De-nacification and the Cold War in Textbook Narratives and in Teacher Narrations (Presentation Barabara Christophe)
COST Conference | History Education and Political Conflicts: Dealing with the Past and Facing the FuturemFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences | University of Split (Croatia), September 12th, 2015
Find more information on the conference and the programme: http://costis1205.wix.com/home#!conference/cbns
Abstract (Presesntaion in Section “Textbooks and Historical Narratives”)
In Germany narrations on the Cold War traditionally have to navigate between three partly competing tasks. They have to tie in with narrations about Nazi times, they have to explain how Germany, the former enemy of the allied powers switched roles and became a much wanted ally itself and last not least they have to deal with the partition of Germany which alternatively can be perceived as a bitter but justifiable consequence of national socialism or as the first crime committed during the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War, the stories developed in response to these challenges were drawn into question. As the American historian Charles Maier has observed, in 1989 the now completed history of the GDR and of the old FRG barged in between our present and the Nazi past. Moreover, re unification has changed the perspective on partition.
Against the backdrop of these observations the presentation raises the question how the story of de nacification that occupies the liminal space between Nazi times and the times of the Cold War is represented in current German history textbooks and in narrations of German history teachers. History textbooks are analysed as a media of cultural memory that allows us to reconstruct hegemonic discourses as well as social controversies. Teachers are looked at in their double role as members of an elite specialized on conveying state approved patterns of sense making into society on the one hand and individuals whose perspectives on contemporary history is shaped by their biographical experience and their generational affiliation on the other hand.