger generations. Rather than viewing this process as an unidirectional handing down of memories from generation to generation, examination is made of how memories are negotiated and re-created in intergenerational discourse. Drawing on a series of case studies, there is discussion of how the meaning of past experiences is construed and organized within particular narrative genres. In order to understand the ways memories are recomposed in the course of social transmission, the analysis highlights the role of group concerns. Against this backdrop, Bartlett’s observations on the repeated reproduction of narratives and Halbwachs’ ideas on the collective memory of the family are presented and discussed as early versions of a sociocultural approach in psychology.

Keywords

history intergenerational transmission of memories narrative social remembering

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bamberg, M. (1997). Positioning between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 335–342.

Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brockmeier, J. (2002). Remembering and forgetting: Narrative as cultural memory. Culture & Psychology, 8(1), 15–43.

Brockmeier, J. , & HarrÈ, R. (1997). Narrative: Problems and promises of an alternative paradigm. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30(4), 263–283.

Bruner, J.S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J.S. (1990). Acts of meaning.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J.S. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 17(Autumn), 1–21.

Davies, B. , & HarrÈ, R. (1990). Positioning: The social construction of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20, 43–63.

Eco, U. (1994). Six walks in the fictional woods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

10.

Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory( L.A. Coser , Ed., Trans. and Intro.). Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1925.)

11.

Iser, W. (1974). The implied reader: Patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyon to Beckett.Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

12.

Middleton, D. (2002). Succession and change in the socio-cultural use of memory: Building-in the past in communicative action. Culture & Psychology, 8(1), 79–95.

13.

Mishler, E.G. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

14.

Mitchell, W.J.T. (Ed.). (1981). On narrative.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

15.

Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development: The emergence of the mediated mind. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

16.

Sarbin, T.R. (Ed.). (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

17.

Schacter, D.L. (1996). Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past. New York: Basic Books.

18.

Welzer, H. (1995). ‘Ist das ein H^rspiel?’ Methodologische Anmerkungen zur interpretativen Sozialforschung [‘Is this a radio play?’ Methodological remarks on interpretive social research]. Soziale Welt, 46(2), 182–196.

19.

Welzer, H. , Moller, S. , & Tschuggnall, K. (2002). ‘Opa war kein Nazi’: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familienged‰chtnis[‘Grandpa was no Nazi’: National Socialism and the Holocaust in the Collective Memory of the Family]. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.