The Language of Belonging (Language and Globalization)

The Language of Belonging Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and ' Dariusz Galasinski Language and Globalization Series Editors: Sue...

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The Language of Belonging Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and ' Dariusz Galasinski

Language and Globalization Series Editors: Sue Wright, University of Portsmouth, UK and Helen KellyHolmes, University of Limerick, Ireland. In the context of current political and social developments, where the national group is not so clearly defined and delineated, the state language not so clearly dominant in every domain, and cross-border flows and transfers affect more than a small elite, new patterns of language use will develop. The series aims to provide a framework for reporting on and analysing the linguistic outcomes of globalization and localization. Titles include: David Block MULTILINGUAL IDENTITIES IN A GLOBAL CITY London Stories Diarmait Mac Giolla Chrióst LANGUAGE AND THE CITY Julian Edge (editor) (RE)LOCATING TESOL IN AN AGE OF EMPIRE Roxy Harris NEW ETHNICITIES AND LANGUAGE USE Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson (editors) LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES, POLICIES AND PRACTICES Language and the Future of Europe Clare Mar-Molinero and Miranda Stewart (editors) GLOBALIZATION AND LANGUAGE IN THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD Macro and Micro Perspectives Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasinski THE LANGUAGE OF BELONGING Leigh Oakes and Jane Warren LANGUAGE, CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY IN QUEBEC Forthcoming titles: Colin Williams LINGUISTIC MINORITIES IN DEMOCRATIC CONTEXT

Language and Globalization Series Standing Order ISBN 1–4039–9731–4 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd., Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Also by Ulrike Hanna Meinhof TEXT, DISCOURSE AND CONTEXT: Representation of Poverty in Britain (co-editor) LANGUAGE AND MASCULINITY (co-editor) LANGUAGE LEARNING IN THE AGE OF SATELLITE TELEVISION WORLDS IN COMMON? Television Discourses in a Changing Europe (co-author) INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE MEDIA (co-editor) LIVING WITH BORDERS

Also by Dariusz Galasinski MEN AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTIONS CULTURAL STUDIES AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (co-author) THE LANGUAGE OF DECEPTION METALANGUAGE (co-editor)

The Language of Belonging

Ulrike Hanna Meinhof University of Southampton, UK

and

Dariusz Galasinski University of Wolverhampton, UK

© Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasi´ nski 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in hardback in 2005 This paperback edition first published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–0787–5 hardback ISBN-10: 1–4039–0787–0 hardback ISBN-13: 978–0–230–55437–5 paperback ISBN-10: 0–230–55437–7 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meinhof, Ulrike Hanna. The language of belonging / Ulrike Hanna Meinhof and Dariusz Galasi´ nski. p. cm.––(Language and globalization) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–0787–0 (hardback) 0–230–55437–7 (pbk) 1. Group identity. 2. Sociolinguistics. 3. Language and culture. 4. Group identity – Germany – Case studies. 5. Group identity – Poland – Case studies. 6. Partition, Territorial – Social aspects – Germany – Case studies. 7. Partition, Territorial – Social aspects – Poland – Case studies. I. Galasi´ nski, Dariusz. II. Title III. Series. HM753.M45 2005 306.44⬘6⬘0943––dc22 2005043280 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Ursula Meinhof-von Andrian and Oli, Michalowi, Ani

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Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

x

Maps

xi

1

Setting the Context

1

2


13

3

The Grammar of Identity

50

4

Stories of Belonging and Identification

71

5 Photography and the Discourses of Memory and Identification

112

6

159

The Voices of Neighbourhood

7 Frames of Belonging: Crossing Local, National and Transnational Spaces

178

Notes

208

Bibliography

210

Index

216

vii

List of Illustrations 5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.5

5.6

5.7

5.8

5.9

5.10

The old mill in Tiefengrün, seen from the eastern banks of the River Saale in Hirschberg, looking west. Phase 1 The leather factory in Hirschberg, seen from the western banks of the River Saale, looking east. Phase 1 The Café Schöneberger on the western banks of the River Neisse, and the ‘theatre island’ in the middle of the river in Guben. Phase 1 The old market square with the cathedral on the eastern banks of the River Neisse in Guben. Phase 1 A propaganda poster erected on the stump of the bridge on the West German side of the river, proclaiming that West Germans do not recognize the border to the GDR as a border. Phase 2 A propaganda poster on the leather factory in GDR Hirschberg denouncing West German politics as warmongering. Phase 2 A postcard of GDR Guben with typical GDR new housing estates (Plattenbauten) and the inscription ‘Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben’ (it was named Wilhelm Pieck in 1961 to honour the first president of the GDR; it reverted to its original name in 1990). Phase 2 The empty market square with the ruins of the Cathedral from Polish Gubin, with no stalls or houses in sight. Phase 2 The first day of opening the provisional wooden footbridge from Tiefengrün to Hirschberg, during the transitional phase, December 1989. Phase 3 Aerial view of the demolished leather factory (Hirschberg) with the new stone bridge under construction. Phase 3 viii

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

List of Illustrations ix

5.11 5.12

5.13 5.14

5.15

5.16

Opening of the fully fledged motor bridge in 1997. Phase 3 The new German customs building (former Café Schöneberger) in Guben with a view of the island without its theatre in Gubin. Phase 3 Gubin today: ruins of the Cathedral. Phase 3 EU notices announcing the shared waste water project built in Gubin with Western financial support. Phase 3 The booklet of Euro-City Guben/Gubin announcing several existing or planned future projects for bringing both towns closer together. Phase 3 Upperlausitzian Hall of Memory

128

129 130

131

132 135

Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible had it not been for the generosity of many people. Our first thanks goes to the people of Guben and Gubin, of Hirschberg and of Tiefengrün of Görlitz and Zgorzelec, who shared their experiences with us and allowed us to record and use their narratives for our study. They remain anonymous for reasons of confidentiality. We would also like to thank our local mediators who helped us to locate three-generation families and in several cases also provided us with photographs from their private collections, especially Ursula Meinhof and Elisabeth Mord for Tiefengrün and Hirschberg, Ernst Schmalz and the then mayor for historic and contemporary Guben, Mr Hain, and Andrzej Winiszewski for Gubin, and Krzysztof Bialach, Radoslaw Baranowski and Hanna Majewska for Zgorzelec. We were also extremely grateful to be allowed to use photographic material from the personal archives of the Town Hall in Guben and from the Museums in Hirschberg and in Mödlareuth. The research was supported by a grant from the ESRC (R000 222699 1999–2000) which subsequently expanded to an EU Fifth Framework project (HPSE–CT–1999–00003). Many of the insights, analysis and writing were made more profound by the subsequent work in many other border communities in Europe, and by exemplary collaboration with our colleagues on this project. Finally we would like to thank our partners, Frank Gloversmith and Aleksandra Galasinska, for their continuing support in exchanging ideas, listening to many drafts as well as sharing the tasks of proof-reading. ULRIKE MEINHOF DARIUSZ GALASINSKI

x

THURINGIA

SAXONY

SPARNBERG

PLAUEN HIRSCHBERG MÖDLAREUTH

TIEFENGRÜN HOF

CZECH REPUBLIC

BAVARIA

CHEB BAYREUTH

Map of the former German–German border communities under discussion

xi

BALTIC SEA

SZCZECIN

BERLIN

POLAND POZNAN

GERMANY GUBEN

GUBIN ZIELONA GORA

LEIPZIG

GÖRLITZ

ZGORZELEC

DRESDEN

WROCKAW

CZECH REPUBLIC Map of the German–Polish border communities under discussion

xii

1 Setting the Context

Hardly a week passes in the British media without someone somewhere posing questions about who we are and to which formations – personal, social, cultural, geographical, national, transnational – we do or do not belong. Britain is not unusual in this respect, since questions of belonging, of cultural identities and identifications represent some of the most significant challenges to social life in our times, in Europe and the world in general. That these questions have acquired such urgency shows very clearly that in a world marked by socio-political upheavals and transnational mobilities there are no easy answers to be had and that our self-understanding of identity and belonging has come under stress. The need for adaptation, reconfiguration and reconceptualization of cultural identity is not only felt at the larger levels of politics and institutional change, such as in the alterations of internal and external borders between regions, nationstates and transnational formations such as the European Union, but it is keenly experienced at the everyday level of ordinary living and human relations. There is hardly a discipline within the social sciences which in one way or another has not addressed these phenomena of contemporary existence. Political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, human geographers amongst many others have engaged with questions of identity, using their particular theoretical models and forms of analysis. Our work complements and occasionally challenges these approaches by other disciplines, especially those which are working with quantitative paradigms, by thinking of identity as a process which reveals itself through our ways of speaking. The ways in which we construct 1

2 The Language of Belonging

our identities – which, in line with many other writers, we see as multiple and potentially conflictual – and how we mark out our social, geographical and institutional forms of belonging through our ways of speaking and narrating our selves thus offers a qualitative, discursive take on these complex questions. This book will therefore begin by showing in detail the ways in which the language we use in everyday life, the micro-features of our linguistic choices – lexical as well as grammatical – constructs and confirms our sense of identity and belonging. We will then move on to larger discursive patterns. Chapters 2 and 3 will offer a discussion of what may seem at first sight like a paradox, namely that whereas on the one hand there are no singular fixed ways in which our language choices index our identities in a one-to-one relationship, there are hardly any features of the lexicon or the grammar which cannot be put to work for discursive identity construction. Chapters 2 and 3 will explain this theoretically and exemplify the discussion with extracts from our own field work. But it is not only through the micro-phenomena of lexicogrammatical choice that we can understand these processes, but also through the larger patterns and choices of narrativization and storytelling. Chapter 4 will move on to these larger discursive structures and again show through examples how narrativization is another central element of identity construction. Methodologically our study describes and demonstrates major innovations in data collection methods by employing photography rather than directive questions as triggers for interviews and oral narratives. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5. Such an indirect method offers a synthesis between two parallel but difficult to combine forms of undertaking qualitative research: that of ethnography and discourse analysis (for a brief first account see Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000). The need for such indirectness in data eliciting was particularly important because of the highly sensitive nature of our investigation. We had chosen to conduct our research with threegeneration families in communities which had undergone traumatic experiences as a result of the Second World War and its aftermath as well as major socio-political upheavals which affected each generation of our sample in different ways. With the construction of new national borders after World War II, new borders divided territory which had been previously unified. Our two sets of communities were accordingly divided – Guben/Gubin on the German/Polish

Setting the Context 3

border and Tiefengrün and Hirschberg on the now dissolved border between West Germany and the GDR were split by state borders. How do such divisions affect people’s sense of belonging? Chapter 6 will show the ways in which the identification of one’s own in-groups will invariably create out-groups and vice versa. Given the difficult past of the communities in question as well as the continuing impact of socio-economic inequalities between them which we will discuss below, the people we interviewed were continuously ‘looking across’ the rivers (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002) as a way of drawing their inner and outer circles of who does or does not belong ‘to us’. However, as our chapter will show, these are not simply fixed stereotypes against other nationals but double-voiced constructions of the ‘other’ which depend on the context of the narrative. Finally, Chapter 7 will take the concept of context-dependency even further by showing how the large public spheres of identity – of nation or supra-nation, region or federal state, town or village – are taken up and incorporated into self-identification or dis-identification in different ways under different circumstances. But before embarking on this journey of discursive identity construction, let us first consider the geographic, socio-political and economic environment of our informants.

Guben/Gubin Until the end of World War II, Guben was a German town with the river Neisse flowing through it. Most of the town’s centre was located on its eastern banks, with the town hall, an imposing church and a plethora of streets with shops and restaurants. It also contained the largest residential areas with houses built right up to the top of the surrounding hills with their famous orchards. Across the river, the western part of Guben was smaller, more industrial, and, apart from the glamorous Café Reichenbach on the river bank, more functional and architecturally less attractive. During the last weeks of the war, Guben became the target of heavy artillery fighting between the German, and the Soviet and Polish armies, with the German army only giving way to the invaders once most of the city lay in ruins. The centre was destroyed to such an extent that, were it not for the still remaining though devastated shell of the church building and its bell tower and the rebuilt town hall, today’s community centre, or Dom kultury, it


would be hard to recognize the place as the former city centre of Guben. For a detailed account of the situation in these cities see Jajesniak-Quast and Stoklosa (2000). When the victorious Soviet, British, French and US Allied Forces agreed on where to draw the borders for the defeated Germany at the Conference of Yalta, the eastern border between Germany and Poland was moved further westwards from its pre-war state, to coincide with the course of the rivers Oder and Neisse, and effectively splitting several towns, such as Frankfurt an der Oder, Goerlitz and (our focus of interest) Guben into a German and a Polish half. Only the western side of Guben remained German, thus becoming a border town to its Polish neighbour, then renamed as Gubin. Whilst gaining territory in the West, Poland herself lost territory east of the so-called Curzon line to the Soviet Union, part of which forms today’s Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. The initial administrative demarcation of Germany itself into four Allied-occupied zones gradually fossilized into a sharp political division between the Soviet-occupied zone in the East and the three western zones, which by 1949 led to two separate nation-states, the Soviet dominated GDR, and the Western-influenced FRG. This division only ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and subsequent unification in October 1990. During the post-war period contacts between East Germans and Poles both at national and at regional level underwent many shifts and turns, from a closed border policy until the 1970s to open borders during that decade, a renewed closure in the 1980s as a GDR response to Polish democratization, and a renewed open border policy since 1989. Crossing today via the official border posts is entirely straightforward, usually requiring no more than an ID card, as are, indeed, illegal crossings for extensive smuggling. As far as the oldest generation of people living in these towns is concerned, the majority of Germans in today’s Guben had originally been evicted from the eastern part, today’s Gubin, whereas many of those Poles living in today’s Gubin had themselves been re-housed at the end of the war from various other parts of Poland or had, in significant numbers, been evicted by the Soviets from their own home territory in the East. Our research into identity construction of three-generation families in split border communities included for each family one or more


members belonging to this oldest generation. The German informants of that group had experienced the division of their hometown and, in many cases, had lost their homes in the eastern part of Guben and resettled in the western part of the town. The Polish informants had been re-housed in Gubin in 1945 or soon after and had often themselves lost their homes further east. The situation in Guben and Gubin is in many ways typical for the entire borderline which runs from the Baltic to the Adriatic sea. When we followed up our research on the German/Polish and former German border with a much larger EU-funded project on European borders (see Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000b; Meinhof, ed. 2002, ed. 2003; Wastl-Walter and Meinhof, ed. 2003) it became clear, that there were many similarities which drew together communities on the much poorer eastern side of the border as against those on the western side. But in all cases – east as well as west of the borders – communities were geo-politically marginalized in relation to the centres of their nations, experiencing many similar problems of socio-economic and population decline (see especially Holly et al., 2003; Meinhof, 2003; and Wastl-Walter et al., 2003). Geo-political marginality and socio-economic inequality thus mapped themselves onto the historical trauma of division, loss or reconfiguration of ‘home’ which strongly permeated all the discourses about self and others.

Tiefengrün/Hirschberg Our second set of communities for this study lies on the former German–German border in what is now the border area between the federal states of Thuringia and Bavaria. Until the end of the Second World War in 1945 this particular region was economically, socially and culturally integrated. The North–South axis, which linked the Middle-Frankonian city of Nuremberg, the Upper-Frankonian town of Hof, the Saxon city of Dresden and former Breslau, which is today the Polish town of Wroclaw, formed historical trade routes with intensive economic and cultural interconnections (Maier, 1990:14–15). Our elderly informants from Bavaria and Thuringia all spoke of their economic, cultural and social orientation with the other side. Many people in Frankonian Tiefengrün worked and went shopping in Thuringian Hirschberg or Schleiz rather than in Hof, and close friendship ties were maintained by many families across the region. Indeed


the majority of houses in the lower part of Tiefengrün (Untertiefengrün) were built for Hirschberg factory workers by the owners of the factory who also owned their villas in Frankonian woodland just outside the village. This interconnection and interdependency was brought to an increasingly more rigid halt with the occupation of Thuringia by the Soviet Army and of Bavaria by the US Army in 1945, with a total collapse of cross-border movement, preceding the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 by more than a decade. What were originally ‘zones’ of occupation swiftly evolved into a strictly guarded and militarized border between two separate nation-states with very different ideological and economic models and standards of living. On this border more so than on any other of the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ – the ideological struggles between East and West were fought out, with principles of parliamentary democracy, federalism and a capitalist market economy in the West and Democratic Centralism, Marxism– Leninism and a centrally planned economy in the East. With the fall of the Wall in Berlin in November 1989 the East–West German border as a whole collapsed, leading to (re-)unification of East and West. At the time of our research in the region between summer 1999 and 2001 the border between the two regions had disappeared for a decade or more, the bridge across the river had been rebuilt, and Thuringia had been established as a new Federal State in united Germany. Yet as we will show with many examples, the former division proved so tenacious that many people still regard themselves as westerners or easterners and use the other side as an out-grouping device (see also Armbruster and Meinhof, 2002, 2003, 2005 and Meinhof, 2004). The difficulty of re-establishing former good links after 40 years of ideological, cultural and economic difference thus tells a warning tale to those who feel that time itself is enough to resolve hostilities. Our case studies on two borders which moved from a highly conflictual status to one of dissolution (East/West Germany) or easy transparency (Germany/Poland in 2000 and 2001, that is, in the wake of Poland’s EU entry) thus focus on families with three generations in communities located on fault-lines of ideological change in the twentieth century. All have experienced between them dramatic socio-political changes during the life-time of their older citizens. All except the very youngest had to embrace major shifts in their


public allegiances. Our case studies of families in two corresponding sets of border communities on the Polish–German and on the former East–West German border will allow us to compare how their members perceive and discursively construct their identities: on the one hand, in relation to these upheavals in their own official spheres of politics, and on the other hand, in relation to the people on the other side of the border with their very different histories. The significance of the border itself as a means of foregrounding and thematizing closeness and distance will form part of this discussion. Also, by contrasting two sets of communities where on the one hand a national border is still in existence, albeit more open than before (Germany/ Poland), and on the other, where a border has been resolved by a nation becoming reunified (East/West Germany) we will also be able to throw light on similarities and differences in the perceived collective categories of (negative) stereotyping and labelling across various group formations.

Identity The main opposition we are setting up is that between essentialism and anti-essentialism (Hall, 1990, 1992). The essentialist argument has it that identity is the name for a ‘one true self’. Identity exists and is expressed through symbolic representation. By this token there would be an essence of, for example, Polishness in that Poles should drink a lot of vodka, be Catholic and not exactly the most organized people in the world, while Germans would have beer-bellies, be organized, punctual and very hard-working. As much as we know Poles and Germans like that, we also know many who do not represent such glaring stereotypes. Furthermore, in contrast to folk theories of self and identity (van Langenhove and Harré, 1993), we see identity as discursive. Identity is a discursive construct which continually shifts in the local contexts in which social actors enter. As much as we might think that our selfconstructions are our own, we always draw upon socially available resources with which we construct our experience of ourselves and the reality surrounding us. We are social even in our solitude, as Hanks (1990) put it. Even love, sometimes wild and all-consuming, is constructed through confessions of love, labelling it, telling it, making stories about it, with the use of socially accepted or deliberately


oppositional ways of talking about our experiences (Wetherell, 1996). The language we use to do this with is itself fundamentally dialogic and multi-voiced (Bakhtin, 1981; Volosinov, 1973). People do not harbour an inner essence of self which is there to be discovered by the analyst. Identity is a discourse of (not) belonging (see also Kroskrity, 2000), which is continually negotiated and renegotiated within a localized social context. It is therefore an ongoing process of becoming: always provisional, always subject to change (for an empirically based discussions of identity construction see Barker and Galasinski, 2001). Finally, identities are necessarily relational – as much as identity is about who ‘I am’, it is also about who ‘I am not’. Identities need the ‘constitutive outside’ (Hall, 1996). It is only through the Other that ‘we’ can establish our own identity, through what we are not. Othering, or constructing a group as Others, is therefore as much about ‘them’ as it is about ‘us’. Representations of the Other are situated within what Blommaert and Verschueren (1998) call the ‘habitual frame of reference’, the authors’ particular world-view (or ideology), as well as within collective and individual power relationships, or collective and personal stakes and motivations (see also Bauman, 1999). The meaning of identities which may be labelled as Polishness or Germanness are subject to continual re-negotiation. If gender is a verb, as was aptly put by Johnson (1997), we could extend it to ethnicity or nationality (see also Street’s 1993 notion of culture as a verb). Indeed, while our research suggests that our informants constructed their Polishness in negative terms to Germans (Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002 and Chapter 7), Poles on the other side of Poland, on the Polish–Ukrainian border, did so mostly in terms of its opposition to Ukrainians (Barker and Galasinski, 2001). In the same way some German youths on the eastern border to Poland used Poles as their constitutive others, whereas those on the western side of the former border to East Germany constructed an imaginary ‘East German’ to play the part of those that do not belong (Meinhof, 2004). What is also important is that the significance of what it means to be Polish, British, German, as much as what it means to be a man or a woman, a father or a mother, is never complete, never finished. Thus identity represents a snapshot of the unfolding process. It is a fast-shutter photograph freezing the runner in a never-ending run. Furthermore, identities are multiple, open to be ‘articulated’


(Hall, 1990, 1992) with other identities. In that sense ethnicities can also be gendered, and genders ethnicized (see Galasinski, 2004; also Beynon, 2002). Hall’s ‘de-centred’ self is composed not of one but of several shifting, sometimes contradictory, identities, with no identity as the core: The subject assumes different identities at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent ‘self’. Within us are contradictory identities, pulling in different directions, so that our identifications are continually being shifted about. If we feel that we have a unified identity from birth to death, it is only because we construct a comforting story or ‘narrative of the self’ about ourselves. (Hall, 1992:277) Hall exemplifies the articulation of identities and the resulting range of identity configurations through the case of Clarence Thomas, an African-American US supreme court judge with conservative political views. Judge Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a black women and former colleague of Thomas’s. Hall says: Some blacks supported Thomas on racial grounds; others opposed him on sexual grounds. Black women were divided, depending on whether their ‘identities’ as blacks or women prevailed. Black men were also divided, depending on whether their sexism overrode their liberalism. White men were divided, depending, not only on their politics, but on how they identified themselves with respect to racism and sexism. White conservative women supported Thomas, not only on political grounds, but because of their opposition to feminism. White feminists, often liberal on race, opposed Thomas on sexual grounds. And because Judge Thomas is a member of the judicial elite and Anita Hall, at the time of the alleged incident, a junior employee, there were issues of social class position at work in these arguments too. (Hall, 1992:279–80) As much as these theoretical points are valid, one needs to remember Bourdieu’s (1991) point that as much as identities are discursive, by virtue of being constructed they also become real and natural. Taking up the point, Joseph (2004:90) says that ‘constructing an identity is in fact constructing an essence’. And this is precisely why people

10


cannot take up any identity they want, in any way they want, whenever they want. Edley and Wetherell (1997) suggest that identity construction is constrained by taking account of the circumstances either at hand, or those encountered earlier. But we think that the constraints on identity construction go further than that. Here empirical data offers a more complicated view (see, for example, Galasinski, 2003; Galasinska and Galasinski, 2003). The local negotiation of identity is not based merely on locally appropriate discourse or our own stories. Provisionality of identity, its continual negotiation in the local context, is just one dimension of identity construction. The other, operating at the level of the nation, society, social group, provides ready-made templates into which the locally negotiated identity can be placed or against which it struggles to articulate itself. The tension which this can create for individuals in their attempts to create cohesive life-stories for themselves is evident in the many instances of ambivalence and double-voicing, in the presence of internal opponents against which arguments have to be voiced even in their absence (see Chapters 3 and 4 and Armbruster and Meinhof, 2005). Taken-for-granted ‘narratives’, what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be Polish or German, must be re-assessed for the benefit of the local situation. In such a way, we see the local project of identity as being framed not only by a myriad of intersubjective narratives of group affiliations, but also as provided by the public discourses available to the social actor. But as we shall argue in Chapter 3, the picture is even more complicated. We shall argue for the notion of a ‘grammar of identity’, an intermediary linguistic level between the metanarratives and the locally constructed ‘discourse of belonging’. Furthermore, as much as we can ‘do’ multiple identities, it is also the society, the community or our relatives who provide different identities for us (see also Joseph, 2004). These do not necessarily have to agree with each other. To quote just one example: one of our universities’ e-mail servers dictates that the format of the name appearing on the outgoing e-mail should be ‘Surname, forename (title)’ – for example, ‘Galasinski, Dariusz (Prof)’ – despite the fact that the preferred format might be ‘darek galasinski’. It is not only the issue of the formality of the format, with the formal form of the forename and the professorial title, but also the sequence of the names, reminiscent of ‘ensign Galasinski’ doing his hated national


service in communist Poland. Still, the institutionally adopted technology does not allow for other name formats, so Galasinski, Dariusz (Prof) is stuck with that imposition, having to ‘live it’. We see such ‘imposition of identities’ or setting a pool of ‘appropriate’ identities in our everyday practices in what Billig (1995) called ‘banal nationalism’, the daily reproduction of the nation-state, be it in the form of the limp flag during the time of the football World Cup, the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States, or, in its extreme version, the notion of un-American activities. Such ideologically motivated constructions interact with the local constructions, more or less strategically, in daily interactions among social actors. To make the point again, the argument that identities are fluid and provisional does not suggest that they are haphazard. If discourse is social and subject to all kinds of social and cultural rules and principles, so are identities. Butler’s (1990) theory of gender as performance makes the point very nicely – gender, as much we think of it as ‘natural’ and obvious, starts with an act of endowment: ‘It’s a girl’ – through which a human subject is put into a regulatory frame within which she performs femininity, or it is performed for her, especially at the beginning of her life (McIlvenny, 2002). A further question is related to the nature of the markers of identity themselves. Speaking of gender identities, Swann (2002) asked the question of how the analyst might decide that social actors ‘do gender’ and provides a comprehensive review of ‘warrants’ used in research. The options she discusses are quantitative/general patterns, indirect reliance on such patterns, participants’ orientation as evidenced in the text, speakers’ solicited interpretation, analysts’ theoretical positions or intuitions, speakers’ biological sex (Swann, 2002:49). Her answer is in eclectism – a wide range of methods and warrants for claims about ‘doing gender’ that might include quantitative approaches. The problem is, however, that Swann does not put her proposals to the test, and we actually do not know how they might actually work in practice. It seems to us that we are left with the assumption that there are no systematic formal discursive markers of identities which mean the same thing within the different contexts of use. It is only possible to have insight into the context-bound ‘discourse of belonging’, which might change from one situation to another when we analyse the ways in which speakers draw upon different, and often contradictory resources, when we analyse how

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they construct themselves as ‘being’ or ‘belonging’ in the context of speaking. Indeed, the position we shall advocate in Chapter 2 is that one cannot speak of linguistic resources which can be universally seen as constructive of identity. Our book thus offers a theoretical and empirical insight into the power of language as the means through which we reflect, create, position and confirm ourselves in our continuously changing social worlds.


In this chapter we discuss and exemplify in detail a range of linguistic phenomena which we want to subsume under the heading of ‘the language of belonging’. We will point to the ways in which the language we use in everyday life is implicated in constructing and confirming multiple identities which may intersect, cross over, overlap, challenge or complement one another. How is group identification achieved, how are local, regional, national or transnational – or indeed any other forms of group affiliations – discursively managed within the social, geopolitical and temporal contexts of people’s lives? In this and the following chapter we shall explore micro-level features of discourse that we see as contributing to the construction of the speaker’s cultural identity. To do this we would like to propose a substantive analytic ‘template’ which other analysts can equally well apply to any type of spoken data. But first we would like to engage with two other approaches aiming at a systematic discourse analysis of identity construction. Wodak and her associates (1999) target their analysis, focusing primarily upon vocabulary and syntax, to find out in their data the construction of: ‘unification, unity, sameness, difference, uniqueness, origin, continuity, gradual or abrupt change, autonomy, heteronomy’ (35). The most important linguistic means that are said to achieve this are: ●

●

Personal reference: anthroponymic generic terms, personal pronouns, quantifiers; Spatial reference: toponyms/geonyms, adverbs of place, spatial reference through persons, through such prepositional phrases as ‘with us’; 13

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●


Temporal reference: temporal prepositions, adverbs of time, temporal conjunctions, temporal references by means of nouns, semiprefixes with temporal meaning. (Wodak et al., 1999: 35).

