Childhood memories (Kindheitserinnerungen) – Narratives from oral history interviews between primary school children and older people who lived in the GDR

Children often learn about the GDR from conversations with family members (e.g. Moller, 2008; Peuke, 2024) and this also applies to young people (e.g. Deutz-Schroeder & Schroeder 2008; Haag, 2018; Klausmeier, 2020). When children first learn about the GDR in primary school, school textbooks repeatedly suggest asking people who lived in the GDR as contemporary witnesses about their lives (e.g. Umweltfreunde, 2017; Schlag nach im Sachunterricht, 2017). So far, however, it has remained unclear what contemporary witnesses actually tell children and young people in such conversations and how these conversations are structured specifically.

Against the background of a 'tripolar force field' of GDR memory culture (Sabrow, 2009) and the integration of GDR history into democracy education (BKM, 2012), the question of the memories narrated in conversations between the generations appears particularly relevant (→ oral history). According to Sabrow (2009), memories of the GDR oscillate between dictatorship memory (Diktaturgedächtnis), arrangement memory (Arrangementgedächtnis) and progress memory (Fortschrittsgedächtnis). Dictatorship memory refers to aspects of the repressive nature of the political system, while arrangement memory focuses more on the memories of former GDR citizens (ibid.). Progress memory refers to aspects of GDR socialism that were meant to endure and includes, for example, the role of women (ibid.). These three dimensions can be expanded to include implicit knowledge in routines and behavioural habits as well as material objects of remembrance that also shape memories (Haag, Heß, Leonhard, 2017). Communication about the GDR is still characterised by an East-West comparison and the question of winners and losers of German transformation (ibid.; → transition / transformation). Previous studies on GDR memory illustrate a central aspect: while public memory focuses on the dictatorship and the nature of the regime, private memory primarily deals with everyday experience (e.g. Haag, 2018; Heß, 2014). This gives rise to two central dimensions of memory that are sometimes very different from one another. For historical-political educational work, it is therefore important to take these different dimensions of memory into account and to connect them with one another.

Based on the key question about what older people from the GDR consider to be relevant to the narrative when talking to primary school children, this study examined interviews with children and contemporary witnesses of the GDR in more detail. To do this, existing data from the ‘Jung fragt Alt’¹ project was analysed. The data included 22 interviews conducted by 9- to 13-year-old children with people from a retirement home in East Berlin. It emerged that the very elderly people participating in the conversations mainly talked about their childhood during the Second World War and, although they spent a large part of their lives there, hardly mentioned the GDR at all. Therefore, 33 new interviews were conducted with younger contemporary witnesses (born after 1950). The children involved in the study developed the interview questions themselves and were accompanied during the interviews by students training to be primary school teachers (Grundschullehramt) in the subject of Sachunterricht (a combination of history, geography, and natural and social sciences) at Humboldt University of Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

All interviews were analysed using the documentary method (Dokumentarische Methode, see Nohl, 2012). The results of the study make it clear that contemporary witnesses approach interviews with different intentions and want to convey something specific to the children. One topic came up particularly frequently: older people from the GDR describe their own childhood in contrast to today's childhood. The present serves as a template for comparison. GDR-specific topics remain on a rather stereotypical, descriptive level, with the focus being on every day, apolitical experiences, while the politics of the time is hardly discussed.

To be able to work out the extent to which the more general everyday stories refer only to life in the GDR or whether they are more generational in nature, the second phase of the study will look at narratives from people who lived in West Germany during the time of German partition. This allows a comparison with the narratives collected so far. It also offers the opportunity to look at memories told in terms of their classification in a pan-German history.