Memory and Narratives of the Past

WHEN I SET OUT TO CONDUCT oral-history interviews with returnees and to read autobiographical texts written by returnees, I expected to come across the already familiar representations of returnees as heroes, perpetrators, and victims as explored in mass-media accounts and in political discourse, just on an individual and more private level. While those narratives are certainly also present in returnees’ own perceptions of the ways in which their past has impacted on their present, most returnees did not present themselves as heroic returnees or overemphasize suffering and victimhood. They also displayed various ways of confronting the question as to whether and to what extent they had been involved in and were responsible for the crimes committed during the years of the Nazi regime. Both the returnees I met and those returnees whom I only got to know through their autobiographical texts created various narratives of their past, narratives that are by no means simple mirror images of the stories that have been told publicly.

These narratives of the past, whether produced by individuals or groups, often center around various reappearing narrative patterns. These patterns involve actual experiences but also retrospective interpretations that are to a significant degree informed by the political and ideological frameworks and cultural techniques of approaching the past. Narratives of the past are produced by returnees individually or as a group, as well as by other memory agents, and are expressed in various political and social contexts. This chapter examines narratives of the past primarily sourced from oral-history interviews and autobiographical texts. The examination complements and contrasts the results from my analysis of returnees’ egodocuments with results from my analysis of narratives that are produced in broader collective frameworks, for instance by veterans’ associations and the mass media.

In this chapter I place emphasis on one specific narrative, that is, the narrative of transformation and conversion as used by returnees in East and West Germany to describe the impact of the past on their present and future. This transformation narrative is explored through in-depth analyses of various case studies, together with an investigation of the broader developments and characteristics of memory construction.