Myths in narrated educational and childhood experiences in the GDR

The project was based on secondary analyses, i.e. data collected in various historical and sociological research projects through interviews. The biographical narratives of people who were born and socialised in the GDR can provide insights into educational experiences and their social conditions. These narratives always refer retrospectively to past experiences, and the present moment of the interview brings the reported past to light. For this reason, both interviews that were conducted during the GDR and those that were carried out after reunification were analysed. This made it possible to compare surveys that were carried out at different historical points in time.

The data pool analysed includes biographical interviews that were conducted during the GDR, shortly after the GDR collapsed, and up to 20 years after reunification. The interviewees included birth cohorts from the late 1920s to the early 1980s. In some cases, up to three interviews were conducted with the same individuals at intervals of several years. These qualitative longitudinal data show how the classification of an individual’s own biography within the socio-political system of the GDR can change over the course of the individual’s life. They also show strategies for dealing with the need to tell one's own life story and to distance oneself from negative contemporary debates about the GDR.

In almost all cases, the biographies outlined by interviewees included educational experiences in schools and children's and youth organisations such as the Young Pioneers (Junge Pioniere) and the Free German Youth (FDJ). In particular in interviews conducted after the end of the GDR, there is a thematisation of communal experiences that are primarily associated with extracurricular educational organisations. The project analysed how affiliations with educational institutions and organisations are contextualised and evaluated. Since the biographical narratives were primarily analysed in relation to educational experiences, the interview passages that dealt with integration into these educational institutions and organisations were first singled out. These parts of the interviews were interpreted from a social science perspective in order to understand how people have made sense of their experiences in the GDR. Myths as forms of biographical speech were distinguished from other representations of facts. If experiences are charged with strong evaluations, this is a first indication of a myth that is distinguished from less significant experiences and their connection with society.

As the project progresses, it will deal with how myths are created in biographical discourse. In their narrated memories, former GDR citizens refer to an obsolete social order and relate it to their current life. Here, mythification is a means of self-affirmation – for example, with regard to stronger social cohesion in the GDR. Interpretations and reinterpretations connected to the respective present of the narrative are of interest.