In addition, Wodak et al. (ibid.) propose: Vagueness in reference or other expressions, euphemisms, linguistic hesitation and disruption, linguistic slips, allusions, rhetorical questions and the mode of discursive representation (direct or indirect, or other forms of reported speech) whether what is said is reported as said by someone else or not … as linguistic devices deployed in the construction of national identity. Finally, the analysis is completed by a look at the representation of social actors and the use of such tropes as personification, synecdoche and metonymy as well as the use of deictic ‘we’. In a more recent discourse analytic study of identity, De Fina (2003) is ambiguous as to what linguistic resources are used to construct identities, choosing to concentrate on aspects of narratives. It seems, however, that she seconds the study of Wodak and her associates in saying that it is ‘definite descriptions, referential term or pronouns to identify self and others’ (p. 24) (see also Bauman, 2000). Other resources, it seems, are not linked to identity construction. We think that the two studies represent a very useful beginning in discourse analysts’ thinking of identity construction. They certainly provide a series of reference points which can be used to identify what we would propose are potentially salient features of identity construction. We also think, however, that what they propose does not yet constitute a systematic perusal of linguistic forms that contribute to the discursive construction of identity. Rather, they focus on what may be seen as ‘core’ linguistic phenomena which may not capture other equally salient but less obvious realizations. For example, in our earlier study (Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000) of exploring conflicting identities we proposed to look for indications of conflicting voices in the narratives of informants. We argued that clear and cohesive expression in the discourse is indicative of tension and ambivalence that have, to some extent, either already been resolved or coped with by a hardening of their attitudes against them.

The Language of Belonging 15

The less explicit presence of these other voices (as in changes of pronouns) indicates a potential threat to the construction of a coherent identity. These are accompanied by other linguistic phenomena such as dis-cohesion (for example, long pauses or breaks in the grammar). Alternatively, in a study of Polish narratives from the Polish– Ukrainian border, Barker and Galasinski (2001) showed that linguistic agency is used in Polish speakers’ constructions of their identity in opposition and contrast to Ukrainians. These two studies show that, even though useful, Wodak et al.’s (and De Fina’s 2003) proposal lacks systematicity and exhaustiveness. What we would like to offer here is a more systematic view of the identity constructing discourse. It is more systematic in the sense of our not making an a priori decision as to which linguistic resources can or should be used by speakers in identity construction. Our approach differs in that we are not aiming at a taxonomy of potential content categories that might serve in the achievement of discursive identity construction (cf. Wodak et al.’s categories of uniqueness, unity and so on discussed above). We prefer to frame the construction of cultural identity through the metaphor of ‘belonging’. In a nutshell, then, the discursive construction of national, regional or local identity consists in positioning oneself as part of a particular ethnic, regional or local group. This may be done on any number of levels or dimensions relevant to the particular contextual configuration within which the discourse is produced. Thus, while Poles from the town of Gubin on the Polish–German border constructed themselves predominantly in ethnic terms and in opposition to Germanness (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002), on the other hand the Poles on the Polish–Ukrainian border constructed themselves predominantly in terms of cultural and religious practices (Barker and Galasinski, 2001). This is precisely what we meant by the context-sensitive notion of identity which we argued for in detail in Chapter 1; we prefer not to see the linguistic mechanisms in terms of uniqueness, sameness and so forth. These categories seem to be a way of pre-judging what are the contextually relevant features of identity in a concrete community, social group or the like. Speaking of belonging, we leave the particular question of what it means to be German, Polish, Russian or British, in a particular context open.

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Contextualization of identity By saying that we shall offer an insight into the ‘language of belonging’, we do not mean that we perceive the lexicogrammatical resources with which social actors construct their ethnic or regional identities as in a one-to-one relationship to identity. Quite the opposite is the case: in line with gender research (see Cameron, 1997; Galasinski, 2004; Johnson, 1997; Ochs, 1992), we do not believe that there are linguistic resources which necessarily index ethnicity. Even self-identification in terms of nationality may not be a statement of identity, as the following hypothetical, yet intuitively plausible, utterance shows: ‘I am British, but I don’t really feel like one, it’s more of a legal status’. The linguistic forms we shall be discussing below should not be seen as constructing ethnicity or any other form of identification by default. Discourse analysis of ‘real language’ is an interpretative, context-sensitive, qualitative reading of texts. It cannot be applied mechanistically by ticking off occurrences of specific lexical items or grammatical structures as a proof of a specific set or sets of identities. Discourse analysis requires at all times an understanding of the socio-political contexts of the speakers, and a detailed reading of the wider discursive context where micro-phenomena occur. We argue, therefore, that some elements of the linguistic repertoire that are normally pointed to as ‘key’ in the construction of one’s identity may actually not be used for that purpose at all. The use of the pronoun ‘we’ provides us with a telling example. While clearly capable of constructing an ethnic group with which the speaker identifies her or himself, it would be wrong to say that every use of the pronoun ‘we’ is indicative of the activation of the discursive process of identity construction. ‘We’ may well be used as a means to assume a certain discourse role, which may have nothing to do with the speaker’s national, regional or local identity. In the same way, declaring one’s citizenship by using an ethnic label, especially in cases of dual nationality, may have little to do with the language of belonging deployed in other non-institutional contexts. However, whilst we think that there are hardly any linguistic phenomena which are intrinsically linked to the construction of cultural identity, we would also like to argue that it is hardly possible to think of any linguistic phenomena which are not in some way implicated in the process of identity construction. In contrast


to Wodak et al.’s proposal, we believe that what we have called the language of belonging is achieved by the entire spectrum of language tools. It is not only the time, the place and person that are conducive to positioning a speaking subject in terms of his or her belonging to a group with which s/he discursively identifies, but all of these are highly interactive with the context of the telling. Our point here is that Wodak and her associates’ proposal, while useful as a first attempt to pin down the linguistic workings of identity construction, remains nevertheless largely context-insensitive. Thus while personal, temporal and spatial references seem to be obvious candidates for identity construction, they have been given such predominance in the Wodak et al. study because they have been separated from the context of their occurrence. We are claiming by contrast that it is the entire linguistic repertoire that is capable of constructing the speaker’s identity within the particular context of the telling. How exactly it is done, we shall show in the next section. This contextualization of ethnicity has another aspect. Barker and Galasinski (2001) argue that ethnicity is more a matter of the local context than a blanket characteristic of people who construct themselves in its terms. Thus, there is no such thing as Germanness, Polishness or Britishness which is homogeneous and uniform across countries, classes, ages or genders. Ethnicity, just like other such ideologically contested ‘demographics’ is intertwined not only with the context of the local community, but also with other narratives, such as that of class. In the same way, the geo-political location of one group of our informants in national border towns has to be seen as an important factor in the ways in which people may ‘nationalize’ their discourses. Meinhof (2004) has shown that what may seem like particularly stereotypical nationally inflected outgrouping devices – the Germans vs. the Poles – appear in similar fashion as an internal German discourse directed towards the youngest generation of former East German from same-generation West Germans. What these examples show is the interdependency of identity labels with the local context for both positive and negative identifications. Thus while we shall be discussing the lexico-grammatical anchoring of constructions of ethnicity, this is not to say that, first, these forms construct a uniform ethnicity with no contextualized variations, and secondly, that the local versions of ethnicity will use such forms in similar ways or with similar functions.

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To sum up this section, we repeat that ethnic, regional or local identities are context-bound. Even though it may be imbued with national metanarratives which are typical or commonplace to most people who form part of a particular ‘imagined community’ of a nation, these narratives are negotiated by the narratives of the local community, as well as in the local context of interaction in which social actors construct themselves. We shall problematize this further later on in the chapter. The lexico-grammatical form used to construct ethnicity is also part of such context and cannot be seen outside it. Language constructs ethnicity here and now, rather than universally or permanently.

Linguistic levels of belonging Let us now proceed to discuss the lexico-grammatical forms which can contribute to the construction of ethnic identities. As we pointed out before, and in agreement with many other writers in the same field (such as Fairclough, 1992, 2003; Fowler, 1991; Hodge and Kress, 1993; Van Dijk, 1997; Wodak, 1999) our discourse analysis is textoriented. We see discourse as social practice, a set of options, as socially constitutive and ideologically inflected. Texts, which are products of discursive practices, are multifunctional and intertextual. There are two ways in which we could design our discussion. On the one hand, the discussion can be framed in terms of ‘levels of language’ (Fairclough, 1989, 1992). Thus, a text is approached in terms of its vocabulary, grammar and textual structure. On the other hand, an analytical template can be designed in terms of Halliday’s (1978) textual functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. There are good reasons for discussing the material in either way, and indeed, the approaches arrive at similar results. Fairclough’s levels of language correspond to functional categories, whereas Hallidayan functions become realized through options in the different lexicogrammatical layers and structures. In opting for a starting point with language levels (Fairclough’s schema) it is easier to foreground the dialogic nature of our data. Since both representational (ideational function) as well as interactive (interpersonal function) aspects are of interest to us, we prefer not to split these functions apart. Instead we will show how the phenomena at different levels of language contribute to the overall construction of the speaker’s group identity.


Fairclough (1989, 1992) proposes to analyse texts on the levels of vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and textual structure. At the lexical level, this implies a focus on the following features: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

classification schemes drawn upon by word use ideological contestation of words rewording and overwording meaning relations (synonymy, hyperonymy, antonymy) (in)formality euphemisms words’ expressive values metaphors

At the grammatical level, Fairclough proposes to look at the experiential, relational and expressive values of the grammatical features of discourse, as well as the construction of compound sentences. More specifically, he proposes to focus upon: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

dominating processes and participants clarity of agency voice of sentences negation mood modality complex sentences pronominal choice logical connectors

At the level of the textual structure Fairclough focuses on: ● ●

interactional conventions (e.g., control over turn-taking) larger-scale text structures.

To that Fairclough adds three additional dimensions of analysis which he sees as an analysis of discursive practice rather than the analysis of text. They are: the force of utterances (the analysis focuses on performed speech acts), coherence of texts (it is the capacity of the texts to make sense) and intertextuality. What we shall try to show below is that all these elements of textual and discursive structures can contribute to the construction of

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ethnic, regional and local identities. This will include some exemplification of our argument that some linguistic micro-phenomena, which seemingly have little or nothing to do with cultural identities, are actually their building blocks.

Contexts of belonging How then can linguistic resources be made to work in the discursive construction of identities within specific contexts? The categories that we would like to focus upon are: time, place, social relations, and social encounters. Selecting and separating them out in this way is only one of several possible, albeit useful, heuristic devices, since at all times, as our examples will show, several categories overlap and interact with one another. Also, in making use of this particular series of content categories we are not claiming that the categories below are the categories in which terms to view identity construction. Instead we argue that it is in the particular socio-political context from which the stories of our informants arose and to which they relate in past, present and future, that these categories achieved particular saliency. In our fieldwork across generations living on (former) borders they simply emerged as particularly pertinent (see the brief sketch of the political and social context of the locations of our research in Chapter 1). Other contexts could easily foreground different categories (see for example Barker and Galasinski, 2001’s case study of ethnic identities, or Johnson and Meinhof, 1997 and Galasinski, 2004 on gender/masculinity). Hence we are not claiming that this is the exhaustive list of the categories within which identities on the former German–German and German–Polish and Polish–Ukrainian borders were constructed. Time Our work places strong emphasis on the presence of several generations in the same location. One of the reasons for this was that across the life-time of three or even four generations fundamental changes had happened to the socio-political reality of our informants’ communities. The context of socio-political change across the periods of pre-war, war, cold war, post-communism and reunification was partly triggered by our photographs from these periods (see chapter 5), which allowed our informants to place themselves within specific


geo-political time frames. Narratives which sprang from a particular moment drew on people’s sense of interplay between their personal lives and the public world. It thus comes as no surprise that in many parts of the conversations implicit or explicit contrasts between now and then were invoked as a way of asserting, defending or even ironizing one’s continuing or changing identification with the way of life of the particular period in question. Whilst the post-World War II experiences of the East–West borders created many similarities, though few sympathies, between the accounts of Poles and Germans (but see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002, for notable exception in some sympathetic accounts of the oldest generation), it has to be noted that not all public worlds are the same. Below is an example for a ‘localized’ reading of the public world, which comes from a story collected in the preparation for fieldwork in the Polish–Ukrainian borderlands. In the conversation the researcher made a reference to the times of the Second World War and was greeted with puzzlement. What war? The informant seemed to be asking. Obviously, the Second World War, the one between 1939 and 1945. The informant’s bemusement was ever greater. There was no such war there, he explained, troops were marching, they even killed some people in the village, but the real war started in 1946. Indeed this is the beginning of what Polish historiography records as the Ukrainian guerrilla war which attempted to impose Ukrainian rule east of the river San. How can anyone not know about the Second World War? Still, the informant was quite adamant. For him, it was the years of 1946–48 which were of crucial importance to Poland, to his region, to himself. The time before was merely an irritation. Polishness of the village of Korzeniec (community Bircza) in south-east Poland had a different time line to tell, if you like. What this anecdote shows is that even in the case of public events of such magnitude as the Second World War one has to allow for the possibility of contextual variation. We would now like to offer a few examples in which our informants from the former German/German and the post-1945 Polish/German border implicitly or explicitly referred to certain periods in history and at the same time – we argue – constructed their identities in relation, but also in opposition, to the dominant ideologies of the periods in question. We would like to begin by quoting extracts from two informants of the middle generation in the adjacent towns of Gubin/Guben – one

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Polish, one German. Their sentiments echo those of many of our informants who had experienced a period of Communism as citizens of Poland and of the then GDR. Both dramatize in their accounts what life was like ‘then’ and what life is like ‘now’ and both home in on the paradox that in spite of some apparent changes ‘for the better’, they have lost out in other ways. The English colloquial phrase that ‘What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabout’ sums up their feeling very acutely. For them, the momentous changes brought about through the collapse of communism is experienced on the one hand as a complete turn around, but on the other as a form of disillusionment. This refusal to experience the current status quo as superior to the previous one can, of course, at least partly be seen as a defensive mechanism against those voices from the West, who view the changes to the former Soviet dominated states as immense improvements to these citizens and, by implication, treat the more ambivalent or critical voices about their current lives as a sign of whinging and ungratefulness. In the Polish extract the continuing disillusionment is presented as an inability – then as much as now – to partake in any more comfortable consumerist life-style in the first period because of the absence of goods, and in the second because of the inability to afford them. Extract 1 LK, female, middle generation (a) LK: The work, exactly the work. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the work. I: The work? LK: Because there used to be so much work but one didn’t have the money to buy and there weren’t the goods, that’s the truth. The shelves were empty. Pasta and matches, nothing else. I: … and vinegar. LK: One queued for a piece of meat at night. I: … and the coupons. LK: Yes. I: 25 … on the bone.


LK: Now we have full shelves, but so what if factories are falling apart, the matter is settled. The wages we had three four years ago, we have half of it now. … (b) LK: Someone must keep the factory going. They are not going to do it, but we. I: Right. LK: That’s why we have what we have. I: Oh god. LK: But … I: But? … LK: But one lives on. Before we comment upon the kind of identity LK constructs for herself, it is worth noting that she does it in a very particular way. Apart from the reference to the time ‘beforehand’, an implicit reference to the communist period, there is no explicit construction of any group she belongs to, nor is there any reference which might serve as an identification of the place where she comes from. And yet there is little doubt that LK is constructing an identity for herself. She does it by reference to social practices or conditions, positioned as pretty much universal, in which she partook. By implication she is one of those people who did these things, or was like that. Linguistically, this is rendered in two ways. Thus, initially she makes use of czlowiek (lit. ‘human being’, ‘man’, translatable as ‘one’) a lexeme not only focusing upon human beings in general, but also denoting a group of people consisting of ‘everybody’. Thus everybody was strapped for cash, nobody could afford things. She further constructs the practice of late night queuing (stalo sij – ‘one stood’) to get rationed meat. Once again, the impersonal form of the verb suggests universality of the practice. It is only when she comes to today’s times, that she switches to ‘we’, presumably referencing the same group of people she referred to before, people who earn the same as before, who can only look at the full shop shelves, who must suffer the consequences of poor management.

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Now, we would like to argue that in this context of speaking, the identity for herself is national – she is Polish in these extracts, despite the fact that there is no explicit flagging up of nationality. Yet particularly the references to queuing, shortages of meat, empty shelves, very clearly draw upon dominant discourses of communism in Poland. It is a particular version of Polishness, a disenfranchised Polishness, one which has not adjusted to the changes after the fall of communism. Note particularly here the expression wyje sij (which we have translated as ‘One lives on’), an instance of the reflexive voice, suggesting that loss of control over life (we shall come back to the issue in the next chapter). In the second text from a German of the same generation, the juxtaposition between the two periods appears to be presented more positively in that the extract (a) starts off with an appreciative contrast between the state of Guben in post-Wende times, as against what it had been like during GDR times, but ends with some very good memories of what life was like during GDR times (b) Intriguingly, the same topic as that from the Polish informant – scarcity or shortage of food items during Communism – is here put to work to underline a very different, positive, and nostalgically inflected theme: namely an invocation of past, and now lost, solidarity and social cohesion. Extract 2 MR, female, middle generation (a) UM: I’d like to know what comes to your mind when you see this [pointing at photos of Guben in the 1960s]? [For examples of the pictures see Chapter 5.] MR: Pictures from the times of the GDR [laughs], obviously from my childhood and the time of my youth, so to speak. UM: And how can you tell that these are from GDR times, because I don’t find it so obvious. MR: But it is – one can tell if one looks around Guben nowadays. I’ll start with this picture, OK. These houses are still here today, but they have been reconstructed, and they now have more life and more colour. In former times they used to be grey, all uniform, yes, and one can also tell by looking at the aerials, because they no longer exist,


and nowadays there are satellite receivers. Well, and everything is a little grey, but still one felt OK, I don’t know, but … And one can tell by the cars and the dove of peace [laughs] – and if there were any pictures they’d mostly be political, by the SED somehow. And the way the shop windows are decorated and so on, it was all guided by the party and the state somehow. Not real advertisement but conveying of an opinion, you know – … Well, and that’s obvious, that’s May 1st or something like that, everybody had to join in the parade and they all had to, I remember that, well – it was compulsory … (b) MR: Well, all that stuff here with the youth organizations, that wasn’t too bad. Only the pressure, from the State and from society, this, how shall I say, that everything was observed and led by the State, that could go, but that the young had some kind of a focal point, that’s missing today, that the children somehow, let’s say, have a shared focal point. If the teacher isn’t engaged or does something else during the afternoon, that’s how it is, isn’t it. Some say: Nobody pays me for it, so why should I do something during the afternoon, why? And the kids miss that, this communality, this contact between themselves. And the same is true for unemployment. Surely we had some lazy people in the GDR, but nobody was officially unemployed. And when somebody fell into a hole, then they fetched him back out again somehow. Perhaps by asserting some form of pressure, or whatever, but there were no people who went totally under as they do now … And also the neighbours among themselves because that’s how it was, because it was hard to get hold of things sometimes. One neighbour for example, she worked on a meat counter, and another was a driver for a drink delivery, and so from time to time I got a piece of ham from her, which one didn’t normally get, and from him a good crate of beer, and that I swapped against something else, and so they also got something from me, somehow everyone needed the other, and therefore they were all treating each other well, nothing like it is today: ‘Ah look I drive that kind of a car’, and there’s such envy and hatred, no it wasn’t like that then. In (a) and (b) of this extract, it is the post-Wende improvement of Guben in the unified Germany in surface (more colourful houses) as

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well as substance (less State-controlled existence) which is measured against that which was good in the previous society but which has now been lost (We were happy; we had a good community spirit; parents cared for their children; people helped each other out, there was no jealousy, and so forth). Texts such as these could easily be replicated right across our data from eastern German respondents, especially from the middle generation. They reflect some of the generational-specific complexities of identity formation for former GDR citizens who are now living in a post-GDR world. The two phases of life need to be weighed and evaluated against one another, since in the dominant public discourses of the united Germany the second phase is built on the disavowal and denigration of the first. In the Polish example both the pre- and the post-communist periods were seen to leave the speaker cheated of a good life, constructing a continuity of ‘us the Poles’ who are left behind by whichever system we live in. In the German example, unification has made identity construction infinitely more fraught and complex. To begin with, Margarete Rabe puts a positive gloss on the ‘now’ time, and offers some critique of the ‘then’ time. In (a), the greyness and uniformity of GDR life in a society controlled by the State stands out negatively against the more cheerful and lively vision of post-Wende Guben. Colour attributes here are both a material description of the outside world, as well as a metaphor for the condition of life and the inside world – its uniformity and depressiveness (‘trist’). These distinctions constitute very typical lexical attributes for easterners (and are not at all shared by westerners) who during GDR times often referred to their own country as the country of greyness or darkness (Grauland/ Dunkelland) to contrast it to West Germany – the country of colour or light (Buntland/Lichtland). In her description of the photograph of Guben in the 1960s, MR discursively interconnects physical appearance (for example, colour of houses) with aspects of life style (depressive uniformity) and the public world (overregulation by the State). But this critical account is already relativized by an unfinished sentence in the middle of (a): ‘But still one felt okay, I don’t know, but …’ In the second part of the extract (b) MR constructs a much more attractive image of GDR times. The admittedly over-regulated society of ‘then’ is juxtaposed and positively re-evaluated against the lack of social cohesion and good-neighbourliness of ‘now’. Whereas in (a) MR


employs objectified and generalized language, in (b) she identifies with the GDR where people helped one another and where no one was allowed to fall through the social net (WE certainly had a few lazy people in the GDR, BUT . . . ) This discursive double-strategy of asserting the possibility of a good life in the GDR, which begins as a defence of past well-being against the odds, but finishes with a full evaluation of the good things that have been lost – appears as a constitutive element in many of the discourses of middle-generation easterners. The lost values of GDR society are invoked as a powerful defence against those other implicit and explicit voices which deny any positive experiences to the former GDR citizens. This perception of a permanent discourseinternal accuser often substantially interrupts the story telling by creating an argumentative structure rather than a chronological narrative. We shall return to this in much more detail in chapter 4. In the next extract from a Pole from the oldest generation, the informant is talking about the war. He immediately sets up a difference between ‘us’ and the Germans. Despite some hesitation as to the latter’s culpability, and hovering between ‘them’, Hitler and the nation, he settles on the ‘collective’ responsibility of Germans in general. But these lexical considerations are supported with grammatical constructions. Poles are positioned on the one hand as objects of Germans’ (and Stalin’s) actions. Poles are passive, victims of history. The use of stalo sij (‘it happened’) or the modal musimy (‘we must’) all construct Poles’ lives as the result of some fate rather than of their own doing, a trait quite typical of the romanticist discourses of Polishness (see, for example, Baczko, 1994; Kloskowska, 1996). It is only in behavioural kinds of processes that Poles are ‘doers’, not imposing themselves upon others. If identity is relational – as much about who we are, as about who we are not – the linguistic form here allows the construction of the difference, the construction of Polishness in the everyday world, which is conducive to peace. Extract 3 SG, male, oldest generation SG: Well, this is a border resulting from a war. Except that I left my [possessions] over there where you have your birthplace of course poorer than I have here now because I would not have lived in a flat like that.

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I: I see. SG: Except Germans can’t blame [anyone] that they left their [possessions] here and we live in it now. The nation is not to blame either. Just like we. But unfortunately the leadership [is to blame]. But there were so many supporting Hitler. Many were. Let’s not kid ourselves. Individuals were against. And they wanted as one says it conquer the entire world. Unfortunately. And now they must [interview interrupted] I: So we were talking about what you think of the border? SG: So I am saying that the border is a result of the war. Not because of us. Germans attacked us. And later when they divided we blame Stalin that he divided but never mind. It happened and now we live here and it can’t – it happened so and we have to live this way so there is harmony among us. Because it will come this and we shall join the community I: The European Union. SG: European Union … Many of our German informants also produced impersonal constructions of acquiescence, of being victims of uncontrollable larger social and political forces, and in some cases of sharing a collective, though not a personal, responsibility. But although their socio-political frame embraces a related historical period, their perspective is different from the above. Perhaps surprisingly, or even shockingly, the Nazi period itself does not provide a key frame for our German informants. Next to nothing was said about personal experiences or involvement in the Third Reich, or about any past role as perpetrator, silent participant or victim. Our informants simply did not choose to thematize their experiences during the Third Reich and the War in relation to Fascism.1 They did, however, focus extensively on the consequences of both as they affected their personal lives. Hence the loss of German territory to the Poles, the division of Germany, and the creation of two separate, very different and economically unequal German States provided a highly personalized context for any reflections on life in Germany during that period. Below are three typical extracts from the oldest generation of East Germans on the Polish border where personal loss or suffering is accepted as a return for collective German wrong-doings. As in the first section these extracts again demonstrate how as a result of the war and the Nazi atrocities German identification processes are put


under much greater strain than those of their Polish neighbours. We identify three typical discursive structures through which these processes are negotiated: as shifts between collective and individual agencies, as a displacement of agency to other agents, and as a projection of other voices from which the speaker critically distances herself. Preceding the first extract below Greta Amsel recounted how she suffered under the Polish occupiers who were supervising work on the railway tracks in Guben in the immediate post-war months: Shifting between collective and individual agency Extract 4 GA, female, oldest generation That [working on railway tracks under Polish supervision and being badly treated by them] was real torture. Well, and today we can understand this. If one thinks what our lot did to the Poles. Gee, I mean, it was us who started the war. My father, for example, he took part in the whole Polish operation and when he came back on holidays, he told us, he told us all sorts of things when we were still school children, that he also – yes, well how – how what our lot did to the Poles at that time, gee – he told us terrible things. That they want to revenge themselves, and were not too well meaning towards us, that one can understand. But for us it was terrible. In the preceding paragraph not reproduced here, and as part of a very long narrative of her escaping from home on the eastern side and resettling on the western side of the river Neisse – to which we will return in Chapter 4 – GA recounts the suffering she and her friends had to endure from Polish work supervisors at the railway track. Inserted into this dramatic rendering of loss and pain is a relativization of her own suffering through that endured by the Poles at the hands of the Germans as seen from the ‘now perspective’. Any wrong-doing of Poles towards young German women can be made understandable because of ‘terrible things’ which Germans inflicted on Poles. On one level, this exonerates the Poles from blame. However, this is not quite as balanced an account as it seems, although it goes quite a long way towards some understanding of the past. But note how her pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ are not really all-inclusive personal identification pronouns. They are much more abstract

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collective pronouns for ‘us the Germans’ which – as a German – she cannot dissociate herself from, and for which she has therefore to endure the consequences. But the revenge of the Poles for German wrong-doing are nevertheless enacted upon her, a young woman struggling to survive. There is also some difference between ‘us who started the war’ – a collective responsibility at the level of the nation-state, and the possibility of German atrocities which can take place at the level of individual action. Recalling her father as someone who witnessed and spoke about German atrocities against Poles clearly shows up this dilemma in the struggle over the choice of the right pronoun. At the point where she recalls her father’s horrendous stories, she stops short of involving him directly in any of the terrible things. This disrupts the grammatical cohesion leading to an aborted sentence followed by hesitation and hedging: , dass er da auch – ja wie, wie – wie unsere auch mit den Polen damals machten, meine Güte – da hat er auch schreckliche Dinge erzählt which he also – yes, well how – how what our lot did to the Poles, gee – he told us terrible things. Her sentence can only be repaired by resuming a new and less personal grammatical structure which allows a collective rather than an individual assignment of guilt. Hence she and her friend are nevertheless constructed as the true victims in this story since they are not personally involved in any wrong-doing, but are – somewhat magnanimously – accepting a collective guilt as a German. In the next extracts it is the Russians and the War which are the real agents of the shared suffering of Germans and Poles. These extracts already anticipate our later sections in that they show how entering a discourse which indexes a particular time immediately and simultaneously implicates space, social relations and social encounters: Displacement of agency Extract 5 WD, female, oldest generation Well, they in turn came from the land which the Russians had taken away from the Poles, they had to leave there and were settled here,


and they also wanted to return, they also didn’t think that they would stay, and therefore they didn’t do anything in the beginning, since they thought that they also can return to their ‘Heimat’… well, these are the consequences of a war … UM: of a war WD: The whole of the war, yes … UM: But you don’t have any problems with the Polish population? WD: No, not at all, I must say, they are, well, they are nice people … … WD: They are people just the same as us, and they had to leave their country/land and they came here, because the Russian [der Russe] claimed their land. WD in this extract identifies with the Poles and their loss of home as a way of coming to terms with her own loss. The whole text presupposes the notion of a Heimat wrongfully taken away. die wollten auch wieder zurück

(they also wanted to return,)

die haben auch nicht geglaubt, daß sie hier bleiben

(they also didn’t think that they would stay)

die haben angenommen, die kommen auch wieder in die Heimat zurück

(they thought that they also can return to their ‘Heimat’)

It co-constructs homelessness of both German and Polish displaced people as a consequence of war. Casting the Russians in the role of the genuine evictors, and the war itself as its cause allows empathy between Poles and Germans. Many texts of the oldest generation of Gubenians echo this sentiment: that it is (a) the Russians and (b) the war which are the real agents causing German and Polish suffering and loss. No empathy is directed towards the Russians who appear in almost all the texts in the collective singular (der Russe) or plural (die Russen) (see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002 for a more extensive account of this juxtaposition). In the third extract another member of the oldest generation argues in favour of an acceptance of post-war realities. Her critique is directed against her fellow Germans, whose voices she projects in direct citation. To make these projections more visible in the

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transcript of the passage we have marked them in italics: Projecting and critiquing other voices Extract 6 LR, female, oldest generation One has to look to the future, one can’t say somehow, it used to be like this and therefore it has to stay like this and so. As some people do, yes, they’ve taken something from us, and we want to go back there, that, the people who live there now, they are not to blame, and, eh, one wants to get on with one another, and if that doesn’t work locally how could it possibly ever work at a larger level. Her argument in favour of accepting post-war realities, or more specifically the loss of the eastern parts of Gubin to the Poles, is constructed in the form of four propositions, two of which are directed against those who are projected as thinking otherwise. Not all of these are evident from the extract, but they are derivable from the larger context from which the quote is taken. This is how the argument goes: ●

●

●

●

Because something used to be one way, this does not mean it needs to remain the same (this indexes the pre-war united Guben) Because somebody has taken something away from you does not mean that you have a continuing right over this (this indexes the lost property in post-war Gubin) People who profited are not the ones to blame for our loss (this indexes the Poles who have moved into houses which used to belong to Germans) It is essential for everyone to have good relations with one another (this indexes the local people of Guben/Gubin as a metonym for the respective nations and the EU).

