The oral history interview as a source of and access to the past. Memory, historical consciousness and the mediation of history between the generations

Abstract

While the significance of the ‘68 generation as a historical movement is widely recognized, the generation of ‘45 has not made their mark as a generation. Although some members have gained individual fame as extraordinary intellectuals, as a generation they have always taken a back seat in German post-war history. And yet, as this paper suggests, it is precisely this generation who, in the early 1960s when they took on social responsibility in their professional positions, pushed the democratization of the German Federal Republic in a pragmatic and systematic fashion.

This paper aims to pad the memory gap in our historical consciousness of the post-war era – in the form of a conversation between Aleida Assmann, member of the ‘68 generation on the one hand, and Gunter Thiele, representative of the ‘45 generation on the other. This paper is an experiment. It proceeds from the historical anchoring of perspectives of both conversational partners, and tests the chances and limits of the oral history interview as a medium of history didactics. How do we handle this source? What are its potentials and what are possible risks and complications? In this case, the generations are not only separated by boundaries of socialization and historical experience but also by boundaries of understanding. Can personal memories and reflections supplement and deepen our knowledge of history? A conversation offers the chance of seeing the present in a longer-term perspective and of taking seriously the lived experience of the NS era as pre-history and background of our democracy of today. Whether this experiment to cross the temporal threshold of 1945 may succeed in contributing to a broadening of the horizon and to a historical self-enlightenment is up to the readers of this paper to determine.