Memory and History, Living Together and Expulsion

Abstract

With reference to the international discussion on the foundation of a Centre against Expulsion in Berlin, the essay considers the necessary asymmetry between the pursuit of understanding through interpretation as it is cultivated by academic history, and the recollection of historical events on the part of individuals and groups who participated in them. Using Czech-German relations and specifically the question of the "transfer" as background and example, the essay draws attention to the memories of participants not only in terms of the role they play in historical scholarship, but also in terms of their capacity to generate ideological political doctrines, maintain nationalist animosities and stereotypes in the perception of one´s own national and the others and to sustain ethnic, social tension. Selective processes of social forgetting, in which individual and collective experience of life are formed and maintained, an inner community bond created and national identity consolidated, are shown to be a basic element of the existence of historical memory.