These three extracts from Germans from the oldest generation already anticipate what will be discussed in the following sections, namely that categories of time, place, social relations and social encounter can be treated as heuristic devices for specific emphasis, but not as exhaustive independent layers. As we have just seen, the indexing and narrativization of experiences of the past construct affinities which mobilize all the other categories at the same time. However, by foregrounding specific content categories we can prioritize


certain perspectives and use them as entry points for the more complex interconnections. In the following sections we will demonstrate the validity of such entry points further by concentrating on examples from our Polish informants only. This will exemplify our discourse analytical procedures by drawing on the same data set of people from Polish Gubin.

Place Given the history of the Polish–German border towns and the more or less forced settlement of Poles there after the war, the town itself could be expected to feature prominently in the constructions of our inhabitants’ identities. This process could be done positively as identification with the place or negatively as identification against it (see, for example, Rose, 1995). Here we would like to show stories of negative identification with the place, which still provide building blocks of the narratives of identity. In the first fragment, the construction of local identity, associated with the town of Gubin, is rendered by the agency structure of the utterance. Extract 7 NE, female, middle generation NE: I think, and this is my personal opinion, Gubin attracts people from all over Poland who, as I call it in an ugly way, were driven away beyond the town limits. Who have not made in their places and have no place in their native town. And they have to come here. Whom no one wants where they come from. DG: Why do you think that? NE: It follows my observations from the people who … DG: Tell me about it. NE: The people who came here and who are no longer here, who came here only to meddle [stir things up] DG: How do you mean? Is this a place prone to meddling? NE: I don’t know, or people don’t care. About this town, those inhabitants of ours. DG: Why? NE: Because they are tricked by con people [hochsztapler] who come from outside. And they turn out to be, well there this one

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[woman] – don’t want to say the name – who allegedly was a choreographer. Allegedly she had education, you know. And she came over from Jelenia Góra I think, but I am not sure. She is going to make a career here and she is going to form a group. I mean what kind of career can you make in Gubin. Tell me, I just don’t get it. You can be a good professional, no career. I say, I can make a career in Wroclaw somewhere by a theatre or go abroad, because if I am good they will want me, right? So I shall make this career but not come to Gubin. And how long did she stay? Not even two years. The two interesting aspects of this extract, relate to the structure of agency and, secondly, to the positioning of the speaker within or outside the groups of people she talks about. And it is precisely these two discursive mechanisms which are constitutive of the speaker’s local identity. The speaker constructs the people living in Gubin predominantly as beneficiaries of others’ actions. On the one hand these are the people who were driven away from their homes, there were not wanted there, they are attracted to Gubin. Even though constructed in active terms when their coming to Gubin is concerned, this action is still a reaction to what others had done. In other words, people who come to Gubin, must come here, they are not doing it of their own accord. In the interviewee’s last turn, the people of Gubin are also tricked by some con people. (A note on translation, unlike English con man and the German Hochstapler, Polish hochsztapler does not refer to criminal activity, it is more akin to the English wise guy, which, however, also, has connotations of criminality.) The non-agentive constructions of the people of Gubin are particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the crucial fragment of the extract: I mean what kind of career can you make in Gubin. Tell me, I just don’t get it. I say, you can make a career in Wroclaw somewhere by a theatre or go abroad, because if I am good they will want me, right? So I shall make this career but not come to Gubin. The speaker shifts the story she is telling about a particular person to the rhetorical question about the town, using the impersonal form. The implication of the question that one cannot make a career in the town is continued with the next shift of voice, and the speaker


gives herself as an example. The agency the speaker ascribes herself is located outside the town. Moreover, the juxtaposition of the nonagentive constructions of the inhabitants of the town with the notion that it is impossible to make a successful professional life there are significant in the speaker’s positioning of her local identity. Gubin is the town of losers, and even though she distances herself from them, the only thing she can offer to position herself outside this group is her hypothetical agency outside the town, the agency that never was and is unlikely to be, we might speculate. The speaker has just about accepted that she will not make this notional career. In the following extract, the same informant continues her uneasy relationship with the town she lives in. Her story of not having decided to emigrate from Poland is rendered in a set of complex relationships between experiences of the realities of the West and of Poland. Extract 8 NE, female, middle generation NE: I was born here and I stayed here. I have never mustered courage to leave Gubin. DG: What do you mean that you stayed here. do you mean this isn’t your place, that you wanted to leave? NE: no, I mean my husband was persuading me a few times. We had an opportunity in the 80s to leave for good to the West. South Africa. DG: I see. NE: For good. He was in the West. In Vienna, right? I used to go to visit. And I was here on my own with a child? And somehow I could not muster courage, despite seeing this greyness and this nation so down, to leave. Now I regret. This is a story of contrasts. The informant makes three juxtapositions in her story. First, she contrasts her lack of courage to leave Gubin with her husband’s wish to emigrate. Secondly, she contrasts the greyness of Poland with the implicitly rendered colourfulness of the West. Finally, there is the contrast between what she did and what she now wishes she would have done. These contrasts, rendered either by the logical connectors between clauses or the overall coherence of the text are also part of her uneasy local and probably

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national identity. As much as she seems to be tied to the place of her living, she wishes she had left. Social relations (‘in’ and ‘out’ group) As we pointed out elsewhere (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002), one of the most important aspects of identity construction on the Polish side is the casting of Polishness against the German neighbours. This we have done, showing also the endemic temporariness in Poles’ discourse about their current domicile. To a considerable extent, to be Polish in Gubin means not to be German, but also to feel threatened by the possibility of Germans coming back to their pre-war possessions and claiming them back. The next example is situated precisely in this kind of context – setting up relations between the ‘in’ and ‘out’ group. Extract 9 RI, male, middle generation RI: … they are assuring us for example here that there is no such possibility that the German might come here and take this away. But when we join the Union and when the Union’s regulations are in force, one doesn’t know, does one? He will come and show the deed and will say: it’s mine. DG: mmm RI: I left it. DG: mmm. So are you in favour of joining the Union or against? RI: I mean, I am of course in favour of joining the Union, right? But these matters like property should be clearly settled before joining the Union? DG: So would you be against Germans being able to buy land here? RI: If it were on equal rights, that I shall be able to buy land in Germany DG: I see, yes. RI: Then no problem. DG: I understand. RI: But with a reservation that for example it’s now known that a German in Poland when we join the Union will be able to do everything, including work and we in 10 years’ time. What we would like to focus upon here is the construction of the relationship between the two neighbouring nations: Poles and Germans.


The first image offered by the interviewee is rendered by the ethnic label: Niemiec (‘German’, singular, masculine), a very powerful image of someone invading the personal living space of the Poles and claiming it for himself. The Germans are not a group in this narrative. Even though the group is potentially more menacing by virtue of sheer numbers, it is the individual German, even though clearly standing for the Germans in general, who will come and claim what is his. The choice of ethnic label, together with the dramatization of the story by means of giving the German a voice – we hear him make the claim – constructs a very particular image of the neighbours across the river as well as of ‘us’, those who have to cope with living in their former houses. Note also that the force of the image is underscored by the particular speech act chosen to represent the notional German. The unmodalized, unhedged It’s mine is not merely performative in that it hypothetically appropriates the property in which the interviewee or the likes of him live. This choice of speech act and its directness and lack of attention to the face of the notional Pole, is also indicative of the German’s right to issue the speech act and, consequently, his power. It is only a very powerful person who can simply come and by such an act of speech claim someone else’s property. By implication of course, the Polishness the informant constructs for himself is weaker, as at the receiving end of the German’s or perhaps Germans’ power. In such a way it is the force of the speech act, even though accessed in the informant’s utterance rather than issued directly, that is used to construct the informant’s and Other’s identity. This image is somehow undermined by the declaration that the interviewee supports Poland’s joining of the European Union, but his statement that he does not oppose the Germans’ right to buy land in Poland, as long it is on a par with Poles, is almost immediately undermined by the assumption of the non-symmetrical rights of Poles and Germans. Whatever happens RI assumes that Poles will be worse off. The interviewee continues with his image of Germans being able to do as they please in Poland, in singular masculine terms. It is worth commenting that the rendering of the German nation in singular masculine terms can be seen as intertextually drawing upon one of the best known patriotic, and anti-German, poems (and songs) in the Polish heritage. The poem (by Maria Konopnicka), by the title of Rota (a word signifying the text of an oath, ‘motto’) and

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written at the end of the nineteenth century during the times of Poland’s partitions and loss of statehood, has been taught at schools ever since Poland regained its independence. Even though used by Communist governments to keep up anti-German sentiments in Poland, the song was also sung in Polish churches. It is more than likely to be known by virtually every Pole educated at least partly in Communist Poland. The first line of one of the stanzas of Rota is: Nie bjdzie Niemiec plul nam w twarz (‘The German will not spit in our face’). Of course it is impossible to make a causal link between the lyrics of Rota and the informant’s reference to Germans in the singular masculine form in utterance. Still, we have little doubt that intertextually the song features in the extract as a significant discursive resource for such references. As such, it takes on a very emotive and negative value. Thus, the interviewee is not merely constructing Poles and Germans and the relationship between them in a particular way, he is at the same time, intertextually, giving credence to his constructions. His belonging is not merely one of an ingroup being threatened by an outgroup, more significantly he belongs to a group which for generations has been at odds with ‘the German’. The following example, also focused on the use of the ethnic label, not only shows a conscious, but also a reflective use of it (we shall come back to it when we discuss Polish constructions of transnational identity in the last chapter of the book). Extract 10 NT (female), RT (male) – youngest generation RT: But somehow the French were able to agree with Germans over there on the other side, but I think there was a financial factor and there were not such animosities. After all what Germans did in the East. NT: But remember that the French are not Slavs. DG: Why are you saying there will never be a reconciliation? NT: Why am I saying that? Because DG: Why do you think that? NT: Because a German is Aryan and a Pole is a Slav. And it is so, so I don’t know, I don’t know. DG: Sure, I am not passing judgement. NT: It sounds so bad, but this is what I think.


What is particularly interesting here is, once again, the expressive value of the ‘ethnic’ label used by the informant to refer to Germans and thus contrast them with the group she identifies with. The word Aryan is hardly ever used in contemporary Poland, especially by young people, and almost exclusively as a representation of what Nazis used to call themselves. The use of the label in the context of the interview can only be seen as a ‘last resort’ attempt to cast the Germans in ultimate opposition to Poles. They are Aryan, we are Slavs – as one of our culture brokers in the research told us – we live on two separate tectonic plates – reconciliation is impossible. And it is upon the choice of this particular label that the interviewee self-reflects and negatively evaluates what she says, even though she does not wish to withdraw her words, presumably having perceived the interviewer as surprised despite his attempts to declare his non-evaluative attitude. But the point we are making is that it is not merely the choice of the label which is significant here. It is also the reflection upon it and, importantly, the metadiscursive comment upon what has been said. This comment signals the problematic aspect of this construction, it is not smoothed out in the discourses drawn upon, and as such it is also significant of the identity construction process. This unease is also visible in the breakdown of the utterance in MS’s penultimate move. The identity the interviewee constructs is not cast in stone any more, the ‘identity stone’ is somewhat cracked. Social encounters The last context in which we would like to show the process of identity construction is that of social encounters. One of the most frequent stories which we have been told was that despite a number of opportunities, people living in the two towns on the Polish German border do not really meet, they live next to each other rather than with each other. In fact, in contrast to an identical set of border towns about 100 km south, Zgorzelec and Goerlitz, for example, there is no transportation structure that would easily take the inhabitants of the town across the border. In Gubin/Guben, in order to cross the border on foot one needs to make a significant walking detour; it is almost as if the planners on both sides of the border, made it spatially more difficult for people just to ‘pop over’ to the other side.

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The next extract shows this lack of encounters and attempts to deal with it: Extract 11 MG, youngest generation, male MG: Simply for a German on his own to come here he is scared. In the same way if a Pole were to go there for example to a German disco or something he would be afraid as well. DG: and is he right to be afraid? MG: I mean he is right in the same was as the Pole. DG: You mean they would beat him up? MG: Mm. They would certainly beat him up. DG: And vice versa? If a Pole went to a disco in Guben they would beat him up as well? MG: I mean I don’t know what it is like on the other side what they think about us. I know what it would be like if a German came to us. DG: And this is why you would be scared to go there? MG: Exactly. I would not know what they might do with me. DG: Mmm MG: And here if a German came on his own, well he would be in heavy [difficulty]. That’s why they don’t come. DG: That bad? MG: He would not come on his own unless he had friends here, pals. DG: I see, yes yes MG: I doubt that you would go to a town and you would go on your own, I don’t know, to a disco and don’t know anyone anywhere. I wouldn’t for example go, even though in Poland, I wouldn’t go to a disco on my own. I would go with a cousin or friend, but on my own I wouldn’t go. Because you can see a stranger. The most interesting aspects of this extract are the interviewee’s attempts to re-evaluate the practice of ‘beating up a German’. The statement of this practice, on the interviewer’s question, cannot be matched by the interviewee’s knowledge of the same practice on the German side. This creates a problem in the image of the community the interviewee constructs – clearly Gubin is presented as unilaterally hostile to sole visitors to discos. The interviewee therefore attempts to off-load this burden of inhospitality by positioning his


community on a par with Polish communities in general. National identity is not only a matter of practice or attitude, but also a matter of typicality. The interviewee’s last turn is a justification introduced, interestingly, by reference to his doubt. In such a way he constructs the interviewer as an adversary with whom he remonstrates. Incidentally, the interviewer’s preceding turn (‘That bad?’) is conventionally used in Polish as indirectly expressing doubt or surprise concerning the extent or strength of the phenomenon referred to, rather than evaluation. This is probably why the informant starts his justification by the hypothesis that the interviewer would not do what the lone German would not do in Gubin either. He confirms his hypothesis by declaring that he himself would not do it, implying a tacit agreement between the speakers. This is even further justified by his shift from a personal perspective to the generic statement about the visibility of a stranger. The construction of identity is not only done at the grammatical or content level. It is also the rhetorical and interaction structures of the exchange which are conducive to the constructing of Poles as a particular group of people. The informant argues his case and at the same time constructs Polishness. In fact, it seems that the interviewee’s last bid aims to de-nationalize the practice referred to. It is not about Germans, it is about strangers, it is not about Gubin, it is about Polish communities in general. The perceived challenge of the interviewer’s surprise is making a dent in the overall nationalized view of reality offered by this interviewee and in fact most of the Polish interviewees (see Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002). This statement, interestingly, is made only a few minutes after the interviewee declared an almost animal sensation in recognizing Germans – Polishness is represented in terms of a certain sensorium – Poles can feel (Polish czuc translatable as both ‘feel’ and ‘smell’) Germans.

Conclusions The sections above have demonstrated several ways in which micro-linguistic resources can be made to work in the discursive construction of identities within specific contexts. Using the content categories of time, place, social relation and social encounter as entry points we were able to show that linguistic analysis cannot simply home in on catalogues of lexical items, but needs to account for the

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full context of occurrence. But through the detailed analysis of textual micro-phenomena a pattern emerged right across the texts of our Polish informants of Gubin, irrespective of the organizing principle of our content categories, which foregrounded Polishness and Polish identity as a central device for the people of Gubin in positioning themselves in their present and past social worlds. However, this identification did not correlate with notions such as nationalism, national assertiveness or national pride, but was more often couched as a negative construction. The language of belonging was thus more often than not a language of not belonging, of lack of agency, of creating an outgroup rather than an ingroup, of negative rather than positive social encounters. In many instances the Germans on the other side acted as a foil: in some instances this meant strongly negative outgrouping – an old enemy, a threatening presence in the future – in other instances it was simply difference or otherness – the German who is not a Slav, who behaves – even smells – different. Germans and Germany were ever-present in these discourses, but rarely from a positive perspective. We shall revisit these underlying negative meta-narratives in our final chapter of this book. Some of the German texts show similar traces, but overall there is far less uniformity and much more ambivalence in every one of these categories. Given the different legacies of the more distant and the more immediate past, constructing Germany or Germanness as a space or identity to belong or not to belong to, is undoubtedly a much more complicated, fraught and fissured exercise, which remains ambivalent even for the youngest generation. If we compare the texts discussed in the section above with those from our Guben informants, a much more diverse picture emerges in relation to Guben and Gubin as places, but also in relation to social relations and encounters with Poles. The brief extracts from our Guben data set in this chapter already signal this, but we will present many more and longer examples from all our German communities in other chapters of this book (see also Armbruster and Meinhof, 2003; Armbruster and Meinhof, 2005; Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002; Galasinska, Rollo and Meinhof, 2002; Meinhof, 2004; Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002). Here we present only a summary. Amongst our Guben informants, only generational similarities allow some element of generalization. For the oldest generation the beauty of pre-war Guben on the eastern residential side of the town


was invariably constructed as paradise forever lost, though memories of the lost home could no longer be grounded in either side of the divided towns in their post-war reconstruction. They belong to something which only exists in memories, in photographs and in stories. Only the topography and natural phenomena such as the flowering of the trees and the mushrooms still echo with these older people and allow them to mourn their loss rather than fuel a wish for returning there. As we have shown above, their acceptance of loss is often articulated together with an acceptance of some collective responsibility for, though not any agency in, the atrocities caused by fascism and war, and accompanied by considerable empathy for the Polish neighbours who suffered a similar loss of home (see also Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002). For the middle and youngest generation Gubin is a place of indifference, and not at all a place for identification or interest. This translates into dislike or indifference towards the people in Gubin for many of the younger generation, echoing the sentiments of their Polish neighbours. But even in the most negative instances where members of the youngest generation from Guben constructed extremely negative or highly indifferent images of their Polish neighbours and the neighbouring town, this was not necessarily from the perspective of being a German or Germanness. Meinhof (2004) in discussing these patterns of outgrouping furthermore demonstrated that the very same categories of outgrouping were present in the discourses of Upper Frankonian youth reacting against those from Thuringia, pointing to prejudice based on ignorance, lack of social encounters, and peer group racism levelled by people from relatively wealthier to those from relatively poorer regions, rather than issues of national identification. There are other voices as well, which construct more positive images for Polish youth, but these are transnational rather than translocal – identities offered to young people by the attraction of international and cosmopolitan cities rather than to those in the neighbouring border communities (Meinhof, 2004). There are also some decidedly positive voices right across the generations who recognize the opportunities of better cross-border relations, but these tend to be in the minority. However, by contrast to the negative constructions of the local and regional for the Polish informants, for several of the middle generation the town of Guben and the region of Brandenburg do provide strong identifications, though

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again these are by no means uniform (Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002 and Chapter 7 in this volume). Appendix: originals of extracts in Polish and German Extract 1 (a) LK: ⫽ wlagnie praca ta praca. nie byloby tak xle gdyby praca. I: gdyby praca? LK: bo kiedyg bylo pracy tyle ale czlowiek nie mial pienijdzy za co ku/ i nie bylo tego towaru bo taka prawda. pólki byly puste. makarony i zapalki nic wijcej. I: tak albo ocet. LK: O. stalo sij nocami w kolejkach za mijsem kawalek I: i te karteczki nie? LK: tak I: dwadziegcia pijc z kogcih LK: a w tej chwili mamy pólki pelne tylko co z tego jak zaklady sij rozsypujh to wtedy wiadoma sprawa. takie jak tu wegmy mieli zarobki dwa trzy lata temu cztery to tera polowj tego mamy … (b) LK: weby utrzymac w miarj jeszcze ten zaklad. no komug trzeba. no przeciew nie im tylko nam. I: no tak. LK: i dlatego tak mamy jak mamy. I: o: bo:we bo:we LK: no:. ALE I: ale? LK: no. sij wyje.

Extract 2 (a) UM: Und woran sieht man das so genau … dass es die DDR-Zeit ist.. M: Oh doch, doch, das sieht man, erstmal wenn man sich jetzt in Guben umguckt, äh, ich fang mal mit dem Bild an, ja?! Diese Häuser, die stehen heute noch, aber sind rekonstruiert, sehen irgendwo, haben mehr Pep, mehr Farbe. Die waren früher grau, alles einheitlich, ja, und an den Antennen sieht mans auch, die gibts jetzt nicht mehr, heut gibts nur Satellitenschüssel. Naja, und … ist eben alles so’n bisschen trist und, aber man hat sich trotzdem wohl gefühlt, weiss nicht, aber … So, und das sieht man an den Autos, nicht, und hier, ja, an der Friedenstaube [lacht], und an diesen, ja wenn einige Zeichnungen da waren, waren sie ja meistens politisch, von der SED irgendwie. Und auch hier diese Fenster-Schaufenstergestaltung usw., das war eben alles so, naja, parteilich und staatlich gezogen. Nicht so direkt als Werbung gedacht,


sondern also … Überbringung einer Meinung, nicht, so … Naja, und das ist ja klar hier, Erster Mai oder irgendwie sowas, jeder musste mitmarschieren, alle mussten sie das kenn ich auch noch ja, naja … War ja Pflichtveranstaltung … (b) M: Na, überhaupt das Ganze, wie gesagt hier mit den den Jugendverbänden, das war nicht schlecht. Bloß dieser Druck, dieser staatliche gesellschaftliche Druck, diese, wie soll ich sagen, dass das so immer vom Staat, wie soll ich sagen … beobachtet und geführt wurde, das könnte wegfallen, nicht, aber so, dass die Jugend irgendwo ‘n Anlaufpunkt hat, das fehlt mir heute, dass die Kinder irgendwo, sagen wir mal jetzt ‘n gemeinsamen Anlaufpunkt haben. Wenn der Lehrer nicht engagiert ist oder irgendwie was macht am Nachmittag, da hilft gar nichts, nicht. Manche sagen: Ich werd’ nicht dafür bezahlt, warum soll ich da noch Nachmittage machen, warum? Und das fehlt den Kindern irgendwo, nicht, der Zusammenhalt, nicht, dieser Kontakt untereinander. Dann hier genau mit der Arbeitslosigkeit. Wir hatten bestimmt auch ein paar faule Leute da in der DDR, aber so offiziell arbeitslos war keiner. Und wenn jemand in so’n Loch gefallen ist, den haben sie auch irgendwo rausgeholt. Vielleicht unter Druck oder weiss ich wie, aber es gab keine Leute, die so abgefallen sind wie jetzt, nicht … Und auch die Nachbarn untereinander, weils ja auch so war, weils ja nicht alles gegeben hat. Der eine, zum Beispiel meine Nachbarin arbeitete am Fleischstand und mein Nachbar war Getränkefahrer, und da hab ich von meiner Nachbarin immer mal ‘nen Schinken gekriegt, den man so sonst nicht gekriegt hat und von ihm ‘ne gute Kiste Bier, und das hab ich dann getauscht gegen irgendwas anderes, und die haben dann auch was von mir dafür gekriegt, irgendwie, der eine brauchte den anderen, und deswegen waren so auch alle gut zueinander, da gabs nicht so wie heute: Ach guck mal, ich fahr das Auto und das und so’n so’n Neid und so’n Hass untereinander, ja, gabs damals nicht so.

Extract 3 SG: ⫽ proszj pani. to jest granica – w wyniku wojny. – TYLKO ja zostawilem swoje tam jak sij ma miejsce urodzenia oczywigcie biedniejsze jak tu:. jak teraz ja mam bo ja mam w takim mieszkaniu bym nie mieszkal. I: tak. rozumiem. SG: tylko – Niemcy nie mo:gh miec – PRETENSJI we ZOSTAWILI SWOJE TU a my teraz w tym mieszkamy. z ich – naród nie winien tew. tak samo jak i my i to. ale niestety do przywództwa ALE BARDZO DUWO bylo przeciew za Hitlerem. du::wo bylo. nie czarujmy sij. i jednostki byli przeciw. i chcieli jak sij mówi chcieli zawojowac caly gwiat. NIESTE:TY. i teraz muszh na to [interview interrupted] I: czyli mówiligmy o tym o tym o tym co pan mygli o tej granicy. SG: tak. wijc ja mówij we granica jest – efektem wojny. z nie naszej przyczyny. Niemcy nas napadli. i póxniej jak – podzielili oczywigcie pretensje mamy do

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Stalina i do: i do tych zachodnich. we tak we ta:k poddali sij temu Stalinowi. we podzielil to tj no ale trudno. stalo sij stalo sij. i teraz tu my wyjemy i nie mowe – tak sij stalo i tak musim wyc. i musim wyc W TEN SPOSÓB weby bylo zgo:da: mijdzy nami. bo to: – przyjdzie ten ta – polhczymy sij z th wspól/ nie? I: Unih Europejskh?. SG: Unih Europejskh …

Extract 4 Regelrechte Schikane war das. Ja und heut kann man das auch verstehen. Was haben denn unsere aber auch mit den Polen gemacht. Meine Güte ich mein, wir haben den Krieg einmal angezettelt. Mein Vater zum Beispiel hat doch den ganzen Polenfeldzug mitgemacht und als er mal auf auf äh hier in Urlaub war, da hat er uns, als wir noch Schulkinder warn, da hat er uns verschiedenes erzählt, dass er da auch – ja wie, wie – wie unsere auch mit den Polen damals machten, meine Güte – da hat er auch schreckliche Dinge erzählt. Das die sich jetzt rächen wollten und uns nich gerade gut gesonnen waren, das kann man ja verstehen. Aber für uns wars natürlich schlimm.

Extract 5 WD: Also, die sind wieder von dem Land gekommen, was die Russen den Polen abgenommen haben, die mußten dort raus und wurden hier angesiedelt, und die wollten auch wieder zurück, die haben auch nicht geglaubt, daß sie hier bleiben, deswegen haben die die erste Zeit überhaupt nichts gemacht, denn die haben angenommen, die kommen auch wieder in die Heimat zurück … Ja, das sind die Folgen eines Krieges. UM: Eines Krieges … WD: Des ganzen Krieges, ja. UM: Aber Sie haben … mit der polnischen Bevölkerung als solchen eigentlich keine Schwierigkeiten, oder? WD: Nein, also wirklich nicht, ich muß sagen, die sind ganz, also, ganz nette Leute. … WD: … Das sind genau Menschen wie wir, und die mussten genau drüben ihrs verlassen, und sind hierhergekommen, weil der Russe ja das Land beansprucht hatte …

Extract 6 FR: Man muss doch in die Zukunft blicken, man kann doch nicht irgendwie so sagen, das war einmal so, und das muss so bleiben und so. So wie manche, ja, die haben uns was weggenommen, wir wollen da wieder hin, das, dafür können die Leute nicht, die jetzt leben, und, äh, man will sich doch miteinander irgendwie vertragen, nicht, und wenn das im Kleinen nicht geht, wie soll es dann im Großen gehen?


