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PARTISAN REVIEW
Karola Brede:
As you know, Niethammer conducted qualitative in–
terviews at the time of the turn and found that antifascist ideas were not
as implanted in people as one might think. But this is not a question of
time or a normative question. I think it depends on how you conceptu–
alize the encounter with the other part of Germany, as something that
belonged to you and must be reappropriated or as something that is
gone, whether you conceptualize it as the past of two different systems. I
think the equivalence of these two states and their history has been em–
phasized enough; that is, with the reunification came the assumption, on
the part of West Germany, that the East had no history and no system of
its own. To think of two Germanies growing together implies, from the
Western perspective, that there was always a tendency towards harmony,
that previously there was no antagonism. I would put the emphasis
differently. It's neither a pedagogical question nor a normative question.
Edith Kurzweil:
We have one more brief question, and then we'll
adjourn for lunch.
David Miap:
I'm a graduate student at the New School for Social
Research.
It
seems to me that in the discussions so far, the audience has
used the speakers as some kind of confessors or mediums between them–
selves and another society, another culture. So I'm wondering what you
think the role of the historian should be in relation to one's fellow col–
leagues, and then to the audiences they speak to.
It
seems that some
people look to you as representatives of a sort of cultural dynasty, or an
embodiment of Germany or Austria or wherever you're from. Could
you speak about that? And do you differentiate between your own per–
ceptions and the perceptions of your fellow countrymen? For instance,
your perceptions as intellectuals versus those of people who have different
lifestyles, different concerns.
If
so, how does that come out in your work
and in your relationship with your audience?
Annie Cohen-Solal:
You're raising two issues: that of historians versus
witnesses, and that of having a passport of a certain nationality and
bearing the responsibility of talking on behalf of this nationality. These
are important questions when historians talk to an audience. At every
conference, historians debate from their own scientific perspective which
includes numbers, inquiries, looking into archives, newspapers, and oral
history. They argue about what part science plays in history, and about
the oral history of witnesses who talk about their subjectivity and their
past and their biography. That is a complex debate. Oral history is part
of something that has a legitimacy, but it is only one part of the work