Extract 7 NE: … ja uwawam we Gubin i to jest moje osobiste zdanie we Gubin to w ogóle przycihga ludzi z calej Polski takich jak ja to ja to tak brzydko nazywam których pogoniono za rogatki u siebie. którzy sij nie sprawdzili u siebie i nie majh miejsca w swoim miegcie rodzinnym. i musza tu przyjechac. których nikt nie chce tam gdzie skhd pochodzhs. DG: dlaczego pani tak mygli? NE: to z moich obserwacji wynika i z ludzi którzy DG: niech pani opowie to. NE: ludzi którzy tu przyjewdwali których juw nie ma którzy przyjewdwali tu tylko tak jakby mhcic. ja nie wiem to jakag tak podatne podatny grunt tu jest do takich rzeczy. do mhcenia takiego … DG: na czym to polega? co znaczy we tu jest podatny grunt do mhcenia? NE: nie wiem. albo ludziom nie zalewy? na tym miegcie tak tak naprawdj tym mieszkancom naszym? DG: dlaczego? NE: … no bo zawsze sij dajh nabrac jakimg hochsztaplerom którzy przyjewdwajh z zewnhtrz. i sij okazujh no no byla taka kiedyg sytuacja nie chce mówic z nazwiska. przyjechala pani która rzekomo byla choreografem. ponoc miala to wyksztalcenie proszj pana. i przyjechala gdzieg chyba z Jeleniej Góry ale nie jestem pewna. no z wiek w kawdym bhdx razie duwo wijksza jest Jelenia Góra prawda? tu bjdzie robic karierj i tu bjdzie zespól robic. ja mówìe¸ jakh karierj mowna zrobic w Gubinie? no niech mi pan powie bo ja tego nie rozumiem nie? mowna byc dobrym fachowcem ale wadnh karierj tu robic. ja mówìe¸ no karierj to ja mogj zrobic we Wroclawiu gdzieg przy teatrze gdzieg w Warszawie albo wyjechac za granice¸ bo jestem tak dobra i mnie bjdh chcieli prawda? no to zrobij th karierj ale nie przyjewdwac do Gubina. no i ilew pobyla ta pani? nawet dwóch lat nie byla.

Extract 8 NE: ⫽ … tu urodzilam i nie. to jednak tu zostalam nie? jakog nie moglam sij nigdy zdobyc wie pan weby wyjechac z Gubina. DG: ale? co to znaczy we pani zostala? to znaczy we we to to nie nie jest pani miejsce we pani chciala stad wyjechac? czy ⫽ NE: ⫽ nie: to znaczy (.) parj razy mhw mnie namawial. mieligmy szanse w latach osiemdziesihtych wyjechac w ogóle na zachód. yyy RPA ⫽ DG: ⫽ aha. rozumiem⫽ NE: ⫽ w ogóle. bo on byl na zachodzie. we Wiedniu byl nie? ja tam jexdzilam do niego. i z dzieckiem bylam i sama bylam nie? ale jakog nie moglam sij zdobyc. mimo tego we wracajhc tu patrzylam na ta szarzyznj na to takie takie jakieg zdolowany ten naród no nie moglam sij zdobyc weby wyjechac. teraz walujj tew.

Extract 9 RI: … tu na przyklad zapewniajh we to jest nie ma takiej mowliwogci weby Niemiec przyszedl i zabral to. no ale gdy wejdziemy jest cihgle to ale. gdy

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wejdziemy do Unii kiedy wejdh wejdziemy w te przepisy unijne: no nie wiadomo? on przyjdzie i pokawe akt notarialny i powie to jest moje DG: mchm RI: ja to zostawilem. DG: mchm to jest pan za wejgciem do Unii czy przeciw? RI: to znaczy: ja jestem oczywigcie za wejgciem do Unii nie? ale weby to byly te sprawy yyy ziemi powiedzmy tego wlasnogci wyraxnie uregulowane przed przysthpieniem do Unii⫽ DG: ⫽ to bylby pan przeciwko temu weby Niemcy mogli tutaj ziemie kupowac? RI: jeweli by to bylo na równych prawach ze ja bjdj mógl kupic ziemie w Niemczech⫽ DG: ⫽ no tak. tak RI: to proszj bardzo: DG: rozumiem RI: ale z zastrzeweniem bo na przyklad jeweli chodzi o to na przyklad juw z góry dzisiaj wiemy ze Niemiec w Polsce gdy wejdziemy do Unii bjdzie mógl robic wszystko: wlhcznie z prach a my za okres dopiero dziesijciu lat.

Extract 10 RI: no jakog ci Francuzi z Niemcami tam po drugiej stronie sij dogadali ale to myglj czynnik finansowy tez mial no i nie bylo aw takich zadrawnien nie? no przeciew na terenach wschodnich to co Niemcy robili. NT: ale pamijtaj ze Francuzi to nie Slowianie. DG: dlaczego pani mówi we nigdy nie bjdzie pojednania? NT: dlaczego tak mowie? poniewaw⫽ DG: dlaczego pani tak mygli? NT: bo Niemiec jest Aryjczykiem a Polak jest Slowianinem: i to jest takie nie. to jest takie ja wiem ja wiem z⫽ DG: ⫽ dobrze dobrze ja tego nie oceniam⫽ NT: ⫽ ze to xle brzmi ale ale ale tak uwawam.

Extract 11 MG: ⫽ no po prostu: sam Niemiec by przyszedl do nas to sij to sij boi. tak samo jak by sam Polak mial pójgc tam na przyklad na niemieckh dyskotekj czy cog to tew by sij bal. DG: a ma racje¸ Niemiec we sij boi jakby sam przyszedl? MG: to znaczy: ma racje¸ ma racje¸ tak samo Polak⫽ DG: ⫽ znaczy obiliby go? MG: mchm. na pewno by go obili. DG: i i odwrotnie? jakby sam Polak poszedl na dyskotekj w Guben to tew by go obili? MG: to znaczy nie wiem jak po tej drugiej stronie jest co oni myglh o nas. ja wiem jak co tutaj jakby Niemiec przyszedl do nas ⫽ DG: ⫽ i dlatego ty sij byg bal pójgc tam? MG: no wlagnie. bym nie wiedzial co by oni mogliby ze mnh zrobic. DG: mchm


MG: a u nas to jest u nas jakby sam Niemiec by przyszedl no to cijwko byloby z nim. dlatego nie przychodzh DG: mchm aw tak xle? MG: sam by nie przyszedl sam by nie przyszedl chyba we by mial przyjaciól tutaj kolegów DG: ja rozumiem tak tak MG: whtpij weby pan by przyjechal do jakiegog miasta i by poszedl sam no nie wiem na jakhg dyskotekj nikogo nigdzie nie zna: ja bym na przyklad nie poszedl chociaw w Polsce bym poszedl na jakhg dyskotekj bo bym sam nie poszedl. bym poszedl z jakimg moim kuzynem z kolega ale sam nigdy bym nie poszedl. bo to widac ze obcy czlowiek.

3 The Grammar of Identity

One of the distinct features of the discourse of Poland in the German town of Guben is to do with the way in which the inhabitants of Guben pronounce the name of their neighbours’ town across the river: Gubin. As ‘GUben’, the word ‘GUbin’, in Polish, is also pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. And yet, in Guben, one is hard pushed to hear anyone pronouncing it in such a way. Mostly, Germans from Guben pronounce the name of the neighbouring town ‘GuBIN’, with the stress on the last syllable. Now, there is little doubt in our minds that such a pronunciation has an important role in the construction of Other or one’s own identity. Gubin’s positioning as different in Guben’s metanarratives is stressed in the language’s phonetic system. In such a way the language itself dictates a possible subject position of someone talking about Gubin. Even rejecting the intellectual ideology (Billig et al., 1988) of Gubin’s difference, one is still likely to be ‘stuck’ with the difference constructed by the way one pronounces the name of the town. The rejection of the construction of Gubin’s Otherness must be carried out also at the level of rejecting the language itself. This insight into linguistic practices of the inhabitants of Guben serves as the beginning of a further discussion of the relationship between language and identity. In the previous chapter we discussed the relationship between identity and linguistic micro-resources that language users can avail themselves of when constructing their identities. We argued that identities can be constructed at all levels of language, and not only at the level of explicit construction of the ‘in-group’ (we), or, by contrast, the ‘out-group’ (they). In this chapter 50

The Grammar of Identity 51

we would like to continue the exploration of the relationship between language and identity. We would like to propose here that one of its aspects is what has been called the ‘grammar of identity’ (Galasinski, 2003, 2004). As we have already indicated earlier and in line with most antiessentialist views of identity, we believe that the construction of identities in the local context is related to national, ethnic, gender or age metanarratives which are shared at the level of the nation, or other ethnic or social groups (for example, Bauman, 2000; De Fina, 2003; Galasinski, 2004). What we want to propose, however, is that the negotiation of such metanarratives in the local context of identity construction is also mediated by discursive resources provided by public or semi-public discourses such as media discourses, literacy materials, but also other sources such as oral tradition. Note that we understand the notion of ‘discursive resources’ in a narrower sense than other researchers in discourse/language and identity. Such scholars as Kroskrity (2000) or Bauman (2000) see the linguistic resources for identity construction at the level of language as social code. Bauman narrows the notion to ‘repertoires of identificational and affiliational resources’ (2000:1), suggesting a relationship between metanarratives of ethnicity and discursive practices. But he still operates on a number of levels of language, much in the way De Fina (2000) proposes in her analytic template of identity analysis. For us the discursive resources for the construction of identity are mostly at the level of lexico-grammatical form. In other words, the construction of identity is constrained by discursive resources contributing to a particular order of discourse within which a social actor constructs their identity in the local context. In such a way, when negotiating their identities, social actors are prone to use certain linguistic clusters which, in certain contexts, they are likely to use or cannot not use. This predisposition makes certain identity positions more likely than others. It is noteworthy that De Fina (2003:25) proposes that certain lexico-grammatical choices construct the speaker as ‘giving off’ certain identities ‘simply by adhering to telling norms and styles that are shared by other members of their communities’. Agreeing with De Fina’s statement, our stance goes somewhat further. First, as we argued in the previous chapter, we do not believe that there is an

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exclusive list of identity markers or linguistic resources with which the speakers construct their identities. De Fina’s linguistic styles seem to consist of such devices. Secondly, we do not see such linguistic resources as necessarily associated with particular styles or narrating practices, although as we shall show in the next chapter, both structural and content patterns are implicated in, and affected by, identity construction. Our position, however, is not to deny the core of the anti-essentialist stance – identity is changeable, provisional and context-bound. What we are claiming is that the community’s or society’s discursive practices predispose social actors to adopt certain identity positions by virtue of the linguistic resources required in a certain context. While shifting in the context, identities are constrained by the resources available to social actors in a given context. But it is important to note that such resources can be contested and rejected – as much as ‘Gubin’ can be pronounced in two – Polish and German – ways. In what follows we shall discuss the discursive resources for identity construction in three domains: lexis, grammatical phenomena and, finally, the agentive structure of discourse.

The inevitably bad Germans The first instance of language taking over the identity work we would like to present here are two extracts from our informants’ commenting upon the relationship between Poles and Germans. We start with two extracts in which the speakers talk about label use in reference to ethnic groups, and at the same time, reflect upon it. Extract 1 KG, male, middle generation I: You know what? I wonder how you remember perceiving those friends from the other side. Because you didn’t have a direct contact with them, right? KG: No there wasn’t. I: You couldn’t talk to them. KG: Looking from the perspective of the years it was frequent, always always. And there will pass another several [more than 10] years before the stereotype of the German in Poland will change in the Pole’s opinion.


I: Aha. KG: Because also, and myself after all I could blame my peer from the other side not knowing him, sending, throwing across, not sending. Throwing across a tile of sorts with the address of course one threw [it] to Adolf. One didn’t throw to Hain but to Adolf. I: Aaa? KG: Right? To Adolf. Because the German was Adolf. The informant talks about his childhood and the practice of throwing pieces of bricks with children’s addresses carved in them across the border river to the children on the other side. What is particularly interesting in the extract is the contrast between the wish to establish contact with a child in Germany, a clearly friendly gesture, and the positioning of those children required by the label used by Poles. Thus, the Polish children were giving their addresses to the little Adolfs, in clear reference to Adolf Hitler and the war. The friendliness of the gesture is undermined by the expression used in reference to the ‘out-group’. The practice of calling the German children ‘Adolfs’ necessarily positions them as an enemy of the Polish children and thus in stark opposition to them. The language, as it were, prevents the possibility of unreserved friendliness towards the neighbour across the river. In this extract, the informant, a school teacher, not only narrates but also reflects upon the practice of always adopting the negative identification figure for Germans from the past – Adolf – rather than a more positive present day figure – Hain – who was Mayor of Guben at the time of the interview and was working hard for closer relations between Guben and Gubin. The next extract offers a further example of the significance of negative labelling, but this time by projecting this practice on what the Germans might say against the Poles.

Extract 2 NE, middle generation female (speaking on why she decided not to marry her German boyfriend) NE: I mean I had nothing against his person. His family were, I mean, are decent people but I always [act] cautiously towards Germans, I mean I have something against them, generally speaking Germans don’t like us and we don’t like them, I think.

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I: Aha. You think? NE: and that’s why I was afraid. Definitely. I: Aha. NE: And that’s why I was simply afraid. Of this name calling, because it was like you take your Polish child, something like that, right? I: Right. So they said take your Polish child, you mean they said that. or … NE: Yes. Those old Germans. I: To you? Or? NE: No. no. to my acquaintances, because I didn’t have with them I: Right. So what were you afraid of? That? NE: No. why should someone call me something I: So what would they call you? NE: I don’t know perhaps they would not be names like the Polish swine or something like that. There are two labels the informant refers to, both are said to be used by Germans in reference to Poles. On the one hand, she talks about old German women referring to a child of Polish–German parents as ‘that Polish child’, even though she actually had never heard anyone say that. But most interestingly, when the interviewer wants to explore the theme, she falls back on a stereotypical label that Germans are said to use in reference to Poles. She, and other Polish informants, used the expression ‘Polish swine’ as the allegedly ‘standard’ label used by Germans in reference to Poles. The interviewer’s probe into the name-calling results in the informant’s availing herself of the ‘default’ label, which happens to be a very strong one. This is indeed why she puts a question mark over it. Still, the question mark suggests precisely that it is the ‘Polish swine’ that one could expect from Germans. The following extract refers to another frequent story we heard during our fieldwork. It is the story of how Polish settlers were taking over German properties on the east side of Guben, which later became Gubin. Extract 3 KT, female, oldest generation KT: You know even the Germans were evicted and here where the sewage facility is there is this rail bridge and over this bridge all these


Germans were evicted. So you know in those German houses when we got there because there was just a handful of people in Gubin when we arrived. So when we went there was hot soup in the bowls because they took the Germans directly. I: Still in the plates? KT: Yes. I: Mmm. KT: So. They evicted them and over that bridge over there because everything here the bridges were pulled down and only that rail bridge. That was in ’46. I: Wow. KT: – because we … I: … food in the plates … KT: In the plates there was food I am telling you. The Germans lived over the bridge and the bridge was destroyed and there was this long plank so I was afraid because even if I walk along a bridge when I look down my getting dizzy, right? So you had to go over this plank and it moved. So I was scared like hell. And we went to look how they were evicting those Germans. We heard the story of the soup still hot in the bowls a number of times. As much as the story dramatizes the process of taking possession of someone else’s properties, the story is no more than an interesting story. It assumes that the process of leaving and moving into the households literally took a few minutes, with Poles literally waiting outside the house while the owners were getting up from the table and leaving. As much as the eviction of Germans east of the Neisse was a dramatic and traumatic process, it did not happen in such a fashion. The time-lag between the forced eviction and moving in was at least a few days. So, what of the hot soup in the bowls? It is now part of the discursive resources used mainly by the oldest generation, but often passed to the next ones, with which to tell the story of Polish forced eviction from what is now the Ukraine and the – often also forced – settlement on what is now the west of Poland. It is a way of showing the drama and trauma experienced by the families on both sides of the historic divide. The reference to ‘hot soup’, becomes a topos, a common place in the stories, and also a cliché with which to construct the experience and also the identity of the settler.

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The final extract, which we have already talked about elsewhere (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002) shows the grammar of identity in a negative way. It shows the lexical item which cannot be used in the story of settlement, or the outgroup. The extract is a story of an interaction between the previous and current owners of the house, told from the Polish perspective. Extract 4 AN, female, oldest generation AN: The German [female] came to see my mummy and said she wanted to go to the attic because she had family photographs there and she asks my mummy to go with her. My mummy says ‘child it is your house. Go and take’ I remember that conversation. ‘Go and take your photographs and take what you want because it is yours’ she says ‘What you want you take’ and she anyway asked that my mummy should go with her. So my mummy did go. And under the roof tiles she had gold hidden. She took out the gold and says that she will take just one ring and she gives the rest to my mummy so she keeps it safe maybe she will one day. But my mummy says ‘wait I have a coat. I will go and fetch a needle and we shall rip the lining off and we shall sew it all in under it and keep an eye on this coat and you will take this coat with your gold across the border. What do I need your gold for? Either you will come back or not, girl, and in any case you will have it with you’. And the German [female] pleased happy, she says that because my mummy is so good to her she will tell her where she has other things hidden. The crucial part of the narrative contains a reference to the unsayable. The German woman asks for the gold to be kept safely for her, because ‘she might one day’. The sentence is unfinished, and we actually never learn what she might do one day. Return? Live there again? Given the pleasantness of the interaction, the German, even though she is said to be the owner of the house, simply cannot be represented to say such things: they would present an immediate threat to the interviewee’s livelihood. Indeed, all the stories of Germans returning to claim their properties – probably the most frequent stories we heard among the Polish informants – were invariably told as those of threat.


Furthermore, even though the mother is described as saying to the German that she might or might not come back, we suggest that the coming back is not about settling back in the property; rather, it is about coming back to get the gold. Germans cannot be talked about as those who return to live east of the Neisse – that is a negative resource in the stories of Polish identity on the Polish-German border. By negative resources we understand those linguistic resources which, while present in the overall pool of discourse, cannot be used in certain contexts. In other words, reference to a ‘returning’ German in the positive context of the narrative, one in which the German symbolically passes the house over to its Polish inhabitants, would make the narrative incoherent – you cannot have a positive threat.

Communism and its rejection The second group of such discursive resources ‘taking over’ the identity construction is related to the accounts of the change of the political system in Poland. The first fragment was elicited by a photograph showing a 1st of May demonstration – with the banner carried by the people in the march carrying the slogan ‘Long live the 1st of May’ (Niech wyje 1-szy maja). The 1st of May demonstrations were just about the only regular public festivities in communist Poland in which the public was made to take part on a mass scale. Our claim here will be that in the extract below the slogan triggers the use of a particular discourse with which the speaker describes his experience. What is quite interesting here is that the speaker uses communist discourse in order to reject the 1st of May and take the anti-communist subject positions. Yet the informant cannot help but use the discourse of communist propaganda. Extract 5 AJ, male, aged 77 I: … and to that? AJ: Well, this, I once had something like that, because I worked in this block, and they allocated a storm flag with me? I: And? AJ: And what? I am standing in this line and what shall I come up with? I said I had a stomach ache. That I have to leave, so she made me give

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the storm flag to a colleague – I gave. If I had gone home, not stood there, it would have worked out. They went in the demonstration, I was sitting on the side. The following day, on the carpet … The story begins with an almost classical phrase przydzielic szturmówki – ‘allot storm flags’, that is, flags used by revolutionaries in charging against the bourgeois police or such like. This is just about the only context in which the word szturmówka (storm flag) would be used in Polish. Also przydzielic is used mostly in official, institutional discourse, as an equivalent of ‘give’. Note again the use of ‘they’ in referring to authorities. Similarly stac w szeregu ‘stand in a row’ or igc w pochodzie ‘walk (go) in the 1st of May demonstration’ are also expressions that could have been heard on Polish television in news on who was in the demonstration. The news was normally about secretaries of the communist party or some such officials. The speaker constructs himself as oppositional to the prevalent ideology. Not wanting to take part in a May demonstration implies a very pronounced rejection of communist identity from the viewpoint of post-communist Poland. His discourse is devoid of what is in Polish referred to as a ‘come back communism’ stance and in German literature as ‘Ostalgie’, and it is not defensive in tone (see our counterexample in Chapter 4 of a 1st May demonstration in East Germany). Yet in spite of that, in telling this story he cannot escape the lexical and phraseological resources of the Communist propaganda. The next extract shows the discursive impact of communist propaganda speech even more strongly. Here the informant is talking about his own experience of creating a cooperative for Greek political refugees to Poland by drawing on official party language. It must be noted that the translation just does not give justice to the Orwellian type of newspeak the informant is using. Extract 6 MW, male, the oldest generation MW: There was a period in Zgorzelec from 1950 when Greeks arrived here after the fight which they carried out over there and were defeated. And were simply forced to leave Greece and in Zgorzelec a centre was organized by the party I think, with the initiative of the party which instructed the workers’ holiday fund to create a centre in


Zgorzelec here it was empty, Zgorzelec was a half-dead town, so the Greeks who were invalids received, a cooperative was created for them by the workers’ holiday fund, with the initiative of the holiday fund, because it was the fund created people, a centre where they had, there could be food provision, a centre where they were provided with food. The highlighted elements of the utterance are those which come very clearly from the communist discourse, with periphrastic expressions as one of the cores of Polish propaganda (Glowinski, 1990; see also Bralczyk, 1987). Such expressions as z inicjatywy partii (with the Party’s initiative), toczyc walki (carry out fighting) are not only reminiscent of communist language, but are actually taken straight from it. Moreover, the repair strategies used by the informant suggest that he seems to realize that the expressions he uses are not formal, official, grandiose enough. In these moments the speaker begins to slip into ‘normal’ everyday language, something he notices and rejects by shifting back to more pompous forms. What is most important here however, is that this is an account of the informant’s own experience: he is the one who was creating the centre for the Greeks; it is a story from his own working life. Still, he uses language in which you can barely see him. He is backgrounded by it. It seems that the story of the 1950s must be told in the language of the 1950s’ propaganda. The identities – that of an anti-communist worker – cannot be formed outside the discursive resources the people received during the period of communism. The younger Poles who were not socialized through such discourses, but were taught from different textbooks and read different newspapers, found it hard to find words for the 1st of May photograph. Interestingly, they seemed to replace the communist vocabulary with that of the Catholic Church. A demonstration became a procession, a tribune became a pulpit. Witness the following two extracts in which the informants respond to the 1st May photograph. Extract 7 EJ, female, youngest generation I: … and do you remember such things? EJ: I was a little baby, but I remember.

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EJ: There are no such processions right now. I: Processions? EJ: I don’t know what to call it. I: It was called a demonstration [laughter] EJ: … a march of sorts I: … a 1st of May demonstration. Extract 8 OK, male, youngest generation; LK, female (OK’s mother), middle generation OK: I remember the demonstrations, everybody had go – the pulpits, not pulpits, what was it called? pulpits, people. [laughter], well … LK: … tribune [laughter] OK: … tribunes, a pulpit, a tribune is … LK: … a pulpit in the church … OK: I remember – everywhere the flags. In both extracts the informants from the youngest generation implement church nomenclature in reference to communist reality. While procesja (procession) can only be used to procession of the faithful, the word pochód (a very formal reference to a walk) was used almost exclusively to refer to the 1st May demonstration. The two words have no overlap in either reference or connotation, and this is why the use of the former in reference to communist reality produces a comical effect which results in both the interviewer’s and interviewee’s laughter. Similarly, OK’s mother intervenes in the interview and corrects her son’s use of the word ambona (‘pulpit’), a word almost exclusively used to refer to a place priests make sermons from (the only other use – slightly ironic – is to a hunter’s lookout place). As in the previous place trybuna and ambona are never synonyms, and there is no context in which they could be interchanged in their literal meanings. The point we are making here is that the new discourse, that of the Catholic Church, is taking over the discourse of communism in a reality in which communism had been deposed and the Catholic Church rose into an institution with considerable power in Poland. Thus on the one hand the rise in importance and domination of the discourse of the Catholic Church coupled with lack of significant


ideological alternative (probably most acutely in provincial Poland) and the demise of the communist discourses account for the lack of the resources with which the youngest generation could describe the reality before 1989. In such a way, they are pushed into subject positions they might not want to take, yet they have no language to oppose them. We think that post-communist identities are discursive constructs which are particularly amenable to this kind of analysis, precisely because they draw upon relatively stable forms of totalitarian propaganda. In other words, the communist state, much in the way Orwell described, attempted to wield political control not only over the linguistics resources available for public, but also private communication. Thus we can observe people rejecting the intellectual ideology of communism, but not having a language which could replace the resources they have taken over. Incidentally, this is a situation reminiscent of Victor Klemperer’s famous book, LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii, the Language of the Third Reich. Despite rejecting Nazism, Klemperer decided not to go into public life immediately after the war, so as not to draw upon the discursive resources of the Third Reich.

Living post-communism The final example of the ‘grammar of identity’ operates at the level of the agentive structure of discourse. One of the features of the Polish narratives of the times after the fall of communism was that the informants constructed themselves in terms of alienation and oppression. The new reality, even though at times represented as a new historical era, was usually positioned alongside the communist period, and when contrasted, the current period was either ‘as bad’ or ‘even worse’ than the previous one. We would like to come back and extend two extracts which we already touched upon in the previous chapter when we showed them as constructing Polishness. Extract 9 LK, female, middle generation (a) LK: … the work, exactly the work. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the work.

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I: … the work? LK: Because there used to be so much work but one didn’t have the money to buy and there weren’t the goods, that’s the truth. The shelves were empty. Pasta and matches, nothing else. I: … and vinegar. LK: One queued for a piece of meat at night. I: … and the coupons. LK: Yes. I: 25 on the bone. LK: Now we have full shelves, but so what if factories are falling apart, the matter is settled. The wages we had three four years ago, we have half of it now. …

(b) LK: Someone must keep the factory going. They are not going to do it, but we. I: Right. LK: That’s why we have what we have. I: Oh god. LK: … but … I: But? LK: … but one lives on. … (c) LK: you know what? I’ll tell you something. I suspect something. I know I used to do these kind of things and who knows whether it has had some effect on my child. For one, in the meantime the private firms came in. It was like the parents are out the whole day. And that’s the truth. When s/he [gender unspecified] goes out, as I went for 6 o’clock, so I went out ten to five when I worked at the Moda. Or then for this businessman in Dimo. How many times I phoned for my mother to go, to look after R., because I can’t, because there is a outgoing shipment for a deadline and I must. I could slave the whole day, the night and the following day in the morning till two o’clock. I came home and do you think I went to bed? Because of this tiredness I could not fall asleep.


I: I see. LK: … and to work in the morning. One day off and again the whole marathon. And I am not surprised that some children, some parents prefer to give money instead of looking after the children. That the parents think that if they give the children money the matter is sorted. They have too little contact with the children. This is how I see it. The overall construction of the times after communism in LK’s narratives has a number of aspects. The first, and, intuitively speaking, one which appears quite frequently in Polish narratives, is the contrast between shortage of goods in communist times and their abundance in post-communist Poland. The interesting aspect of the contrast is that in both cases the goods are as inaccessible as before. After 1989, LK, and others, cannot afford them. Linguistically, LK renders it in terms of two generic statements. But it is the generic statement about what is going on now that is constructed as much closer to her experience. Note that when she speaks of pre-1989 Poland she uses the expression ‘czlowiek’ (lit. ‘man’, ‘human being’), alternatively, in the post-1989 Poland she uses the verb in the first person plural (in Polish the linguistic person is carried by the appropriate form of the verb). Even though ‘czlowiek’ cannot be seen as distancing the speaker from the general experience by default, the first person plural can easily be seen as an attempt to construct the speaker on a par with a number of others in the same situation. LK is constructing herself as a member of a group that is worse off: they cannot buy goods, they have worse salaries. It is interesting to note that LK continues with the impersonal rendering of the queuing experience (stalo sij ‘one queued’, lit. ‘one stood’), and, similarly, she continues with the impersonal account of life in general now: (‘one lives on’). The experience of post-communism is rendered more personally, as something that touches the informant more. She, together with those like her, is worse off. Interestingly also, she switches to the impersonal form ‘one lives on’. But this time the expression is almost formulaic – the impersonal use of the verb ‘wyc’ (to live) conveys a very poor quality of life. The construction of the group of people who have a hard life is continued in the next fragment. LK constructs herself on a par with a

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number of other parents who also have had to leave their children for entire days because of work commitments. Even though attempting to show herself as outside the group – it used to be like that with her – she still knows the experience. But what is also striking about LK’s account is the construction of the informant in terms of being oppressed in the system, a certain inevitability of their fate, very much augmented by the construction of the main outgroup in her discourse: the private owners, rendered, incidentally, by a pejorative word prywaciarze connoting a certain illegality of their operations. The use of the sij wyje (‘one lives on’) expression shows the daily existence as somewhat independent of the living person. Life simply goes on and, even though it might be my life, I have very little part in shaping it. The reflexive form of the verb (rendered by the reflexive pronoun sij, ‘-self’) shows the process it refers to as occurring in its own right, without anyone interfering (incidentally, the now proverbially bad working practices in communist Poland were rendered by the expression robi sij (‘one works’, ‘it works itself’)). But sij wyje is preceded by another verb suggesting LK and the groups of people she is part of as on the receiving end of some external forces. LK suggests that she and her kind need to (Polish trzeba which can be roughly rendered in English by ‘one needs to’, ‘there is a need’) keep the factory going. And this is why they ‘have what they have’. It is as if there was some external imperative to keep the factory going, and the imperative is for her and her fellow-workers rather than ‘them’, presumably the owners or managers. The use of mamy (‘we have’) further underscores the reality that must be accepted. They have half of their salaries, they just have what they have. Despite the default possessiveness of the verb, this time it is used more as the English ‘get’. There is no opportunity, no chance of changing what comes their way. The post-communist condition, the condition of having lost out in the process of the systemic transformations in Eastern Europe, seems to be associated with a discourse in which the individual is positioned as helpless, unable to influence the reality surrounding them, with the elected representatives hardly representing them (see also Galasinska, 2003; Kozlowska, 2004; Ryba, 2003). The discourse of victimhood, we could say, reinforced by the rise of the populist


politics in Poland is another resource with which to construct their identities: identities of those who are lost in post-communism.

Conclusions Our argument in this chapter represents another ‘modification’ of the anti-essentialist view of identity. We do agree that people construct their identities in the local context of interaction, with identities being situated and potentially or actually ever-changing. What we are proposing in addition is that the linguistic resources available to social actors in a given context at a given time offer identity positions social actors avail themselves of. In such a way the discursive repertoire available makes certain positions dependent upon discursive practices of a community, and thus more or less likely. Conversely, the rejection of certain resources and choice of others is also significant in social actors’ identity constructions. We have suggested that one can speak of a ‘grammar of identity’ of socially available linguistic resources which, in a given context, can be constructive of identity positions. They are relatively fixed and stable, probably recognizable as belonging to certain orders of discourse. Their fixedness however does not translate in a fixedness of identity itself – identity is as provisional, as malleable in a given context – it means, however, that certain identity positions are more likely than others, precisely because of the likelihood that social actors will avail themselves of ‘ready’ patterns of speaking. This chapter ends our theoretical considerations of identity. We have adopted an anti-essentialist view of identity. It is radical in our consideration of identity and the context in which it is constructed: we do not believe that the linguistic aspect of identity construction can be seen without reference to the context in which it is done. This is why we argued that it is not possible to draw up a list of lexical or grammatical items with which social actors construct their identities. Constructive of identity in one context, a certain expression does not have to be constructive of identity in another. We also proposed that the negotiation of identities in the local context is mediated not only by socially shared metanarratives, but also by what we called in this chapter ‘the grammar of identity’.

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As identity construction is a discursive, and thus social affair, it is also socially constrained. In the next chapters we would like to show – albeit implicitly – the complexity and richness of identity construction. We shall move to a more thematic discussing of our data and offer insight into our ethnographic findings. We would like to show how informants constructed themselves, their neighbours, and their surrounding – both spatial and temporal – in the interactions with us. Appendix: originals of extracts in Polish Extract 1 I: wie pan co? ciekawi mnie jak pan pamijta wlagnie postrzeganie tych kolegów z drugiej strony. no bo z nimi nie bylo jakby bezpogredniego kontaktu prawda?⫽ KG: ⫽ nie. nie bylo.⫽ I: ⫽ z nimi nie mowna bylo porozmawiac. KG: patrzhc z perspek z perspektywy lat to niejednokrotnie zawsze zawsze. i i minie parj jeszcze tak uwawam minie jeszcze parj ladnych nagcie lat nim stereotyp Niemca Niemca w ocenie Polaka sij zmieni. I: aha KG: bo równiew i ja przeciew ców ja móglbym winic tego mojego rówiegnika z drugiej strony nie znajhc go wysylajhc przerzucajhc nie wysylajhc. przerzucajhc jakhg tam dachówkj z adresem oczywigcie rzucalo sij do Adolfa. nie rzucalo sij do Haina tylko do Adolfa. I: aaaa? KG: prawda? do Adolfa. no bo Niemiec to byl Adolf.

Extract 2 NE:⫽ to znaczy sij nie mialam nic przeciwko jego osobie. jego rodzina byla to jest porzhdni ludzie ale ja jakog zawsze zachowawczo sij do Niemców zacho to znaczy mam jakieg do nich cos: no: ogólnie rzecz biorhc Niemcy nas nie lubih i my chyba ich tew. nie? I: aha. chyba? NE: i dlatego sij balam. na pewno nie⫽ I:⫽ aha ⫽ NE:⫽ i dlatego sij balam po prostu. tego tam na nazywania bo tak bylo we ty wex to swoje polskie dziecko: tam na takiej zasadzie nie? I: aha. aha znaczy wex swoje polskie dziecko znaczy oni tak mówili? czy: NE: tak. to te Niemki stare. I: do pani? czy?: NE: nie nie. do moich znajomych bo ja tam nie mialam z nimi I: aha. a no to czego sij pani bala? we we we?⫽


NE:⫽ we nie. no po co ma mnie ktog wywywac od kogog tam. I: znaczy jak by panih wyzywali? MD: no nie wiem no mowe to nie byly by wyzwiska typu tam: weby polska gwinia czy cos w tym stylu …

Extract 3 KT: ⫽ to wie pan nawet tych Niemców wysiedlali i tutaj gdzie jest ta gciekownia to tam taki most kolejowy idzie i tam bez ten most tych Niemców wszystkich wysiedlali. to tam wie pan w tych domach niemieckich jak my tam zaszli bo tam byla garstka ludzi tu w Gubinie jak my przyjechaligmy. to jak my tam poszli to wie pan gorhca zupa w talerzach byla wszystko bo te Niemcy prosto wzijli⫽ I: jeszcze w talerzach? KT: tak: I: hmm KT: no. i ich stad wysiedlili o i tam przez ten most tamtjdy bo tu bylo wszystko te mosty pozarywane. tylko tam przez ten kolejowy no. to bylo w czterdziestym szóstym roku. [ I: ojej KT: no bo my⫽ I: ⫽ jedzenie w talerzach. KT: w talerzach bylo jedzenie jeszcze no mówij panu no. Niemcy mieszkali za mostem tam most byl rozwalony to jeszcze taka decha byla dluga a ja to tak sij balam bo ja to jestem taka we jak idj mostem a spojrzj na dól to juw mi sij w glowie kreci no nie? to jak przez te dechj trza bylo igc to ta decha tak chodzila to ja sij balam jak nie wiem. no i my tam przeszli patrzec jak tych Niemców wyganiali wie pan?

Extract 4 AN: Niemka przyszla do mamusi we ona chce na strych wejgc bo ma tam zdjjcia rodzinne i prosi weby mamusia moja z nih poszla na strych. mamusia mówi nie mów dziecko. to jest twój dom: idx sobie wex ja to pamijtam te¸ rozmowj. idx sobie wex swoje zdjjcia wex sobie co chcesz bo to jest twoje mówi co chcesz to sobie zabieraj a ona wszystko jedno prosila we nie: mamusia moja ma igc tam z nih no mamusia poszla. ona pod dachówkh miala schowane zloto. wycihgnjla to zloto i mówi we wexmie tylko jeden piergcionek a resztj oddaje mamusi weby to mamusia przechowala: ona kiedyg mowe tego: ale: mamusia mówi czekaj mówi masz plaszcz. pójdj przyniosj iglj odprujemy podszewkj powszywamy ci pod podszewkj i pilnuj tego plaszcza i ten plaszcz sobie za granicj z tym swoim zlotem przewieziesz. bo mówi po co mi twoje to zloto potrzebne. albo ty kiedy dziewczyno wrócisz albo nie wrócisz a to: bjdziesz miala swoje. no i Niemka zadowolona szczjgliwa mówi za to we mamusia dla niej jest taka dobra to yyy powie gdzie oni majh jeszcze nachowane rzeczy.


Extract 5 I: a na takie? AJ: o:: no to – raz mialem takie cog pani kochana bo pracowalem w tym bloku i pracowalem i mi przydzielili szturmówkj I: i co? AJ: no i co? stojj w tym szeregu: – i co tu wykombinowac? powiedzialem we mnie brzuch boli. we musze wyjgc to ta kazala mi dac koledze te szturmówkj – no i da:lem i webym poszedl DO DOMU: nie sta:l to by wszystko gralo. szli w pochodzie ja tak z boku siadal ⬍xxx⬎ [unclear]. na drugi dzien – na dywanik.

Extract 6 MW: byl okres w Zgorzelcu od pijcdziesihtego roku kiedy przyjechali Grecy tutaj po tych – walkach które tam toczyli zostali pokonani i:: zostali po prostu zmuszeni do opuszczenia Grecji i w Zgorzelcu zostal zorganizowany ogrodek przez partij chyba z inicjatywy partii w której która polecila funduszowi wczasów pracowniczych zorganizowanie ogrodka w Zgorzelcu tutaj byly PUStki Zgorzelec byl mias/ miastem na pól wymarlym w tym czasie … wijc Grecy ci którzy tutaj byli inwalidami otrzymali ogr/ stworzono dla nich spóldzielnij przez fundusz wczasów pracowniczych z inicjatywy funduszu wczasów bo to fundusz tworzyl raczej ludzi: ogrodek gdzie mieli moglo byc wywywienie byla ogrodek gdzie oni byli wywieni tutaj

Extract 7 I: […] a takie rzeczy pamijta pani? czy nie? […] EJ: takim bylam malym szkrabem ale pamijtam to […] EJ: teraz to cho/ teraz nie ma wadnych pro/ tych takich procesji I: PROCESJI? EJ: no nie wiem jak to jak to nazwac I: ⬍to sij pochód kiedyg nazywalo⬎ [laughter] [ EJ: taki MA:RSZ I: pochód pierwszomajowy

Extract 8 OK: pamij::tam te pochody – wszyscy musieli i:gc – ambony: nie ambony. jak to sij nazywalo? ⬍ambony lu:dzie⬎ [laughter]NO:: LK: ⬍trybuna⬎ [laughter] OK: trybuny no: ambona a trybuna to⫽


LK: ⫽ambo:na. w kogciele. OK: pamij:tam – wszjdzie te flagi

Extract 9 (a) LK: ⫽wlagnie praca ta praca. nie byloby tak xle gdyby praca. I: gdyby praca? LK: bo kiedyg bylo pracy tyle ale czlowiek nie mial pienijdzy za co ku/ i nie bylo tego towaru bo taka prawda. pólki byly puste. makarony i zapalki nic wijcej. I: tak albo ocet. LK: O. stalo sij nocami w kolejkach za mijsem kawalek I: i te karteczki nie? LK: tak I: dwadziegcia pijc z kogcih LK: a w tej chwili mamy pólki pelne tylko co z tego jak zaklady sij rozsypujh to wtedy wiadoma sprawa. takie jak tu wegmy mieli zarobki dwa trzy lata temu cztery to tera polowj tego mamy … (b) LK: weby utrzymac w miarj jeszcze ten zaklad. no komug trzeba. no przeciew nie im tylko nam. I: no tak. LK: i dlatego tak mamy jak mamy. I: o: bo:we bo:we LK: no:. ALE I: ale? LK: no. sij wyje. …

(c) LK: no – wie pani co? ja cog pani powiem. ja tak podejrzewam. ja wiem jak ja kiedyg robilam i kto wie czy to tew sij w pewnym sensie tew nie odbilo na moim dziecku. raz we w mijdzyczasie weszly juw prywaciarze. rodziców jakby nie bylo calymi dniami prawie w domu nie ma. no bo taka jest prawda. jak pojedzie rano tak jak ja szlam na szósth rano to juw za dziesijc pihta wychodzilam z domu jak pracowalam w ‘Modzie’ przeciew. czy potem u tego prywaciarza w ‘Dimo’. ile razy ja dzwonilam weby mama jechala R. przypilnowala tutaj no bo nie mogj bo jest wysylka na czas i muszj pani to ja potrafilam ryc CA:LY DZIEN NOC NA DRUGI DZIEN JESZCZE RANO DO DRUGIEJ GODZINY PRZYSZLAM DO DOMU PANI MYGLI WE SIJ POLOWYLAM? ja z tego wszystkiego z tego przemjczenia

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U: snhc nie moglam. I: rozumiem. LK: i rano do pracy jeden dzien luzu i apiat znowu ten maraton. i sij wcale ja dziwij we niektóre dzieci/ a niektórym rodzicom znowuw wol – dac pienihwki zamiast dzieci przypilnowac bo taka tew jest prawda. we rodzice po prostu uwawajh we jak dadzh dziecku trochj wijcej pienijdzy we to jest sprawa rozwihzana. za malo kontaktu z dziecmi majh. ja to tak rozumujj …

4 Stories of Belonging and Identification

The previous chapters set out a series of discourse analytical procedures which, seen in context, allow us to investigate the micro phenomena of the language of identity and belonging. We argued and illustrated with extracts from many examples taken from our data on (former) German and Polish borders, that the way we speak is directly and intrinsically implicated in how we position ourselves in the different contexts of our lives – as individuals and as members of a group, as social and cultural beings in social and cultural settings. The forms we select from our respective linguistic system – that is, the ways in which we develop and use a particular lexico-grammatical repertoire from the possibilities offered by our respective language system, encode and construct these positions in subtle and not instantly recognizable ways. We do not usually monitor the ways in which we select and make meanings through speech, though we all do this whenever we speak. Analysis of these discursive selections thus allow us access to the complex multi-layered constructions of identity. In this chapter we will focus on larger but equally fundamental processes of meaning creation, those of narrativization and storytelling, and the ways in which these narratives are thematizing and expressing people’s sense of belonging to, and identification with, people and places in memories of the past, besides accounting for the present. The emphasis on narrative as an underlying principle not only in literature or oral history, but right across the humanities and social sciences, has a very long history, though the last three decades of intellectual pursuits have seen what is sometimes referred to as ‘the narrative turn’ in social sciences, embracing History, Anthropology, 71

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Sociology, (Social) Psychology, but not escaping the Natural, Biological and Medical sciences either (see, for example, the discussion on neural Darwinism in Eakin, 1999). Rather than assuming an outside fixed reality which the sciences set out to capture and describe, the ‘narrative turn’ starts with Nietzsche’s observation, namely that ‘there are no facts but only interpretations’. (Nietzsche 1965/1844–1900:903)1 From there a whole series of theories have developed which place emphasis on interpretation and the social and interactional construction of reality – past and present – rather than an objectively constituted outside (White, 1987). For our work, it is the narrativization of personal experience which is particularly pertinent for understanding the interplay between processes of identification and socio-political change in the public world, between the dramatization of memories in our informants’ discourses across three generations and the momentous socio-political changes that impinged on their lives (Kroskrity, 2000). Following writers on identity and narrative such as De Fina, 2003; Ochs and Capps, 2001; King, 2000; Easkin, 1999; Finnegan, 1997; Somers and Gibson, 1994, and expanding on our own published work in this area (Armbruster and Meinhof, 2005; Meinhof, 2002), we are not only sharing theoretical assumptions of a narrative model of identity and identification, we are also providing empirical evidence for the processes which underpin them. In this chapter we will highlight the ways in which people’s stories provide the material for understanding how we make and re-make sense of ourselves through a narrativization of the continuities and changes in our public and private worlds; how in the telling we describe, share and confirm a sense of cohesion for our lifeworlds, but also how we fail to do so. Hence in the successes and failures of constructing cohesive life stories we can find the continuities in people’s identity constructions, but we can also see the fissures and breaks which disrupt the attempts of a cohesive ‘storied self’ as a result of life experiences which disturb a smooth retelling. Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps (2001) in their recent study Living Narratives see this tension between the longing for coherence on the one hand and the disruption to coherence caused by experience as the fundamental dilemma of all narrators of life experiences: Examining the spectrum of narrative possibilities helps us to fathom the essence of personal narrative, namely the oscillation between

Stories of Belonging and Identification 73

narrators’ yearning for coherence of life experience and their yearning for authenticity. That is, narrators contending with life experiences struggle to formulate an account that both provides an interpretive frame and does justice to life’s complexities. This tension fuels narrative activity and accounts for much of the social life of narrative. (Ochs and Capps, 2001:24) Our informants’ discourses provide ample evidence of such a tension, and we will give examples of these below. However, in contrast to Ochs and Capps who see this tension as a feature of conversational double- or multi-authored personal narratives, largely absent from the traditional single-authored ‘default narrative’ (Ochs and Capps, 2001:20 and 23), we find evidence for each of these in both single authored and dual-authored narratives. In our case, our informants’ attempt to narrate a cohesive well-motivated and justifiable life story is most of all disrupted as the result of their being caught in ongoing ‘ideological dilemmas’ (Billig et al., 1988) between a personal life story and dramatic shifts in the public world in which these life stories unfold, pointing to unresolved and in many ways unresolvable tensions in our informants’ lives. These are often a direct consequence of the problematic relationship between the present-day vantage point and the narrated memory time, the results of what Bernstein (1994:16) and Morson (1994:7) have aptly described as ‘fore-shadowing’ and ‘back-shadowing’ (see also Ochs and Capps, 2001:5–6). Telling a story of past experiences in the full knowledge of what has happened since (fore-shadowing), and feeling a need to justify and make coherent one’s life’s choices against genuine or internalized interlocutors who, with the privilege of hindsight, would not accept the inevitability of, or the rationale behind, these choices (back-shadowing), are amongst the key factors for the disruption of some personal narratives.

Cross-generational differences in storytelling Cohesive and well-formed storytelling on the one hand and disrupted narratives on the other are not equally distributed amongst our informants, nor do they run within particular families, but are generational across many of our families. Amongst our informants it was the middle (parent) generation – that is, those Germans who were born and grew up in the divided Germany, especially those from the

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former GDR, and Poles who were born and grew up in Communist Poland – who found it hardest to tell a continuous cohesive story set within a particular time-frame and unfolding chronologically. Most of the middle generation’s narratives do not answer to the five structural patterns of personal narrative identified by Labov and Waletzky (1967), identified as: ● ● ● ● ●

Orientation Complication Evaluation Resolution Coda.

Nor do they conform to the three structural units suggested by Hartig (1984) and Meinhof (1997) which compress the five to three basic units: ● ● ●

selection/relativization description/complication evaluation/coda

Instead we find a constant interweaving of descriptive (fore-shadowing) and evaluative features (back-shadowing), an argumentative rather than a chronological, event-driven structure (see also Armbruster and Meinhof, 2005). We shall later show typical instances of such argumentative and often disrupted narratives, which set out to persuade the listener (van Dijk, 1993:126; also quoted in De Fina, 2003:151), defending the narrator against an imaginary opponent (see also Meinhof and Galasinki, 2000), rather than focussing on an eventful story. By contrast, the narratives of the oldest – the grandparent – generation contained all the classical features of storytelling. Surprisingly perhaps, we find far less evidence of disturbed narratives in this generation, in spite of the often traumatic and disturbing nature of their key stories which dealt most often with the period during the final months of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, dramatizing their fears of enemies, hunger and hardship, the threat of homelessness, evictions from home or involuntary resettlements. This oldest generation who had to adjust not just once but twice to a total reorientation of their public world, tended to


intersperse the flow of the conversation with the interviewers with clearly marked narrative sections, where coherent chronological story lines lead to some form of resolution. We shall provide examples for these later in the chapter. To return to what we mean by ‘story’: we would like to differentiate a story as a longer stretch of discourse with particular features which set it off against those aspects of the interview which follow a more conventional interview structure. Prototypically, these are usually narrated by one person, but they may also include more interactionally constructed shared narratives – in our cases stories which are co-constructed with a co-narrating husband or wife, or by siblings. In her recent study on Identity and Narrative, De Fina (2003:14) describes prototypical narratives as ‘narratives that tell past events, revolve around unexpected episodes, ruptures or disturbances of normal states of affairs or social rules, and convey a special message and interpretation about these events and/or the characters involved in them’. She continues with the proviso, that ‘although we may look at stories as prototypes and as a basic genre from which the others are derived, characterizing narratives in terms of stories is reductive and may lead to neglect storytelling as a process’. To allow for a more flexible approach to her informants – 14 undocumented Mexican economic migrants – De Fina differentiates between stories proper, which follow the Labov and Waletzki (1967) schemata, and narratives which she defines as chronicles. These latter relate specifically to a regularly recurring theme amongst her informants, that of illegally crossing the Mexican–US border. They (a) relate a series of events chronologically and/or spatially ordered (b) give an account of how a certain state of affairs was brought about and (c) do not have a single evaluative point or coda (De Fina 2003:98).Whilst this distinction between chronicle and story proved useful for De Fina’s approach to her data, and could be replicated from within our data set as well, it does not capture what emerged to us as the most pertinent distinction for the processes of identity creation. We would therefore like to propose a different way of accounting for the distinctive discursive sub-genres within our interview data, which bear more relevance to the socio-cultural dynamics of our informants’ storied lives, and are furthermore sensitive to generational differences. On the one hand, we would like to differentiate between (a) interactional, often interviewerled dialogic sequences which do not construct stories though they

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may in fact precede them (these are particularly frequent in the data of our youngest generation); and (b) narrativized stories and episodes on the other. Since the first category is the least narrativized of all we will not focus on these in this chapter, though we will show some transitions from the first to the second in our first two sets of extracts. The second category, however, is highly relevant for our understanding of the interlinking of narrative and identity construction. Here the narratives and narrative episodes can be further differentiated as: ● ●

prototypical stories, singly or dually authored, and argumentative and/or disrupted stories.

Since our informants are members of three-generation-families who lived on the most controversial borderline of twentieth-century Europe, and who had experienced a series of major political and ideological changes, the interrelation between different socio-political events and identity narratives informed both the predominant choice of story content (key narratives) and the ability to tell it (story format). The geo-political position of their communities foregrounds the tension and interplay between the more personal experiences of belonging to a family, a network of friends and relations and a geographical place on the one hand, and the larger discourses of collective memories of, and interactions with, the public worlds on the other. In this chapter we will give examples of the ways in which our informants used the larger structures of storytelling to construct and position themselves in their lifeworlds, and for the disruptions evidenced in the telling.

Constructing and co-constructing storied lives As previously discussed, our field work in Germany and Poland consisted of interviews with members of the same three-generation family either on their own, or in pairs consisting of the same generation. That is, we often interviewed married couples or siblings together, but avoided – if at all possible – cross-generational interviews. This affected the ways in which stories evolved. When we interviewed married couples or siblings, some of these shorter sequences would


turn into longer co-constructed narratives, where both speakers jointly told their stories. Although we found some competition for the conversational floor through interruptions by a dominant partner, these did not result in obvious changes to the co-construction of the story content. One can only surmise if this would have been different had we interviewed members of the same family across the generation. However, given the strong generational preferences in thematic choice based on shared key events in our informants’ lives, one might expect a more competitive construction at the story level in cross-generational encounters. In our cases, however, different narrative sequences were added on by the different partners to further exemplify or underline a developing story line rather than providing counter-evidence or challenging the content by other means. This apparent agreement between family members of the same generations did not, however, rule out contradictions and paradoxes. These did emerge within the different sections of partnered interviews, but intriguingly did not arise as a result of explicitly stated differing experiences, opinions or attitudes between the pairs at any one time. In most cases couples and siblings engaged in similar co-constructions even where these contradicted some of their previously co-constructed attitudes and experiences. Thus the absence of arguments in the flow of the conversations between pairs does not imply complete agreement in people’s worldviews. But these differences can only be gauged in appreciating the role and content of some of the embedded narratives and brief anecdotal excursions which arise spontaneously in the give and take of the conversations. Here we found some interesting implicit differences in perceptions and attitudes which – because of their anecdotal nature – did not get picked up as potential counter-argumentation by their partner. Below we give examples of two such inserted narratives by one couple from the oldest generation which in each case seem to deviate from the thematic flow of the conversation. However, we shall argue that this deviation happens only on the explicit referential level of the talk, and not on the implicit emotional undercurrent. If the latter is taken note of, there are some implicit differences between the two informants which are left entirely unexplored in their surface talk. In the next sections of this chapter we will elucidate our theoretical reflections by drawing on exemplary extracts from our informants,

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all belonging to either the middle or the oldest generation. Each extract serves the dual purpose of exemplifying a particular form of story telling, and at the same time highlighting some of the central themes amongst our informants. We will divide the remaining chapter into four sections which reflect this sub-division: 1 2 3 4

embedded shorter narratives co-constructed conversational narratives argumentative narratives prototypical longer stories

The sections on argumentative narratives and prototypical large stories are particularly sensitive to generational and cultural difference, since category 3 is most prevalent amongst the middle generations and 4 amongst the oldest generation. However, as we will show, all narratives in the sections allow us to understand the ways in which changes and upheavals in the public world directly interact with the form and content of people’s life narratives, even when what is being told seems to be no more than a story from their everyday life. Embedded narratives: from conversational interaction to storytelling Structured and to a somewhat lesser extent semi-structured interviews are usually organized through shorter exchanges, often featuring adjacency pairs such as question–answer sequences, or similar interaction patterns, though embedded in these are frequent shorter excursions with brief story sequences. Although the interviewer may or may not direct the interviewee to a particular topic of interest, we preferred a conversational rather than a more formal interview style, allowing the interviewees to largely self-select which of their experiences they wanted to share with us. Hence the flow of the conversation with our informants was regulated by the turn-taking rules already identified by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974; see also Cameron, 2001), and, as can be seen below, interlocutors interweave in smooth transitions. Before the onset of the extract 1 below, the conversation between our informants had focused for quite some time on the extent to which German reunification had recreated a geographically and socially unified space which was being used by themselves and other people from both sides of the former border. The interviewees, a couple


of the oldest generation from the Thuringian town of Hirschberg, insist that it will take quite a while still, before the two Germanies once more will have grown together (es dauert schon noch ein bißchen, bis alles so zusammengewachsen ist:). But this is a general observation which they do not find to be relevant for their own lives, since they themselves make equally good use of the once again accessible environment on the Frankonian side of the former border. At the point where the transcript sets in, the husband declares that to him reunification seems still like a miracle, a feeling which the interviewer herself also supports. Extract 1 PE and HE, husband and wife, oldest generation, Hirschberg 1. PE: No. Sometimes one still feels like a miracle has happened. 2. I: That’s how I feel, too. I still can’t believe it. 3. PE: That all of a sudden the border is no more. Oh I must really tell you something here, we were up at Bad Schandau in ’88, no ’89, from ’88 to ’89 for New Year’s Eve and that night I dreamt, those were the ‘Unternächt’ [nights between 25 and 31 December], that I walked down over there in Tiefengrün, that I walked down the hill and all of a sudden the border was gone, there was no more border, it was all open and that’s how it happened. 4. I: So you were really dreaming something which then became true? 5. PE: And you can count the exact day on your fingers, it all happened like that. It is a premonition, isn’t it? 6. I: You felt it was very positive. 7. HE: Yes, I mean, I didn’t know Hof at all. There was a bus from Schleiz – Gera, a bus service until the end of the war, but we didn’t know any more than that about Hof. The parents maybe, but as children … 8. PE: And my father’s mother is from E., her maiden name was M. 9. I: And the area where you spend most of your time, is that Hirschberg and the place where you are from, or does it tend to be the whole region? 10. PE and HE: [murmuring, inaudible] 11. PE: and we don’t really manage to go out that much any more. 12. HE: We have lunch at Hulda’s or supper and we go to Tanna, to the Stone-ponds [Steinteiche] that’s very close.

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13. PE: And also to Hof, don’t we. We go to Hof more often than to Schleiz. 14. I: Ah yes, Hof, Hof, is that more or less because of the shopping? 15. HE: Yes, yes. 16. I: And do you have a feeling of being at home there, too? Could one say that? 17. PE: Yes, one could say that. This story is at once idiosyncratic in its anecdotal nature, and part of the cultural repertoire of all our German informants from the middle and older generation in this region. The experiences of the division of the two Germanies between 1945 and 1989, and their (re-)unification in 1989 and 1990 emerged in narrative clusters which constantly interweaved the private with the public. This required a negotiation between our informants’ subjective geography of belonging to certain places, and the physical and material conditions of their lives under the regulations, restrictions and possibilities offered up by the respective state(s) and its/their public policies. What we can see in this and the following extracts from Tiefengrün/Hirschberg is a narrativized mis en scène where people inhabit differently constituted geo-political spaces, where some do and others do not belong. The subjective and symbolic sense of belonging or not belonging to particular places in this former border region, which is a historically, geographically and for more than a decade also politically unified space, thus directly interlinks with identification with and distancing from ingroups and outgroups, and a sense of one’s own inclusion or exclusion by the others. (For a more detailed account of the significance of the borderland in peoples’ narratives see also Armbruster and Meinhof, 2003.) Let us now look at both the structural and content features of the first extract in more detail. At the beginning of the extract above, interviewer and PE agree about the miraculous nature of German reunification (turn 1 and 2). At this point PE briefly suspends the sequential turn-taking pattern by introducing a narrative excursion. This is embedded in, but deviates from, the theme of the ongoing talk which had been on the topic – later resumed – of how since reunification they spend their leisure time in both Frankonia and Thuringia. This transition from multiple turns to singular storytelling is managed by the opening: ‘Oh I must really tell you something here …’ (Also da muß ich ihnen


noch was erzählen). Having thus given notice of a shift in conversational style from a shared to a single authored format – ‘I will now tell you a story’ – he is not interrupted whilst recounting a visionary dream he had, a year exactly before the full reopening of the border in this region (Hirschberg and Tiefengrün were rejoined by a wooden footbridge on the 30 December 1989). Only when he reaches the end with the evaluation/coda sequence und so ist es gekommen (‘and this is how it happened’) does the interviewer return to a shared floor for the conversation. This story in turn 3, though very brief, has all the features of a well-formed narrative: topic selection ⬎ description ⬎ evaluation/coda. It serves to underwrite the miraculous nature of what happened, since the dream itself had occurred in the ‘Unternächt’ – those nights between the end of the Christmas days and the beginning of the new year, when according to an ancient German superstition dreams are predictive of the future. Only when the story reaches its evaluative ending – and a further turn between interviewer and storyteller confirms that this is indeed how the story should be read – does the other interlocutor, PE, return to the previous theme of how they are both freely using both eastern and western locations. (For explanation: The Hulda is a local inn in Frankonian Tiefengrün, Hof is the nearest bigger town in Frankonia, that is, both lie in the former West Germany whereas Schleiz, Tanna and the Steinteiche – the stone ponds – are in Thuringia and thus in the former East.) The second extract presents another typical transition from a dialogue to a storytelling sequence, this time introduced by HE. It follows on almost immediately from the previous extract: Extract 2 1. I: Since the reunification, Thuringia has gained importance as a federal state. Am I right? 2. HE: Yes, and Thuringia is a beautiful country. The towns right through Thuringia, Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt, Jena, Weimar, Gera, I want to put it like this, the cities are like a string of pearls and every every city has its own something. Eisenach has got the Wartburg and the car factory, Gotha the palace, Erfurt the IGA [international horticultural exhibition], the cathedral and the Salvator Church, and Weimar is now a cultural capital, and Jena has got Zeiss and Gera the Osterstein castle, all that. It is, and the area is really uniquely beautiful.

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3. I: And have you felt this more now, since the Wende or has it always been like that? 4. HE: It’s always been like that. 5. I: It’s always been like that. 6. HE: It’s always been like that. 7. I: It’s not because it’s become a political entity, Thuringia as a state, it’s always been like that? 8. HE: It’s always been like that. My father came originally from the Black Forest and came here because of his profession and work in 1920. And he got married here and we stayed here. And his entire family, friends, relatives, sisters, brothers, cousins, in short his whole family were over there. Black Forest, Düsseldorf. And one of the cousins always kept in touch and my father died in ’39. When I was down there for the first time I said, ‘well, we would never have left home, this is our home and that’s where we stayed’, I mean we didn’t suffer and we didn’t get huge parcels either. My cousin was a real Suabian, she sent a shoebox [laughter]. And she was married and they had a grocery store and my mum said, look, M. has been going through her shop, here some chocolate and a bit of coffee [laughter] But more, well these were the presents, well, one – but apart from that, they need not have been scared that we would have stood outside their door one of these days. We would have never left our home The extract opens with a question by the interviewer whether as a result of having achieved the status of a federal state in reunified Germany the Thuringian region had gained in significance. HE’s response gives the question a very different twist. Rather than speaking about the political or administrative changes which the federal system brought to eastern German regions, she exclaims instead on the beauty and cultural value of Thuringia (turn 2). Her almost elegiac incantation of names of Thuringian towns – which she compares to a row of pearls collected on a piece of string – its emotional fervour and the heightened emotion in her voice can easily be seen to redress the previous assertion of feeling equally at home in neighbouring Frankonia. Hof may be a good town for shopping and the Gasthof Hulda may be a good place to go for a meal, especially as mentioned earlier when there is a ‘Schlachtfest’ – (literally the day of slaughter of the animals, when local inns in the region usually serve blood


sausage and boiled beef or pork). But this is not comparable to the beauty of her home region of Thuringia. In order to further convince the interviewer that Thuringia has always been the most important place for her, irrespective of any political changes to its status, she then launches herself into a brief narrative (turn 8). Hers opens simply with an also (‘well’), but it has the same effect as the more narrative opening of ‘Let me tell you a story’ preferred by her husband. There are several intriguing points to be made about this extract and its relationship to the previous one. Firstly, as already mentioned, it follows on from a sequence in the conversation where (a) her husband tells about his premonition about the border disappearing, which prefigures the possibility to return for his walks to Tiefengrün as well, and (b) both husband and wife claim to be at home on either side of the former border. But she now corrects a somewhat indecisive and possibly interviewer-induced observation of feeling at home on both sides (turn 16 and 17 in extract A) by firmly coming down on the side of Thuringia. Secondly, the story that spontaneously arises from an implicit comparison between East and West makes her preference for home in Thuringia explicit. Beginning with her father’s move away from the Black Forest as a young man and his marriage and settlement in the Thuringian region, it sets up a contrast between herself and her parents, who lived in Thuringia, and the father’s relatives who all live drüben (‘over there’), in the Black Forest and Düsseldorf, with one cousin keeping up the connection during the division of Germany. The story depends on mutual knowledge between interviewer and interviewees about the meaning of certain deictic and cultural references which are undoubdetly quite obscure to non-Germans, or even to Germans of the youngest generation. To briefly summarize her story with this background filled in: She is saying that when she visited her relatives in the Black Forest for the first time – and it is clear from the context that this visit occurred at some point after the Wende – she reassured them that neither she nor any one of her family would ever have left their home (in the GDR). This is explained in several ways: (a) because Thuringia is her ‘Heimat’; (b) because during GDR times they did not suffer any hardship; (c) because they had been perfectly able to cope during that period, even though they did not get much support from her western relatives: that is, no large parcels

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arrived, just some small bits from their relative’s food store. This absence of more generous support from a richer (western) to a poorer (eastern) relative she thinks of as typical for her cousin’s origin – she describes her as a true ‘Swabian’ – since she comes from a region in Germany whose population, like the Scots in the UK, have a reputation for being frugal and somewhat stingy. Finally, she points to an implicit understanding that she would not have been welcome at her relatives’ house in the West. Points 1 and 4 are made in the narrative, first by dramatizing herself through direct speech directed at her cousin, ‘We would have never ever left home, that’s our Heimat, and that’s were we were staying’, and secondly by an evaluative final comment ‘They need not have been scared that we would have stood outside their door one of these days. We would have never left our home.’ The repetition of her emphatic assertion never to leave home completes the brief narrative. In HE’s storytelling we find some traces of the linguistic manoeuvres which are much more prevalent in the middle generation’s discourses to be exemplified below. For her it is not enough simply to recall the beauty of Thuringia and her love for her home region, but she must also defend this against an implicit western perspective – represented by her relatives or more generally a perceived prevailing western discourse about easterners – that everyone in the (former) GDR now or then, would or would have preferred to leave for the West. The interview with HE and PE, members of the grandparent generation in Thuringia, was an example for an explict co-construction of life stories with both partners agreeing at all times about each other’s experiences and attitudes, yet revealing underlying disagreements and potential tensions in the narrative excursions. In comparing the two embedded narratives it is easy to see that PE’s sense of home embraces the immediate locality reaching out across the former border which split the united space of his youth into two. From the end of 1989 onwards, his home town, Hirschberg, and the adjacent village of Tiefengrün have once again become geographically and politically unified – literally a dream come true. By contrast, HE’s narrative of home positions her in a much larger region of what is both a cultural and a political identifier – the new federal state of Thuringia with its long cultural traditions. Belonging to Thuringia marks her off from neighbouring Upper Frankonia/Bavaria/West Germany. Hence pride of place in Thuringia and its cultural traditions


defy any implicit inference by westerners that she could not possibly have or have had a good life in the former GDR. Narrative sequences arising spontaneously within the conversational context differ considerably in length, and thus usually also in their formal patterning and narrative function within the interview. Shorter narrative sequences, for example, often simply expand on earlier points already made in the dialogue sequences by providing anecdotal evidence for an argument, or add some further detail to a description of an event (as in the first descriptive section of extract 1). Sequence 1 and the narrative second sequence in extract 2, however, were on the one hand deviations or excursions from the thematic referential flow of the conversation. Yet at the same time they were connecting with the underlying emotional flow of the exchanges with a great deal of the meaning left implicit. Neither of the interlocutors shows any awareness of the implicit differences in their positions. These extracts provide intriguing examples of a more general phenomenon, namely that narratives may dramatize more implicit experiential meanings which might be denied or repressed in more explicit discourses. We will return to this relation between explicitly held attitudes and experiential meaning triggered by narrativization in a later section of this chapter and in Chapter 6. Co-constructed conversational narratives The next extract shows us again a couple, but this time from the middle generation, and not from Hirschberg but the neighbouring Upper-Frankonian village of Tiefengrün. Their long conversational narrative is almost entirely constructed through sequential turntaking of the three interlocutors – largely through turns between husband and wife – rather than by embedded narratives. Frequent overlaps have one of the interlocutors quickly give way to the other, and both seem in total agreement as to the content of their narrative. However, as our insertion of thematic titles for each sub-section and the subsequent discussion will demonstrate, what is actually said by both, is quite contradictory. The part of the conversation transcribed below is sparked off by photographs of the same event alluded to in our first extract above, the official opening of a wooden footbridge in December 1989 across the river Saale which had marked the heavily fortified border between the GDR and the FRG, and the official opening of the motor

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bridge which replaced it after unification had taken its course: Extract 3 VG and MG, husband and wife, middle generation, Tiefengrün i. Having good relations with people from Hirschberg 1. I: [laughs] You said you had links with Hirschberg because you had met people. How did you meet them? 2. MG: Well, at the, well, at the opening of the border. 3. I: Just down there? 4. VG: In fact on the bridge. 5. MG: On the bridge. 6. I: On the bridge. 7. MG: No, in the civic hall [Kulturhaus]. 8. VG: Or in the civic hall, we got together somehow at a table. 9. I: Exactly, in the civic hall, where we sat, too. And you started talking with them there? 10. MG: Yes, somehow, I don’t remember how, we saw each other and we got on well and we get on well to this day. And we meet, V. and S. with the men, they have just been over to his birthday. Well I, we don’t have any problems. ii. Differences in attitudes between the generations 11. I: And she [your daughter] was just saying that it is very different for the young people. 12. MG: Yes, the generation, some before, some in the midst of it and others not at all. 13. I: Later. 14. MG: I am aware that she doesn’t [go?] to Hirschberg, only to Hof, but as we were saying before, there aren’t many links to Hirschberg. And if they don’t want to, then phhhh. iii. Reasserting the good relations with the people of Hirschberg 15. I: Of course, of course. But do you have a feeling that Tiefengrün is suffering a bit because the border has been opened? 16. MG: Not us, we are able to go shopping, go to the dentist, we are able to do that and we are at work most of the day and it that respect.


iv. Disappearing old customs 17. VG: We did the ‘Kälberumzug’ [local festivity, literally ‘calves’ procession’] at the time. 18. I: Here in Tiefengrün? 19. VG: Yes, yes.. We went round the houses with a cart full of music and beer. 20. I: But you don’t do that anymore? 21. VG: No, nobody. 22. I: Why not? 23. MG: The young ones go to the disco and they don’t go to the village pub anymore. The sense of community is … 24. VG: … there are few villages that keep up the tradition, ‘Kälberumzug’ 25. MG: … Joditz, Joditz is still doing it. 26. VG: Joditz, Gartenau, there it is still common. v. Being homesick in Tiefengrün 27. I: Does Tiefengrün have an identity as a village? You were saying you related to it. 28. MG: Yes, where one is or where one, one always relates to. I have been away from Bayreuth for twenty years and I still relate to it. The first few days he had to drive me home every day [laughter] 29. I: Really. 30. MG: The first, you know, the first years he had to drive me home. 31. VG: Homesickness. 32. MG: Ah 33. VG: Homesickness 34. MG: Homesickness, yes, it was cruel [terrible] 35. I: [directed at M] But I mean, you are a proper Tiefengrüner. 36. VG: I am one, I was born in Tiefengrün. vi. Remembering the first border crossing as moment of reunion: what it was like then 37. I: Because I have … [shows picture of 30 December 1989 – see Chapter 5] 38. MG: We’ve got the same little images. Almost. 39. I: Yes, just a moment, you were referring to this.

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40. MG: Yes, look, down there, we’ve got a similar one, I can’t find the picture. But the people were all on there, K.’s child with her little girl. 41. VG: Yes, and we’ve got that one where we went for the walk, where we are on. And the one of the opening where the whole bridge was crowded. There was a stream [of people], the ones from over there rushed over here and we rushed over there [laughter]. vii. Remembering the first border crossing as the start of division – what it feels like from today’s perspective 42. I: Yes, exactly, this one, isn’t it. And what comes to your mind when you look at it now? [another picture of same day] 43. MG: In Hof they used to say ‘Who wants to make a donation’? 44. VG: Yes, a lot of donations were made the first years. We’ll rebuild the wall and all that … 45. MG: for the monument 46. I: Oh dear oh dear. 47. MG: Yes, it’s true, you’ll make a donation so that we can re-erect the wall. It was really like that right form the start. 48. DG [daughter]: And who will lend a hand? 49. I: But what do you think, has it been getting better or worse? Have people got used to each other or are they further apart? 50. MG: The.. 51. VG: It’s difficult to say, one gets together but … 52. MG: It always remains Ossi–Wessi. 53. Ossi–Wessi somehow always remains. 54. I: It always remains? 55. MG: Always somehow. 56. I: Yes, it’s still there. viii. Co-constructing distance and difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ 57. VG: On a private level one gets on with the people, but the gap is there in terms of work and they just can’t get to each other. The greed, because they don’t earn the same and … 58. I: Yes, yes. And that’s exactly what I am interested in. She [the daughter] described to me very vividly that she thinks one can spot an Ossi straightaway. Do you think that that’s still the case? 59. VG: Partly yes.


60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

I: And how can you tell? MG: We see it straightaway [laughter] I: See it straightaway – but how? MG: The clothes … VG: The clothes, with the clothes one can usually tell I: Yes, and how, what is it about the clothes? VG: The women dress differently somehow, I don’t know, they have a different … MG: And the men mostly have, let’s say … VG: Well, the men, they wear old-fashioned clothes, I don’t know. MG: … and the scarves, the scarf-wearers [Stofftüchler] VG: Or older people, they are still wearing their typical Eastern fur hats [Ostpelzchen] The GDR furs I: And that really is still an indicator? When you … MG: Yes, yes. VG: Anyone of the age of a pensioner, they still have their former fur hats.

If we now view the discourse sections in their sequence it becomes clear that both husband and wife are jointly working through highly ambivalent attitudes about the effects of the disappearance of the border between Tiefengrün and Hirschberg, and about their attitudes to the younger generation, but they do this without ever openly disagreeing with one another. In subsections i to iii the couple’s good relations with people from Hirschberg are asserted on the basis of the good friends they made on the day when the border came down, and how useful the nearness of the larger town Hirschberg is for their shopping and visits to the dentist. Hence in these paragraphs they see a social and an instrumental bonus for themselves, against the views of the younger generation exemplified by their own daughter’s explicitly negative account which the interviewer refers to. This generational difference is further expanded on by the husband’s nostalgic memories of old local customs (the procession of the calves through local villages) which the younger generation has abandoned in favour of modern pleasures like the disco. He blames generational changes rather than east–west differences on changes to the lost customs in Tiefengrün. His wife adds to this discourse of nostalgia her own homesickness for Bayreuth, a Frankonian town some 50 kilometers

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away further south – which she left on marrying her husband, again not an east–west difference, but one of moving away – if only a relatively small distance. This picture of a couple who lives happly in the reunited locality plagued only by some nostalgic memories of the places and customs of their youth changes at the point where the interviewer introduces photographs of the opening of the wooden footbridge on the 30 December 1989. When viewing the first picture both speakers first agree on the exciting memories backed up by their own photographic records of the stream of people crossing each other on that bridge, how ‘the ones from over there rushed over here, and we rushed over there’ (turn 42). However, when shown a similar picture of the same moment accompanied by the interviewer’s question ‘What do you think about that now?’, both launch into an account of how ‘some people in Hof’, the neighbouring Frankonian town, wanted to rebuild the wall there and then.. The reference to the people in Hof who wanted to see the wall rebuilt provides the transition for a series of rapid turns where the alleged old-fashioned clothing and behaviour of easterners are ridiculed. Hence it becomes quite clear that it is not only the people of Hof who use strong negative out-grouping devices, but they themselves share these views. Several features in their discourse are very typical for attitudes held by the people who live in the western border regions against those in the eastern regions. These frequently revolve around work, status, or taste, and style related issues: ●

●

Work: easterners are said to be greedy because they do not accept differential attitudes and rewards for their work (see also Armbruster and Meinhof, 2002); Taste: easterners are said to be instantly recognizable because of their bad or old-fashioned taste in the ways they dress (see also Meinhof, 2004).

Their dismissive comments are co-constructed in the same way as their earlier assertion of ‘not having any problems with being friendly with easterners’. They echo almost verbatim what their daughter had earlier told the interviewer, contradicting their earlier assertion that it was only the young who held negative attitudes about the easterners (for more details of the similarity of such out-grouping devices of West vs East by western Germans against eastern Germans, and eastern


Germans against Poles see Meinhof, 2004). Their ambivalent attitude and the strong out-grouping devices employed against the people from ‘over there’ act like a foil against which one can understand the defensive nature of the narratives in the next section (see also Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000). Argumentative narratives The next two extracts are typical examples of ‘middle generation’ narratives from two middle-aged women who grew up and spent most of their adult lives in the former GDR. Both exemplify what we have identified in the beginning of this chapter as ‘argumentative narratives’. In other words the chronological order of their storytelling is disrupted by processes of fore-shadowing and back-shadowing. These suggest a need to defend their experiences and attitudes against a continuously present but discursively absent silent interlocutor who represents what is either perceived to be a critique by one of the protagonists in the story or, more generally, a perceived dominant discourse of westerners in general. As the previous extract from West German informants has exemplified, such ‘silent opponents’ are not entirely fictitious creations by overly defensive former East Germans but are well-grounded in discourses of prejudice and non-acceptance even more than a decade after reunification. The first extract comes from the daughter of the first couple in section 1. Like her mother, she dramatizes oppositional views in her narrative, but she does so in a much more disrupted way. Her mother HE in extract 2 recreated chronologically the moment where she successfully argues against her cousin and the other western relatives by positive confirmation of her deep roots in her beloved Thuringia – a positive assertion of pride of place irrespective of potential alternative evaluations of her home town, which by virtue of its location in the infamous five kilometer exclusion zone (Sperrzone) during GDR times, was perceived by many as a double prison. ME by contrast finds it difficult to remain within a chronological frame – even though she has a much more positive account of her western relatives’ role than her mother. Her explicitly recreated or implicitly referenced opponents’ voices disrupt the possibility of a cohesive narrative since they need to be silenced at every turn of the story. These different voices which set out to undercut the value of her past life are discursive enactments of the processes of fore-shadowing and back-shadowing. They force

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this professionally successful middle-aged woman from Hirschberg into a defensive dialectic which prevents her from telling any aspect of her life as a simple chronological event-driven instance. The difference to the patterns of the oldest generation could not be more marked. Extract 4 ME, female, middle generation, Hirschberg 1. ME: We were lucky … it was in 1990 … Relatives of my other grandfather, the grandfather was from Baden originally, and the relatives came to us to see what was happening. And we wanted to carry on running the business. They had a business themselves. And they really gave advice. For me they weren’t those who just come, and look and complain. They said, with this you do this and that … and you always have to be well-informed and you have to offer something new and attract people. I must say that it helped us a lot. 2. UM: … And one notices whether someone really wants to help or whether someone is being condescending. 3. ME: Well, and one discovers that we know a lot about the West, because we used to look towards the West or because we used to look for dialogues, but the West Germans, they don’t know much about us and our lives. And if someone says something to me of a disparaging nature about our former lives, then I say why is it supposed to have been bad. You didn’t live here, but I lived here, I know that it wasn’t bad, that there were many good things as well as many bad ones, but one shouldn’t judge something that one doesn’t know [by one’s own experience]. Just like her mother in extract 2, ME also refers to what are clearly the same group of shop-keeper relatives from the West. But whereas her mother in her narrative asserted her independence and the value and beauty of her own home region against the relatives’ implicit criticism, ME is grateful for their coming to help and advise them on how to run the shop from a more western point of view. However, this is not the point of her story. ME’s narrative is not centring on either the shop or on the relation to the western relatives, but is constructing an argument against other unnamed westerners who only come to


nag and complain and say deprecating things about her former country. To refute their indifference, critique and lack of knowledge about what life had really been like in the former GDR, ME dramatizes her own persona by direct quotation of what she would say or has been saying. But whereas her mother fields all the positive values of her home region to make her case, ME’s defence only offers evaluative but vague references to ‘things that were good’ and ‘things that were bad’. Her language is marked by a high degree of syntactic discontinuities and hesitations which appear systematically throughout the entire interview at points of conflict (see also Meinhof and Galasinki, 2000 for further examples of similar patterns of talk). The next extract also comes from a woman from the middle generation, from the former GDR, but this time we go east to Guben, the eastern border town of the former GDR with Poland. The flow of her narrative, triggered by a photograph of a May demonstration in her home town during GDR times, is less disrupted than that of ME, but it, too, has many argumentative features which disrupt the chronological flow of the story. We have already pointed to the significance of May Day demonstrations in Communist Poland in Chapter 3, where the extract served to demonstrate the absence of linguistic resources for creating critical distance to the experience. The extract below exemplifies a different phenomenon in that Cornelia’s attempt to tell a positive story about life in the GDR is undermined by her knowledge of how this might be received and judged from the presentday perspective. It is thus much more defensive and ambivalent in character. There is only a brief break of a few turns between extracts 1 and 2, but basically it is one continuous text. Extract 5 CE, female, middle generation, Guben (a) 1) Yes, and that’s in May, that’s right, the May demonstration. that’s, we used to take part in the march, and even my children took part in the march there, with the children’s dance group and they were allowed to dance in front of the stands. Well, I must say I grew up with it, I didn’t have any major problems with it. That’s just the way it was. One went out on the streets on May 1st and many people that I am talking to today say that it wasn’t bad, at least there was

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2) 3) 4) 5)

something happening, we met and there were stalls selling sausages and beer and that’s how the morning was spent, lunchtime and then everyone went their separate ways, you know, and when the weather was bad one didn’t stay that long, sometimes one was lucky and there was good weather on May 1st. But it was all rather regulated, you know, it was hardly voluntary and you have to show me the person who wanted to carry a banner. UM: [laughs] How was that administered … CE: They were being forced … UM: they were being forced [laughter] CE: They appealed to their conscience, and they, you have become an activist, now you can carry this, and nobody liked doing that, and so everyone carrying one of these should have a grim face [laughter]

(b) 6) CE: It was nice, because it was the time when this whole thing about the Beatles started and we were very enthusiastic about it, and one is able to sing those songs oneself but of course one can speed them up a little, too and we used to emphasize the rhythm in them. And we received some support from the factory for synthetic fibres and they donated some musical instruments and a drum kit, and that was of course quite something, and we were so proud, yes, and that was nice. For me it was a wonderful time and I don’t regret it. Yes, and it’s also got to do with the May demonstration, these memories, you know, the choir and the singing movement. My children, my two girls were members of the children’s dance groups at the time of the GDR, organized by the large cultural company of the factory for synthetic fibres and they took part in the marches, and they danced there, and everybody was happy and clapped their hands and then they went on. Well, that’s what it was like, that was our time, I mean I wasn’t especially upset, when the children were still babies of course I didn’t go to the May demonstration, that’s obvious, but later many joined in with their prams. The children enjoyed it, too, they were holding little flags and they thought it was great. It depends on what one is used to as an individual. As long as one didn’t have any difficulties, one just went along in the same way that many people are doing today.


It wasn’t as noticeable, but of course when it was an obligation and the weather was bad, oh shit, you didn’t really feel like going but if you don’t go they will look at you [in a reprimanding way] again, and as I was head of the laboratory I had to set a good example and I wasn’t able to stay away as head of the laboratory, it would have been noticed and later the colleague would have said, yes, she should have been there and so on, that’s the common opinion and one is somehow. In both extracts CE gives a lively account of the May demonstrations, narrating her pleasure in going there with her children, when they were babies and were waving little flags from the pram, and later when they were dancing in front of the tribune, the dancing, the meeting up over sausages and beer and so on. This event she constructs as part of the community’s life. Against that stand the more unpleasant unvoluntary aspects of these events – that one had to be there, that one might be ordered to carry a poster, that there would be trouble if she didn’t go, since her position as leader of the chemical laboratory meant that she had to go. What is, however, typical for the structure of the discourses of the middle generation of our eastern informants is the continuous evaluative assessment of this event where CE feels the need to justify her enjoyment. Hence these insertions appear whenever she described something as particularly pleasant (see sections marked in italics). In extract A turn 1, for example the reference to her children dancing in front of the tribune, is immediatedly qualified by her justification that she grew up with this, and that she didn’t really have any problems with it. Similarly in extract B turn 1, the fun with the music that she talks about is qualified by ‘I didn’t regret this time’. Further down, the general good athmosphere – the dancing and clapping is qualified by ‘Well, that’s how it was, that was our time .. and again .. well, that’s how it was, everyone was used to it.’ It is difficult to render in translation the tone of the recurring phrase ‘das war/ist eben so’ where the particle ‘eben’ underlines the inevitablility of things having been just like that. Also in the conversation with her friends in the ‘now-time’ she quotes them as saying ‘perhaps it wasn’t really that bad’. Again it is the processes of fore-shadowing and back-shadowing which interfere with a straightforward account of what is partly constructed as fun times: May demonstrations cannot simply be told innocently, but have to be

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measured against the ways in which these were political events in a later discredited state. Hence any innocent pleasure and fun needs to be defended against an opponent who would attack her pleasures from the point of view of the present day. The processes whereby informants make meaning by immersion in their memory narratives have thus to be understood in combination, and usually in conflict with their ‘now’ perspective, which disrupt the flow of the story. Prototypical stories As discussed before, our method of research attempted to suppress the leading role of the interviewer in favour of a more independent flow of communication which would give our interlocutors the opportunity to seize on more or less self-selected stories, sometimes triggered – but not determined – by the photographic material which we had presented (see Chapter 5). Just like the brief narrative excursion above, longer narratives also occur spontaneously within the general flow of the conversation, and – once seized upon by the speaker – follow the pattern of storytelling rather than dialogue, selfdetermined or co-determied by the speaker(s) as to the beginning, middle and end. Finally, we also found fully established long stories within our interviews. These were particularly frequent around those topics which emerged as the key narratives in our informants’ lives, and were often returned to by our informants even when the conversation had passed on to other topics. They occurred most frequently amongst the oldest generation and least of all amongst the youngest, though there were exceptions. These key narratives in particular draw on personal experience within a shared cultural context, and their topics re-occur within the same generation along the entire East–West borderline (for a detailed account of these, see Meinhof [ed], 2002). Again they arise spontaneously from within the flow of the discourse. Once the speaker has established the opening of one of their key stories, narratives evolve which comprise many of the conventional features and patterning of fiction: characters within a network of social relations, with the narrator usually cast in the role of the I – protagonist, action sequences set within a continuous – almost always chronological – spatio-temporal frame, a plot leading to a climax or an anti-climax. They are often rounded off by an evaluative comment or a simple exclamation which marks the end of the story itself. Narrators thus


create and ‘people’ their life worlds with the material of their memories constructed from the vantage point of the present day, and in full awareness of the context – where, when, and to whom the story is told. This dialogic and context-bound nature of the storytelling is particularly evident if we compare the formal differences between the stories told by the older generation which usually unfold in largely cohesive patterns, and those more argumentative and disjointed structures by the middle generation. As pointed out before, these formal features of the narrative can be related to the socio-political and interactional contexts in which the storytellers find themselves at the moment of the telling, with the middle generation caught in the conflicts caused by internalized arguments, related to processes of fore-shadowing and back-shadowing. In other words lived and unresolved tension emerges in both, in breaks in the story-line and in the format of the telling. The oldest generation’s narratives by contrast retain the tension of their dramatized lives as part of the dramatic twist of their story which then gets resolved when the story reaches its climax. Coda and evaluative framing of these stories point to problems long resolved or, if not resolved, then come to terms with as inevitable aspects of their existence. One can also guess that they have been told a few, if not many, times before. The long narrative below is a prototypical instance for such storytelling, in form (that is, an uninterrupted long narrative triggered but not retained by a photograph of her home town Guben during the pre-war period) and in content (a story of the informant’s dramatic experience of making her way home in the post-war chaos). The marking in the paragraph does not correspond to breaks in the fluency in her telling, but are simply thematic devices introduced by us for easier reference. Extract 6 GA, female, oldest generation, Guben 1. Our house is still standing today, yes … We had our little house up here on this side in the F. street. And while we were stuck in Berlin we were really wondering. Will our house still be standing? Because being up there on the hill on the Fleminghill, we were like a sitting duck … because the Russians at that time were shooting from their side with our military and that went right above our house …

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2. From Berlin where we were waiting around for our aunt to see when she’d return we really wanted to get on our way, to see whether our little house in Guben was still standing. Oh dear, there was no train at all, they had already blown up all the bridges, here in Frankfurt/Oder there was no train that could pass a bridge, when you came from Berlin. 3. And finally we had to leave behind our grandmother because she couldn’t walk any more, because she was quite crooked. She had to stay here until there was to be once more a decent train connection, proper passenger trains and not just those old goods wagons. Our grandmother wouldn’t have managed to get up into one of those. You can see, how we .. the step ladder one needed to climb up, well that was impossible, and so my mother and my grandfather who always pulled the cart, where grandma used to be sitting inside, they were the first to get on their way ⬍on their own⬎. 4. They ⬍i.e. mother and grandfather⬎ wanted to explore whether we still had a home in Guben, whether anything at all was still undamaged. They went off with their cart, one day they just went on their way, and they pulled each other in turn, so that one could always take a rest. Until they finally … but we never got any news, there was no telephone, no thought of that, we could never find out whether or not they arrived. So we went on waiting for weeks, whether one could find out anything at all. But they didn’t return either so we assumed, we simply assumed that they got there alright. 5. Now we were with my sister, we were 15 and 17 years old, as I said, and our grandmother who stayed behind at our aunt’s, and so one day, we, and our sister, it simply lasted too long for us before we would find out whether our mother and our grandfather did get there alright. 6. So we went on our way, and tried to get onto one of those goods trains, many people who were far way from their home they got onto of those goods trains, just like when we were escaping, we simply sat inside and waited until a driver would arrive and the train got going, as I said, there were no schedules, everything was chaotic. So we crawled onto one of these trains, there were lots of used bazookas, all that stuff from the war was still lying about there, and we climbed up and sat down on one of the open wagons.


There were plenty of others, and on the other tracks there were other trains, and people just waited and we were always asking whether any one of the German railwaymen could tell us whether the train would go direction of Frankfurt/Oder so that one would manage to get to Guben, and they never gave a proper answer, because nobody knew it either. We had to wait and see, once the train really did get going, and once it did, well fine, and once a train next to ours started to roll, so we climbed down from ours and onto that one, and we thought, oh gosh it’ll be still standing here tomorrow. Nothing moved. And when it finally did go we didn’t get further until just before Frankfurt, because all the bridges were destroyed. So everyone had to get down again before Frankfurt. My gosh, neither of us knew how to go on, there was no chance of a train we gave that one up right away. First we shuffled along in the direction of Frankfurt to Eisenhüttenstadt, which was still called Fürstenberg at the time, there was not yet an Eisenhüttenstadt, Fürstenberg, it was that direction. And all of a sudden there was this military car, a Russian military car, yes, and they were driving in our direction. And I don’t even know how we communicated with them. But it did stop, and somehow with our hands and feet we managed to ask them if they were going into our direction, and they nodded and told us to get in the back, it was a truck, a big open truck. They sat inside, two guys, one was driving and the other sat next to him, and we crawled up onto the back of the lorry with our sister. Then they started to drive, like madmen, we were thrown from one corner to the other, we really did think that they were out to kill us. That they had taken us up on the back because they wanted us to be thrown off. They couldn’t. We had to lie down and grip the edge of the truck. The way they took the curves, I still have a very clear memory of that how we had to hold on tight so as not to get thrown off, nor did they ever stop, and in this way with this truck we actually did get to Guben. I don’t know if you know the – well when you come from Breesen we did pass through Breesen, and we got into the – ah what is it called these days, at the time it was called Thälmannstraße, they were forever renamed these streets. Anyway we came along this street and then they went elsewhere, and threw us off the truck, and there we were almost at home. We then walked across the meadows from the road and up the Breichenbacher Berg, and along the Berglehne,

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and another bit along the Schrimachsberg it was called, and then and there we would already see whether our houses were still there, so we both shuffled along, could hardly wait to see whether our terraced houses were still in one piece or whether they had all been blown to dust. 7. And really we did arrive and our little house was still standing, only the front gable had some holes from the shooting, but nothing … well inside everything was just fine [heile]. Our neighbouring houses, on our right and on our left, they had been hit more severely, those were houses with stables attached, and some of those had parts of their walls missing. They needed to do quite a bit of rebuilding later on to get it back in order. And yet ours was left in the best order of them all. 8. And yes, we did actually find our mother and grandfather there. So finally we all got back home from our escape. Only grandmother was still left at our aunt’s, and that took quite a time before the trains were running again. We could only fetch her back when things were back in some sort of order, and then we did fetch her back as well. Finally we all had returned home from our escape. This is the second part of much longer continuous narrative, with no interruption by the interviewer. The whole story is chronologically told, with the narrator adopting a continuous ‘then as now’ perspective. At no point does she foretell the outcome, leaving the listener in tension of whether she did or did not see her mother and grandfather again, whether their house did or did not survive the last fighting of the war, whether her grandmother did or did not make it back to them. The drama and tension of the journey only resolve at the end, when all ends well. Hers is a dramatic story of endurance leading to a happy end against the odds. It is told with close attention to detail – as in a cinéma vérité, we seem to follow her every step. Remarkably matter-of-fact rather than emotional in tone, it fully captures the chaos and confusion of those years of her life. The story ends with the whole family settled back in their home. This moment of closure concludes a much longer narrative than could be reproduced here which began with the family fleeing their home out of fear from the encroaching Russians, leading them to Berlin and finally, in the sequence reproduced, seeing them reunited. Although there is no verbal interaction between listener/interviewer and storyteller, the listener’s role is nevertheless acknowledged in


that descriptive details which the latter may not know are quickly explained, such as the forever changing names of streets and towns. But by sharp contrast to the stories of the middle generation neither the interviewer’s presence nor any characters in the narrative itself, implicit or explicit, cause any disturbance for the unfolding story. Not even the Russian soldier lorry-drivers who appear in her story elicit much meta-commentary. GA does not evaluate their implicit act of kindness (picking up the young women and giving them a lift) nor their implicit unkindness (driving so crazily that the young women fear to be thrown off), constructing them into enemies or helpers – they are simply actors that move the story on. This is one of several ways in which longer narratives can include a host of characters which are not necessarily used as in-grouping or out-grouping devices for or against a more generalized group of people. But even where narrators have a clear perception of an ‘other’ or an ‘enemy’ to be feared which is referenced in some part of the interview, their long experiential narratives often undercut any simplistic assignment of individuals to these enemy groups. The discursive mise en scène of complex interactions with particular persons – the Russian soliders who shared their bread with starving refugees hiding away from them in a barn (Armbruster and Meinhof, 2005); the kind Polish soldier who told another to let the woman with her child keep her semolina (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002) – may not unsettle the overall attitude to ‘the Russian’ or ‘the Pole’ as a dangerous enemy. However, just like in the story above, the recounting of these encounters undermines at least partially a fixed negative stereotype based on lack of experience with the ‘other’. In fact, we have shown with our analysis of many other examples from the oldest generation’s stories not reproduced here, that narratives of lived experience do indeed counteract the simplistic discourses of prejudice typical for many discourses of the youngest generation (see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002; Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002; Meinhof, 2004). We will return later in this volume to the significance which flexible or fixated in-grouping and out-grouping strategies have for understanding the ways in which people construct multiple rather than singular identities.

Conclusions In this chapter we have argued that narrativization of lived experience is one of the most fundamental processes of making sense of our lives,

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and of creating symbolic and metaphorical spaces for acting out our present-day version of the past. By combining a construction of the past with the evaluation and perspective of the present day, storytelling is directly implicated in the ways in which we discursively construct our identities and our sense of belonging. In telling our lives we people our life-world with networks of ‘actors’ and thus reveal the ways in which we position ourselves within and against the spaces and the people whom we see as belonging or not belonging to our own groups. In analysing selections of our informants’ stories we were able to show some of the ways in which looking back to a conflictual past and/or to a past made conflictual because of the viewpoint of today, impacts on both story structuration and content. Some of our informants, and this was particularly evident amongst the middle generation of former East Germans, were struggling to create cohesion in their storied lives. They did not tell chronological stories but instead opted for argumentative structures, as if in the presence of some silent opponent who accuses, blames, criticizes or condescends to them. Others had no such difficulties, in spite of the trauma of their past experiences. We also pointed to the ways in which couples can co-construct cohesion even where the underlying content of their narratives points to paradoxes and contradictions. As we argued in Chapter 2, there are many features in our ways of speaking which do not automatically carry with them obvious ‘identity markers’. Yet micro-selections and the macro-patternings of longer narratives and content choice here can reveal identification processes in action as well as under stress. In storytelling we are dramatizing and ‘peopling’ our past lives discursively from the inescapable point of view of hindsight, and in the cross-fire between public and private events. Storytelling enforces selection and ordering of experience in a ‘tellable’ form which is interpretative and evaluative at the same time. Our informants’ stories showed the difficulties as well as the possibilities of resolution in coping with these experiences. Appendix: originals of extracts in German Extract 1 1. PE: Ne, es kommt mir machmal noch vor, wie das ein Wunder geschehen ist 2. I: Also mir geht es auch so. Ich glaub es immer noch nicht. 3. PE: Dass auf einmal die Grenz nimmer is. Also da muß ich ihnen noch awas erzähln, wir waren 88, ne 88 auf 89 oben in Bad Schandau, über Silvester und


4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

da hab ich die Nacht geträumt, es warn ja Unternächt, daß ich drüben runter, Tiefengrün drüben runtergelaufen bin und auf einmal war die Grenze weg, war keine Grenze mehr, also war alles offen. und so ist es gekommen I: Also Sie haben richtig geträumt, was dann auch wirklich passiert ist. PE: Und das ist nach dem Daumen auszurechnen, ist das auf einmal zugetroffen. Ist eben eine Vorahnung, gel. I: Also Sie haben es schon sehr positiv jetzt empfunden. HE: Ja, ich mein, das Hof hab ich überhaupt nicht gekannt. Es kam ein Bus von Schleiz-Gera, ne Buslinie, bis Kriegsende, gel, aber mehr haben wir von Hof nicht gewußt. Die Eltern vielleicht, aber als Kinder.. PE: Und meine Großmutter, väterlicherseits stammt ja von Eisenbühl, das war eine geborene M. I: Und wenn man jetzt den Einzugsbereich anschaut wo Sie sich jetzt am meisten aufhalten, ist das jetzt so mehr Hirschberg Gegend, und da wo Sie jetzt hergekommen sind oder geht das es jetzt mehr so über die ganze Region? PE: und HE: [hesitation noises] PE: Ach so viel komme mehr gar net fort HE: Wir gehen zur Hulda Mittagessen, mal, oder Abendbrot essen und, und, wir fahren nach Tanna, in die Steinteiche, das ist so nah. PE: Und auch mal nach Hof, gel, wir kommen eher mal nach Hof wie nach Schleiz. I: Ja, also schon Hof Hof, weil in Hof ist das mehr zum Einkaufen und so. HE: Ja, ja. I: Und haben Sie das Gefühl jetzt, daß Sie sich da jetzt einfach auch zu Hause fühlen? Kann man das sagen? PE: Ja, das kann man sagen.

Extract 2 1. I: Also es ist so, daß es ist ja jetzt durch die, seit also das alles wieder vereinigt ist, ist ja auch Thüringen irgendwie so als Bundesland, hat ein bißchen mehr Bedeutung gewonnen, oder seh ich das richtig? 2. HE: Ja, Thüringen ist ja auch ein wunderschönes Land. Ich sag einmal, die Städte, die quer durch Thüringen gehen, Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt, Jena, Weimar, Gera, ich sag einmal, die Städte sind doch aufgereiht, wie Perlen an einer Schnur und jede, jede Stadt hat ihr eigenes. Nicht, Eisenach, die Wartburg, die Autowerke, Gotha – das Schloß, Erfurt – die IGA und den Dom und die Salvatorkirche, und Weimar, als Kulturstadt jetzt, und Jena – Zeiss, und Gera – Schloß Osterstein, was das alles war. Also es ist und die Gegend ist doch nun einmalig schön. 3. I: Und haben Sie das jetzt mehr empfunden, jetzt seit der Wende, oder war das schon immer so? 4. HE: Das war schon immer so. 5. I: Das war schon immer so. 6. HE: Das war schon immer so. 7. I: Das ist also nicht .. dadurch, daß es jetzt auch also ja politisch mehr ne Einheit ist, daß Thüringen ein Bundesland ist, das war schon immer so?

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8. HE: Das war schon immer so. Also, mein Vater stammte ja aus dem Schwarzwald, und kam durch Beruf und Arbeit 1920 hier her. Und hat hier geheiratet, und dann sind wir hier geblieben. Und alle seine Verwandten, Bekannten, also Verwandten, Schwestern, Brüder, Cousins, Cousinen, wie eben so’ne Familie ist, waren drüben. Schwarzwald, Düsseldorf. Und die eine Cousine hat immer Verbindung gehalten und ne, mein Vater ist ’39 gestorben. Wo ich dann das erste Mal unten war, hab ich gesagt, also mir wären nie von zu Hause weggegangen, das ist unsere Heimat und da blieben wir, ich mein, wir hatten nichts groß auszustehen gehabt und das große Pakete kamen auch nicht. Also meine Cousine war ne echte Schwab, also ein Schuhkarton kam. [Lachen]. Und die war verheiratet und hat ein Lebensmittelgeschäft gehabt und da hat meine Mutter gesagt, schau, die Matilde ist durch ihren Laden gegangen, da Schokolade, ein bißchen Kaffee. [Lachen] So, aber mehr, das waren eben Geschenke, naja, na gut, die man eben. Aber ansonsten, die hätten keine Angst haben müssen, daß wir eines Tages vor ihrer Türe stehen. Wir wären nie von zu Hause weggegangen.

Extract 3 i. Having good relations with people from Hirschberg 1. I: [Lacht] Also Sie haben gesagt, Sie haben zu Hirschberg Kontakt, weil Sie da diese Leute kennengelernt haben, wie haben wie haben Sie die denn kennengelernt? 2. MG: Na von der, von der, also da, also wo die Grenzöffnung halt war. 3. I: Einfach unten? 4. VG: Eigentlich auf der Brücken. 5. MG: Auf der Brücke. 6. I: Auf der Brücke. 7. MG: Naa [⫽nein] im Kulturhaus. 8. VG: Oder Kulturhaus, an einem Tisch sind wir irgendwie zusammen gekommen. 9. I: Genau in dem Kulturhaus, da saßen wir ja auch. Und da sind Sie ins Gespräch gekommen mit denen? 10. MG: Ja, irgendwie ganz, ich weiß nicht das, wir haben uns gesehen und wir haben uns verstanden, wir verstehen uns heute noch. Und wir sehen uns, die Viola, die Susie, mit Männer, die waren bei dem Dings erst zu seinem Geburtstag dort. Also ich, wir haben keine Probleme.

ii. Differences in attitudes between the generations 11. I: Ja aber den Jungen, stellt sich das anders da, hat sie [⫽ihre Tochter] gerade erzählt. 12. MG: Ja, die Generationen, die anderen vorher, die anderen mitten, die anderen net. 13. I: Hinterher. 14. MG: Ich weiß schon, daß sie also nicht nach Hirschberg, daß nur Hof, und daß sie woanders ??, und zum ??, das, aber Hirschberg, haben wir ja


vorhin gesagt, daß da nicht so viel Kontakt ist. Ja, wenn sie es nicht wollen, dann pff.

iii. Reasserting the good relations with the people of Hirschberg 15. I: Ja, sicher, sicher. Aber ich mein, haben Sie das Gefühl auch, daß das Tiefengrün leidet so ein bißchen, dadurch, daß die Grenze aufgemacht ist? 16. MG: Für uns nicht, also wir können einkaufen, wir können zum Zahnarzt, wir können das, und den ganzen Tag sind wir in der Arbeit, also von dort her.

iv. Disappearing old customs 17. VG: Den Kälberumzug haben wir noch gemacht zu der Zeit. 18. I: Hier in Tiefengrün? 19. VG: Ja, ja. Da sind wir rumgezogen mit nem W agen und Musik hintendrauf und Bier, von Haus zu Haus. 20. I: Und das ist nimmer jetzt? 21. VG: Ne, keiner mehr. 22. I: Warum? 23. MG: Die Jungen gehen in die Disco, die gehen auch nicht mehr ins Dorf in die Kneipen so. Der Zusammenhalt ist.. 24. VG: … sind wenige Ortschaften die das noch so pflegen so praktisch, Kälberumzug. 25. MG: … Joditz, ne, Joditz macht noch. 26. VG: Joditz, in Gartenau ist es noch gang und gebe.

v. Being home-sick in Tiefengrün 27. I: … Hat denn Tiefengrün so ein bißchen eine Identität, als Ort … Sie haben gesagt, Tiefengrün, das hat für Sie schon einen Bezug. 28. MG: Ja, wo man ist, oder wo man, da hat man immer einen Bezug, ich bin jetzt auch schon seit zwanzig Jahren weg von Bayreuth ich hab immer noch einen Bezug, die ersten acht Tag mußte er mich alle Tag heim fahren. [Lachen] 29. I: Wirklich wahr. 30. MG: Die ersten, gel, die ersten Jahre, mußte er mich heim fahren. 31. VG: Heimweh. 32. MG: Eh. 33. VG: Heimweh. 34. MG: Heimweh auch, das war grausam. 35. I: [directed at M] Aber ich meine, Sie sind ja so ein richtiger Tiefengrüner, ne, so richtig. 36. VG: Ich bin einer, ich bin in Tiefengrün geboren …

vi. Remembering the first border crossing as moment of reunion: what it was like then 37. I: Weil, ich hab hier nämlich jetzt, ich hab [shows picture of 30 December 1989] …

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38. MG: ... das Bildchen haben wir auch. Fast ähnlich. 39. I: Da, Moment, das da, das haben Sie gemeint. 40. MG: Das, schau mal, das da unten, das haben wir ähnlich, ich find das Bild nicht. Was, aber die Leut waren alle schon drauf, wo der K. ihr Kind mit ihrem Mädele mit drauf ist. 41. VG: Ja, das haben wir wo wir auf dem Spaziergang sind, wo wir drauf sind. Und das eine direkt bei der Öffnung, wo die ganze Brücke voll war. Das war ein Strom, die da sind herübergewetzt, und wir sind hinüber gewetzt. [Lachen]

vii. Remembering the first border crossing as the start of division – what it feels like from today’s perspective 42. I: Genau, dort, dieses, das da, gel. [shows another picture of same day] Und wenn Sie das jetzt sehen, was fällt Ihnen da gleich ein, also wenn Sie das jetzt anschauen? 43. MG: Ne, in Hof haben sie immer gesagt, wer gibt ne Spende? 44. VG: Ja, die ersten Jahre ist viel gespendet worden. Wir bauen die Mauer wieder auf und ... 45. MG: ... fürs Denkmal [Lachen] 46. I: Oh Gott, oh Gott. 47. MG: Ja, das ist schon wahr, wer spendet nun was, damit wir die Mauer wieder aufrichten können, das war schon am Anfang so. 48. DG [Tochter]: Und wer hilft freiwillig mit. 49. I: Aber ist das jetzt besser geworden oder schlechter geworden, was meinen Sie, haben die Leute sich eher aneinander gewöhnt oder mehr auseinander? 50. MG: Das ... 51. VG: Das kann man schlecht beurteilen, man kommt schon zusammen, aber ... 52. MG: Es bleibt immer, also Ossi–Wessi. 53. Ossi–Wessi bleibt immer irgendwie noch. 54. I: Bleibt immer. 55. MG: Immernoch was. 56. I: Ja, ist schon noch da.

viii. Co-constructing distance and difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ 57. VG: So privat versteht man sich mit den Leuten eben schon, aber die Kluft so von der Arbeit her und da finden sie sich einfach nicht so. In der Gier, weil sie halt nicht das verdienen und ... 58. I: Ja, ja. Weil das ist eben, das täte mich jetzt sehr interessieren, was Sie da meinen, weil ihre Tochter hat mir jetzt so genau also und so plastisch das geschildert, auch, also daß sie meint also das Ossi, da man das auch gleich erkennt und so, meinen Sie, daß das noch so ist? 59. VG: Teilweise ja. 60. I: Ja, und woran merken Sie es?


61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

MG: Sehen wir gleich. [Lachen] I: Sehen wir gleich – aber woran denn? MG: An der Kleidung [Lacht] VG: An der Kleidung, an der Kleidung sieht man es oft. I: Ja, und wie, was ist das dann um die Kleidung? VG: Die Frauen die kleiden sich anders, irgendwie, ich weiß es nicht, die haben den, nen anderen… MG: Und die Männer haben immer noch ihre, zum großen Teil, sagen wir mal, die … VG: Naja, beim Mann die haben halt immer so die altmodischen Klamotten an, ich weiß es nicht… MG: … und dann die Stoff, also die, also die Stofftüchler. VG: Oder wenn ältere Leut die haben noch ihre typischen Ostpelzchen auf, Pelzmützen. Die DDR Mützchen I: Und daran sieht man das auch wirklich jetzt noch. Also wenn Sie MG: Ja, ja. VG: Wer so Rentenalter sind, die haben immer noch ihre Pelzmützen da von früher.

Extract 4 1. ME: Wir hatten das Glück gehabt … das war dann 1990 … Von meinem anderen Grossvater Verwandte, der Grossvater, der stammte aus Baden, waren die Verwandten da bei uns, und die haben nachgesehen was los war. Und wir wollten das Geschäft weiterführen. Die haben selber ein Geschäft gehabt. Und die haben uns wirklich Ratschläge gegeben. Das waren für mich keine, die nur kommen und gucken und bloss meckern. Die haben gesagt, ja damit macht ihr das und das … und ihr müsst immer auf dem Laufenden sein und müsst immer was Neues bringen und ihr müsst die Leute ansprechen. Ich muss sagen, das alles das hat uns sehr geholfen 2. I: … Und das merkt man dann auch, wenn jemand also wirklich helfen möchte, anstatt nur so herablassend zu sein 3. PE: Na und man stellt eben fest, wir wissen zwar viel vom Westen, weil wir immer nach Westen geschaut haben, oder weil wir immer Gespräche gesucht haben, aber die Westdeutschen, die wissen nicht viel von uns und von dem Leben. Und wenn jemand zu mir sagt, irgendetwas abfälliges sagt über unser früheres Leben, dann sag ich, warum soll das schlecht gewesen sein. Sie haben nicht da gelebt, aber ich hab gelebt, ich weiss, dass es nicht schlecht war, dass es vieles Gutes gab, ich mein auch vieles Schlechtes, aber man sollte nicht über etwas urteilen, was man nicht selber … [was man nicht selber kennt]

Extract 5 (a) 1. CE: Ja, das ist Mai, ja das stimmt, Maidemonstration. Das ist, da sind wir auch immer mitmarschiert, da sind meine Kinder sogar noch mit marschiert,

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2. 3. 4. 5.


in der Kindertanzgruppe, und durften tanzen vor der Tribüne. Naja, ich muß mal sagen, ich bin damit groß geworden, ich hab damit auch keine Probleme gehabt so großartig. Es war eben so. Man ist eben zum ersten Mai auf die Straße gegangen und mit vielen mit denen ich mich jetzt unterhalte, die sagen war vielleicht nicht schlecht, da war wenigstens was los, da haben wir uns getroffen, da haben wir, da gabs dann Bockwurststände und so ganz einfach Bierstände und nicht, da wurde eben so der Vormittag wurde damit verbracht, Mittag und dann sind alle wieder weggetrudelt, nicht, und wenn das Wetter schlechter war, ist man nicht so lange geblieben, manchmal hat man Glück gehabt, da war schönes Wetter zum ersten Mai. Aber das war eben alles so sehr verordnet. Nicht, es war eben kaum freiwillig, auch wer wollte schon so ein Tranzparent tragen. I: [Lacht] Wie wurde das da zugeordnet… CE: …die wurden verdonnert... I: ... die wurden verdonnert… [Lachen] CE: Da wurde ans Bewußtsein appeliert, und die haben doch, seid erst Aktivist geworden und dann könnt ihr das doch auch tragen, und das hat keiner gerne gemacht, das, alle die sowas tragen müßten normalerweise alle ganz grimmig gucken. [Lachen]

Extract 5 (b) 1. CE: ...das war so schön, weil das damals noch aufkam mit der ganzen, mit den Beatles, das hat uns so begeistert, und dann natürlich auch selber die Sachen so ein bißchen, man kann die Sachen ja so singen, man kann sie aber auch härter singen, nicht, und dann haben wir sie natürlich so Rhytmus betont dann gesungen. Hatten dann auch gekriegt gehabt Unterstützung vom, damals vom Chemiefaserwerk, und dann auch Musikinstrumente davon, haben wir geschenkt gekriegt, ein Schlagzeug geschenkt gekriegt, na das war natürlich was, da waren wir so stolz, ja das war schön. War für mich eine wunderschöne Zeit und ich hab das nicht bereut die Zeit. Ja, das hängt dann auch mit zu der Maidemonstration zusammen, solche Erinnerungen, nicht, Chor, und dann Singerbewegung, meine Kinder, die, meine beiden Mädchen viel mehr, die waren in den Kindertanzgruppen noch zu DDR Zeiten vom Chemiefaserwerk von dem großen Kulturensemble, und die sind auch noch mitgelaufen, die haben dann da getanzt, wurde dann getanzt, hier wurde mal angehalten, dann wurde mal getanzt, die haben sich alle gefreut und geklatscht, und dann ging es wieder weiter. Naja, das war eben so, das war unsere Zeit, ich meine ich hab mich nicht sonderlich dolle geärgert, als die Kinder noch Babies waren, bin ich natürlich nicht zur Maidemonstration gegangen, ist ja klar, aber später mit Kinderwagen, da sind sehr viele mit Kinderwagen mitgelaufen. Den Kindern hat es auch Spaß gemacht, die haben Fähnchen gehalten, die fanden das auch toll. Es ist eben so, wie jeder auch dran gewöhnt ist, nicht, das. Solange wie man selber irgendwie keine Schwierigkeiten gehabt hat, wie man da so mitgelaufen ist, wie es heute auch wieder viele machen. Hat man das nicht so gespürt, aber das war natürlich, wenn es dann verordnet war und schlechtes Wetter, oh Scheiße, hast


eigentlich gar keine Lust, aber wenn Du dann nicht gehst, dann gucken sie wieder und dann sagen sie, weil ich ja Laborleiter war, nicht, ich muß ja erst recht Vorbild sein, ich konnte ja nun nicht als Laborleiter wegbleiben, das fiel ja auf, dann sagen nachher die Kollegen, ja die, die hätt ja kommen können, und so, so ist diese allgemeine Meinung wird dann, da ist man irgendwo … [breaks off]

Extract 6 Also da hat meine Tante eben und der Onkel, der von russischer Gefangenschaft noch mühselig sich zurückgeschleppte, die wohnten da drüben. Wir selber hatten in der Flemmingstrasse hier oben auf dieser Seite unser Häuschen. Und da waren wir denn, als wir noch in Berlin waren, so gespannt, wird denn unser Haus noch stehen? Weil wir auf dem Berge, auf dem Flemmingberg, grad oben is ja eher Zielscheibe, als wenn ’se tiefer unten nich … weil die Russen damals eben immer von drüben über unser Haus, schossen die sich mit unserm Militär. Also, da haben sie angenommen, wir sind … war ein Krach, wir sind bald aus’m Bett gefallen. Und der ganze Himmel ein einziger Feuerschweif, da hat man erstmal gesehen mit diesen Geschossen, wie der Himmel vollkommen, wie’n Feue rball aussieht, ganz hell und dieser Krach und da haben wir gedacht, nein bei diesem schrecklichen Beschuss, da müssen wir wirklich hier raus. Sonst werden wir ja auch miterledigt durch durch diesen Brückenkopf eben, der hier gebildet wurde. Und äh, wie gesagt da sind wir … wir habens denn, sehen ja, ich lebe heute noch, wir haben alles glücklicherweise gut überstanden. Von Berlin, als wir damals bei der Tante eben uns solange aufhielten bis sie zurückkam, da wollten wir uns denn so langsam wieder auf die Socken machen, um zu sehen, ob hier unser Häuschen in Guben noch steht. Ja, meine Güte, es ging ja auch gar kein Zug, die haben ja die Brücken alle vorher gesprengt, hier Frankfurt/Oder kam ja kein Zug über die Brücke, wenn sie von Berlin kamen. Und äh, die Grossmutter mussten wir damals als letzte noch zurücklassen, weil die ja nicht laufen konnte, weil ’se ganz krumm schon war. Die musste noch dableiben, bis erstmal wieder richtiggehend da normaler Zugverkehr eingerichtet wurde, Personenzüge und nicht diese ollen Güterzüge.Da kam ja ’ne Grossmutter gar nicht ruff. Sie sehen ja, wie wir da … die steile Leiter, da hochzuklettern, also, das war unmöglich und da is meine Mutter und mein Grossvater, die immer den Wagen zogen, wo Grossmutter drinsass, die haben sich zuerst damals auf’n Weg gemacht. Die wollten erstmal auskundschaften, ob wir überhaupt ’ne Bleibe in Guben noch haben, ob noch was ganzgeblieben ist. Da sind die mit dem Wagen, haben ’se eines Tages äh aufgemacht und haben sich abwechselnd gezogen, dass einer immer ausgeruht war, nich. Einer setzte sich rein in den Wagen, der andere zog. Und bis sie denn … aber sie haben ja nie Nachricht gekriegt, es ging doch kein … von Telefon war gar nicht damals dran zu denken, sie haben nirgendwo was erfahren können, sind die nun gut angekommen oder nicht. Da haben wir wieder Wochen gewartet, ob man mal irgendwas in Erfahrung bringt. Aber zurück kamen sie eben auch nicht und wir nahmen an, einfach an, sie habens geschafft. Nun waren wir beide mit der

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Schwester noch, wir waren 15 und 17, wie gesagt, und die Grossmutter, die bei der Tante denn blieb und da haben wir denn eines Tages uns, wir mit der Schwester, es dauerte uns zu lange, eh wir erfuhren, ob Mutter hier gut angekommen is mit’n Grossvater. Da haben wir uns aufgemacht und versuchten irgendwie wieder mit so’m Güterzug, viele haben sich denn, die weit von der Heimat weg waren, haben sich auf so Güterzüge, wie damals auf der Flucht, einfach da reingesetzt und äh warteten bis eben mal ’n Lockführer da war und der Zug losging, wie gesagt, alles planlos, ging alles durcheinander. Wir krochen auch auf so’n Zug rauf, da lagen noch lauter so’ne abgenutztn Panzerfäuste, alles so’n so’n Zeug vom Kriege lag da drauf und da sind wir raufgeklettert und haben uns wieder auf so’n offenen Wagen gesetzt. Viele andere auch, denn standen noch viele auf Nebengleisen auch andere Züge und warteten immer und hatten uns immer erkundigt, ob jemand von deutschen Eisenbahnern sagen konnte, ob der Zug nun mal endlich in Richtung Frankfurt/ Oder, dass man nach Guben eben kam und sie haben auch nie ’ne richtige Antwort gegeben, das wusste auch keiner richtig. Wir waren drauf angewiesen, ob tatsächlich der Zug sich mal in Bewegung setzte und sehen ’se und äh, da fuhr denn, da hat mal einer neben uns sich aufgemacht loszufahren, denn sind wir runtergeklettert auf den anderen, da dachten wir ach der steht morgen nach da, wir werden auf den … Es ging ewig nicht weiter. Und als denn endlich mal, sind wir auch nich weiter gekommen als bis vor Frankfurt, weil alle Brücken kaputt waren. Vor Frankfurt irgendwie, da mussten wir alle wieder runter. Meine Güte, wussten wir wieder beide nich, wie denn nun weiter … ’n Zug ging gar nich mehr, die hatten wir gleich aufgegeben. Wir tippelten immer erst in Richtung, wo’s hier von Frankfurt nach Eisenhüttenstadt, damals noch Fürstenberg, Eisenhüttenstadt stand ja noch gar nicht, Fürstenberg war das, in diese Richtung … Und dann kam mit einem Mal so’n Militärauto an, ’n russisches Militärauto ja und die fuhren in diese Richtung. Und ich weiss gar nicht, wie wir uns verständigt haben. Jedenfalls hielt es auch an und wir fragten irgendwie mit Händen und Füßen, ob sie in diese Richtung fahren und nickten auch und wir sollten oben raufsteigen, war ja so’n Lastwagen, offen, grosser offener Lastwagen. Die sassen vorne drin, zwei Mann, einer am Steuer und der andere daneben, wir krochen beide mit der Schwester oben rauf. Dann fuhren die los wie die Irren, wir flogen da hinten von einer Ecke zur anderen, da haben wir dann unterwegs gedacht, die wollen uns umbringen. Die, ja die haben uns extra da oben rauf … dass wir im hohen Bogen rausfliegen. Sie konnten sich ja gar nicht, wir mussten uns fast wie langlegen und an der Kante festhalten. Die nahmen die Kurven, also, das hab ich auch noch ganz deutlich in Erinnerung, haben uns derart festhalten müssen, um da hinten nicht rauszufliegen, angehalten haben ’se auch nicht und dann sind wir auf diese Art, mit diesem Fahrzeug, sind wir bis tatsächlich Guben... ich weiss nicht, ob sie hier die, wenn man von Breesen kommt eben, durch Breesen war’n wir schon und kamen in die äh, ja wie heisst ’se jetzt nun wieder, damals hiess ’se lange Zeit Thälmannstrasse, wurden ja dauernd umbenannt, jedenfalls kamen wir diese Strasse lang und dann fuhren die anderswo, dann haben ’se uns dann runtergeschmissen, denn waren wir ja


schon fast zu Hause. Denn sind wir da hinten durch die durch die Wiesen von dieser Strasse aus und sind denn hinten ja diesen Breichenbacher Berg hoch und wenn wir da und die Berglehne unten lang und denn wieder ’n Stückchen, hier Schirmachsberg hiess dit, denn, denn konnten wir schon sehen, ob unsere Häuser noch standen, sind wir denn beide langgetippelt, konnten nicht erwarten, ob unsere Siedlungshäuser noch stehen oder ob alles auch in Schutt und Asche ist. Und wirklich kamen wir denn an und unser Häuschen stand noch, hatte nur an der Giebelseite, vorne nur immer so kleine Einschlaglöcher von dem Beschuss, aber gar nicht … Also, innen ist alles heile geblieben. Unsere Nachbarhäuser, rechts und links, da war doch, will mal sagen, ’n kleiner Volltreffer reingegangen, da war so, es sind so runtergezogene Häuser, da war’n Stallungen dran, da war die ganze eine Seite so richtig weggerissen. Also die mussten schon ganz schön später wieder da alles in Schuss bringen, anbapn. Und da blieb unsers tatsächlich am besten noch verschont. Ja, und da haben wir Mutttern tatsächlich und Grossvatern angetroffen. So sind wir zumindestens wieder von der Flucht damals zu Hause gewesen. Nun war bloss noch die Grossmutter bei der Tante und das war noch lange Zeit vergangen, eh die Eisenbahn wieder richtig in Betrieb kam. Die konnten wir denn später erst, als sich alles ’n bisschen einregulierte, haben wir se denn auch zurückgeholt. So sind wir wieder von der Flucht alle nach Hause gekommen.

5 Photography and the Discourses of Memory and Identification

In the previous chapter we showed the significance of narrativization in the construction of people’s sense of identity and belonging. We showed that in the narrativization of their everyday life experiences people attempted to create cohesion in their lives in the telling. But we also showed that the longer stories revealed ambiguities, contradictions and unresolved tensions in peoples’ lives. We briefly mentioned in previous chapters that our informants’ talk and storytelling were stimulated by a novel ethnographic method in data collection, namely that of using photography rather than structured or semistructured questions as triggers. In this chapter we will discuss in detail the role which photography plays in triggering memory narratives. We shall argue that people looking at photographs do not access a ‘genuine true past’ in the sense of a time-traveller in science fiction, but rather that they are narrativizing past experiences from the vantage point of the present day. All (re-) construction of past experiences invariably involves such double and multiple positioning of the self in the context of the past and the present. Memory narratives in particular thus become central agents for identity construction yielding invaluable data for studying such processes. We shall show that the trigger effect which pictures have for narratives makes them invaluable for the collection of ethnographic data, especially for discourse analysts who want to create minimum interference with their informants’ lexico-grammatical choices. 112

Photography, Memory and Identification 113

Photographs and their role in constructing memories and memory narratives Edgar Reitz, one of Germany’s most celebrated film-makers and himself a theoretician of cinema, described his own use of photography in the making of the 15-hour-long feature film Heimat as follows: We wanted to achieve what is happening when we’re looking through a family photograph album: that the essential things we talk about are not on the pictures at all … the essential things we know are in the imagination, not in the photograph. (Reitz quoted in FWU, 1985:20; see also Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000:334/5) What Reitz touches on is a fundamental observation about the interconnection between personal photography and memory. Whilst pictures seemingly represent people and places as fixed moments in time, their significance lies not in the indexing of a historical reality as a frozen moment of the past. Contrary to Barthes (1993) and Sontag (1972), old photographs do not block or falsify memories but unleash them. It is their trigger function for our imagination through which we recreate the past from the continuously moving perspectives of the present day (see also Keenan, 1988). Looking at photographs thus acts as both an individual act of constructing a personal past from the point of view of a personal present, but simultaneously as a social act of embedding the personal in specific social and cultural contexts. Where photographs index a specific recognizable and shareable time and space, they also relate to events and happenings whose significance from the view point of the present may need to be negotiated and re-negotiated. In Chapter 4 we already discussed how processes of ‘back-shadowing’ and ‘fore-shadowing’ (Bernstein, 1994:16; Morson, 1994:7) affected the storytelling of our informants. Old photographs create a similar tension in that they foreground the discrepancy between the ‘then’ and ‘now’. They are thus excellent triggers for narratives, conversations and discussions. Looking at photographs with other people can become an act of co-construction as well as negotiation between present and past. The pictures we are talking about are of course very different from the type of bland digital images stored, for example, in image banks, which deliberately

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undercut connections to that which is culturally or personally specific. In these latter images it is their decontextualization which makes them generic rather than particular, in their aim to create a multipurpose ‘global visual language’. Those images tend to be the basis for further digital manipulation rather than stand-alone representations. (Machin, 2003; van Leeuwen and Machin, forthcoming). By contrast the photographs that we are discussing here are both recognizable and shareable between members of a particular social group, and the act of reading them becomes a social and not just a purely individual act (Burgin, 1982; Eco, 1982).

Photographs as triggers for talk In selecting photographs which would have the potential to act as triggers for each of the three generations in our families, and would help us in structuring our conversations across the three periods of socio-political change that we were interested in, we used a number of criteria: 1 Photographs had to index places in the respective towns and villages which would be likely to be instantly recognizable by everyone. 2 Photographs had to index each of the three periods in question to such an extent that all generations, even the youngest, would be likely to place them in a distinct time-span, even where this related to the times before they were born or were small children. 3 Photographs had to have a certain symbolic and/or an emotional significance in indexing key aspects of the socio-political context within each of the phases. These criteria were important since we were interested in the ways in which people would position themselves within the temporal–spatial spans suggested by the photograph, but without wanting to prescribe the kind of memory that this would unleash. Hence we wanted people to recognize the time and space, but allow them to self-select what kind of story they wanted to attach to this. In the same way, even though pictures were clearly ideologically loaded in that they foreground the dramatic changes which communities and the lives of their inhabitants underwent across these three generations, this was not meant to control the thematic selection and content of our


informants’ reactions. As we will show with some extracts below, the photographs did not stop our informants from freely moving across the times and places which interconnected within their memory narratives, even though these places or moments were often not physically depicted in the photograph. The consequences of this method of eliciting talk and the freedom it gave to the interviewer cannot be overestimated. It allowed an overall comparable structuring for all the interviews without the interviewer having to take recourse to a series of guiding questions. Instead of relying on a more traditional structured interview format, our questions could arise as they would in a more spontaneous conversation – determined by the context set by the photographs on the one hand and the informants’ choice on the other. Interviewers did not need to put into words questions about identity and identification, they could avoid introducing ideologically sensitive labels – even loaded pronunciations – for political, geographic, cultural and social entities (such as people, buildings, places, nations, rivers); they could simply follow the lead taken by their informants. In the political context of our periods, which comprised the time of German division and unification and the subsequent demise of the GDR, as well as the period during which the Polish border moved further west – leading to the renaming of former German towns and regions by Polish names – the choices of names by our informants were significant identity markers, both as self-identification and an in-grouping device, and as a means of out-grouping others. Whether people in East or West adopted labels such as GDR or the former GDR, that is, using the former official political name which was long disputed by West Germany (until way into the late 1960s and even 1970s WestGerman media and politicians referred to the GDR as the ‘so-called GDR’, placing the name in inverted commas when written) – whether they referred to it as the Ostzone (eastern Zone) – referencing the postwar occupation by the Soviet Army, but denying the GDR the status of a nation-state, whether they said East or eastern Germany, or the ‘new federal states of Germany’, whether they used several of these in different discursive contexts or avoided any labelling – all of this already positions the speaker inside the ideological minefield of post-war German nomenclature.1 It is equally significant to note whether informants pronounced Gubin as [‘gub∂n] with the stress on the first syllable and a short ‘i’ (phonetically the schwa sound [∂}), or

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with the stress on the second syllable and a long [I:] [g∂’bi::n]; whether informants used the contemporary Polish names for Polish towns and regions, or the old German names (for example, Grünberg/Meseritz). Using pictures as triggers circumvented the risk of the interviewers introducing such loaded terms themselves. Instead it was the informants themselves who selected politically sensitive labels and changed them if they so wished according to the different photographic or narrative context. Their choices were significant markers for the ways in which they position themselves in contemporary or in past life worlds, how they construct their sense of singular or multiple belonging, for their identification and dis-identifications as in-groups or out-groups. (We shall return to these details in Chapters 6 and 7.) Seen in the full context of an individual’s narrativization of their life experiences, the particular selections from a wider linguistic repertoire allowed important insights into the more general questions of how people undergoing massive socio-political changes in their public world construct their identities in relation to these upheavals. With these criteria in mind we selected sets of three to four salient images for each community and each historical phase, corresponding to each of the generations we interviewed. The method thus allowed us to retain an ethnographic insider perspective, yet apply the sharp critical outsider perspective of a discourse analyst. We were looking at the same pictures, adopting the same expressions introduced by our informants, we were able to collude in their storytelling without undue solicitation or even manipulation on our part – all of this created empathy even where our attitudes were vastly divergent (in fact, in some cases we found opinions, such as the widespread xenophobia, totally unacceptable). Yet at the same time we could analyse the resulting discourses with all the fine-tuning made available from a critical discourse analytical perspective. We already discussed in Chapter 2 how significant the selection of a linguistic repertoire is for understanding people’s shifting and often ambivalent identities – our method allowed our informants’ selection to be uncontaminated by the interviewers’ own linguistic choices.

The photographs set in context The following were the three key phases which corresponded in each family with the period into which one of each generation had been


born or, in the case of the middle and the youngest generation, in which they spent the major part of their life: ●

●

●

Phase 1: Before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939: The German communities of Tiefengrün, Hirschberg and Guben. Phase 2: 1945–1989: The times of division: West German Tiefengrün, East German Hirschberg, East German Guben and Polish Gubin. Phase 3: 1989/90 to the present: Post-unification Germany: German Tiefengrün, Hirschberg and Guben, open borders with democratic Poland, Polish Gubin and impending accession of Poland to the EU.

The fifteen illustrations below are a selection of some of these photographs. We will discuss the relationship between our informants’ stories and the photographs we showed in two complementary ways. First, there is the explicit reading and describing of the photographs themselves, which raises questions of indexicality and verisimilitude. Secondly, there is the function of the photographs as triggers of narratives. Interestingly, in neither case can the photographs be seen as restraining discursive and narrative responses in our informants. The photographs we looked at together were enabling the telling. In the next section we would like to offer some insight into the first of these relationships – that of actual, often close ‘readings’ of the images we showed.

Reading the photographs In the summer of 1999 the British press was hit by a new series of photographs of Diana, Princess of Wales. The event would not have been exceptional in its own right, had it not been for the fact that some of the pictures presented scenes from Diana’s family life … well, the family with her late companion, Dodi al Fayed. One of the photographs showed Diana and Dodi lovingly looking at their mixedrace child. The images, which came from the series Mental Images, by the photographer Alison Jackson, shown in London at the Blue Gallery, spurred a heated debate as to whether or not they were acceptable as art. They were, after all, so true!

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Illustration 5.1 The old mill in Tiefengrün, seen from the eastern banks of the River Saale in Hirschberg, looking west. Phase 1

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Illustration 5.2 The leather factory in Hirschberg, seen from the western banks of the River Saale, looking east. Phase 1

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Illustration 5.3 The Café Schöneberger on the western banks of the River Neisse, and the ‘theatre island’ in the middle of the river in Guben. Phase 1

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Illustration 5.4 The old market square with the cathedral on the eastern banks of the River Neisse in Guben. Phase 1

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Illustration 5.5 A propaganda poster erected on the stump of the bridge on the West German side of the river, proclaiming that West Germans do not recognize the border to the GDR as a border. Phase 2

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Illustration 5.6 A propaganda poster on the leather factory in GDR Hirschberg denouncing West German politics as warmongering. Phase 2

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Illustration 5.7 A postcard of GDR Guben with typical GDR new housing estates (Plattenbauten) and the inscription ‘Wilhelm-Pieck-Stadt Guben’ (it was named Wilhelm Pieck in 1961 to honour the first president of the GDR; it reverted to its original name in 1990). Phase 2

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Illustration 5.8 The empty market square with the ruins of the Cathedral from Polish Gubin, with no stalls or houses in sight. Phase 2

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Illustration 5.9 The first day of opening the provisional wooden footbridge from Tiefengrün to Hirschberg, during the transitional phase, December 1989. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.10 Aerial view of the demolished leather factory (Hirschberg) with the new stone bridge under construction. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.11 Opening of the fully fledged motor bridge in 1997. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.12 The new German customs building (former Café Schöneberger) in Guben with a view of the island without its theatre in Gubin. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.13 Gubin today: ruins of the Cathedral. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.14 EU notices announcing the shared waste water project built in Gubin with Western financial support. Phase 3

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Illustration 5.15 The booklet of Euro-City Guben/Gubin announcing several existing or planned future projects for bringing both towns closer together. Phase 3


One of the reasons for the outcry concerning the exhibition is the assumed indexicality and iconicity of photography (for example, Messaris, 1997; Mitchell, 1992) – in short, photographs are socially invested with the power to show us things as they are. As Mitchell (1992:195) points out, a photograph can only represent something that exists in the physical world. A photograph always tells us that something which we can now find in the photograph was actually out there. This is precisely why advertisers attempt to pass paintings off as photographs (see Key, 1989): paintings do not carry the connotation of referring to reality. This is also why photographs are used as evidence (Mitchell, 1992:193), as we have recently seen in many deeply disturbing contexts – from the row over truth and falsity of photographs collected in an exhibition about the true or alleged atrocities of the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War (Heer et al., 2003) – to the recent outrage over the humiliation and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US and British army personnel. The debate about deception or truthful evidence via photography has a long and continuing history. The advent of digital technology has added an even more dramatic twist to this. Although the process of releasing the camera’s shutter and taking a picture still has representational effect, any notion that a photograph can only represent something that exists in the physical world becomes more and more problematic. Mitchell (1992:17) reports that digital image manipulation was used by National Geographic when one of their photographs showed pyramids in Giza a bit closer to each other than they in fact are, thus making a more exotic composition. In the same way, a celebrity can appear with her head ‘attached’ to a different body, but making her in such a way a more attractive woman. Life in the post-photographic age (Robins, 1996) means that seeing may no longer be believing. The war between US and Albania, as shown in a film by Barry Levinson, Wag the Dog, not only is a media event in the sense that the Vietnam war used to be, but is an event entirely created by the media. The war in Albania exists only on computer screens and editing suites of television producers and spin-doctors trying to distract voters’ attention. As much as this ‘objectively’ might be the case, we believe that Bourdieu’s (1990) analysis of photography as a social practice still rings true. Photography is used as a means of solemnizing and immortalizing the highlights of an event. Photography is now so much a condition

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sine qua non of such social events as weddings that it is almost impossible to imagine them without it (Tagg, 1982). And thus photography has the potential of prolonging the festivities, of transforming ‘good moments’ into ‘good memories’ (Bourdieu, 1990). Perhaps the goal posts of the indexicality have been changed, still, even digital photography is used, we think, to capture the moments that have really happened; it just lets them be presented in a more ‘embellished’ way. The view that photographs are indexical of time and space – a view that is socially and institutionally supported – is not as straightforward as it seems if we study the responses of our informants to the pictures presented. They also make Tagg’s (1988) view that photographs are historical, rather than ‘evidence’, problematical. The ways in which our informants recognized, refused or mis-recognized some of the pictures, how they accepted, rejected or expanded on the pictorial representations does not automatically relate to any objective form of seeing or remembering, but is fractured through our informants’ subjectivities. The discourses of describing and referencing the photographs are as constructed as are all the other more obviously interpretative forms of narrativizing past experiences. For obvious geo-political reasons it was in particular the series of photographs about the now Polish sides of united pre-war (German) Guben and Görlitz which complicated any obvious sense that what is there to be seen is there to be recognized and believed. Many of our informants consistently rejected the indexical representations of the photographs we showed them, and read them instead from a contemporary perspective. What we shall argue is that the concerns of nationality, and in particular the national ownership of the places shown in the photographs, overruled the social function of photography of indexing time and place for these informants. First, however, we would like to show how our informants described the representations of the photographs using the contemporary frame of reference. The first extract is a response to a photograph from 1905 showing an exhibition around the Upperlausitzian Hall of Memory in Görlitz. Seeing the photograph, the informant says: Extract 1 LK, female, middle generation LK: Isn’t this the park? Wait, this is the park, gee, I don’t know, this is the House of Culture.

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Illustration 5.16 Upperlausitzian Hall of Memory

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I: That’s right LK: But I cannot remember that there is something like that there. I: You know, you can not remember it as it was in 1905. LK: I knew it was the house of culture but I say, which side, damn it. I have just wanted to say it was in Germany. In the informant’s words, the Upperlausitzian Hall of Memory becomes today’s ‘House of Culture’, with the exhibition around just about first disappearing from the narrative, only to become an element out of place. But what is even more fascinating is that the interviewer makes an explicit reference to the time of the photograph, well before the Second World War, well before anyone would have dreamt of the division of Görlitz between two nation-states. Still, the interviewer persists in calling the building the ‘House of Culture’. Moreover, her reference to Germany is clearly one to today’s Germany – she thought the Hall was on the other side of the Neisse river, as it appears, for her the building is definitely in Poland. Today’s perspective cannot, it seems, be given up – the Hall is the house of culture, regardless of the timeline. This is similar to one of the informants in Gubin exclaiming, on seeing a pre-war photograph of Guben: ‘Jesus, old Gubin’. On the one hand, one could argue that such narratives are devoid of historical anchoring. However, what seems more plausible to us is that they are intertextual both with the official propaganda, which is constantly making claims to the Polishness of the regained lands, as well as with the widely circulated narratives of the threat which Germans are posing by potentially claiming their land back (see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002). Gubin in such discourse can never become Guben, even before the war. Witness now another two extracts in reaction to illustration 5.3 which are read through the experiences of living on the border. Extract 2 PH, male, middle generation PH: This is from before the war, so I can only guess what it is I: Sure. PH: I mean I recognize the present part, that this is the theatre on the island, this is the building by the border crossing where you go over the bridge. This is I can see it is restored and now there is the newly


built bridge which wasn’t there, now there is a little bridge onto the island. This is what I can say, what I recognized. Extract 3 JF, male, middle generation JF: A picture of the border bridge, on the left hand side, where the flowers are, there is the customs office, I think … That’s right, exactly, the present house of culture, the former town hall, what I remember, and the cathedral, the marvellous lamp which was preserved … This is the entrance – looking straight past it there is the border crossing somewhere on the straight line, I can’t remember, but I remember the rubble on the square, where today’s market is. It seems that it is the experience of living on the border, in the immediate neighbourhood of another country, with the history of conflict and contestation of the land, that imposes the unavoidable narrative framework upon the photographic representation. Both informants cannot see the pre-war photographs, particularly the border-crossing, in terms of today’s reality. Both refer to it. It is interesting that JF’s reference to the ‘present’ house of culture is not an acknowledgment that it used to be something else before the war. Rather, it used to be a town hall, still in Gubin, still after the war. The only possible acknowledgment of pre-war times is in the reference to the lamppost outside the cathedral. Perhaps the lamppost is not significant enough to be claimed by Poles. Such constructions are typical. The bridge across the river Neisse in particular is almost always referred to as the border bridge. The reality and experience of the border imposes itself upon any possible reading of a ‘historical’ photograph. Witness now the following extract: Extract 4 CN, female, middle generation CN: I don’t remember much, you know. My mom certainly remembers more than I. But the cathedral, a beautiful church, right? It’s a ruin. Wouldn’t it be better to make it usable?

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I: mmm … CN: A wonderful thing, same with the theatre. My mom told me a lot of things … On the Death Mountain, there was a beautiful casino, it was lovely there, where the agricultural school is, there was apparently a beautiful hospital and when my mom came in ’45 the hospital was still there, I don’t know, they pulled it down. The photographic representation of the living space is translated both into what might be, as well as what was. It is almost as if the photograph is not taken to be an ‘acceptable’ rendition of reality. Reality could be better, reality was better. The photograph is nostalgic, it is taken to refer to something missing. Incidentally, the first time we observed such constructions was in Tiefengrün where our informants continually referred to a clock on the factory tower – except that the clock was not in the photograph. The frame of the picture left it outside the image. Still, for our informants, the clock, an important part of the community’s life, was there. What we would like to propose is that such narratives show that photographs are not only indexical of the space and time, they are, importantly, indexical of the way of life of those who read it, of the lived experience associated with the image. One final example of what we are trying to argue here relates to the following extract: Extract 5 MN, female, youngest generation I: Tell me what you think about this photograph. MN: This is the crossing now I: mmm … MN: Except it must have been very long time ago, because I can see a carriage with horses, a tram, there are no trams like that here. And it looks as if there was one town, there was no such thing as a border. I: right. So was there one town, or not? MN: It looked like there was no such thing as borders. There is a straight street and it’s OK. No one will stop me and I can get there by tram. I: Yes? MN: It’s so relaxed, there is no such tension. I: I don’t understand this.


MN: Crossing the border one feels a tension, always, ‘Will they let me through, or will they not?’ In contrast to older informants MN does not construct the reality she sees in the photograph in national terms, the older times for her are likely to be unproblematic. When asked explicitly (unquoted here) MN is unsure about the history of Gubin and who lived there before the Second World War. Once again, the photograph is constructed in terms of what is missing. This time, however, it is not so much what is missing in the image itself, but rather, what is missing in life. In contrast to CN above, the photograph is taken to represent a desired state of affairs – a life without the border. Still, the contemporary border crossing is read into the photograph, even though it is not explicitly there. The socially anchored reading of the photograph invests it, again, with the power to refer to what is not there. The reading extends the reference of the image well beyond the physical picture. It is already known that the reading of photographs is a social affair and that people approach them with a whole baggage of experiences which lets them read and experience them differently. But what we are arguing goes somewhat further. We are arguing that photographic indexicality goes further than that of time and space. Our informants consistently see in the photographs what was not there, describing them in terms which were not comprehensible from a simple reading of the image-content. Indexicality, which is necessarily a social phenomenon, was thus extended beyond the physical reality. In the next section we will look at the workings of the photographs as triggers, where informants moved from discrete images with which they explicitly engaged, to long sequences of memory narratives unconstrained by the images.

Moving across geographical and temporal spaces One of the key points in using photographs as triggers for memory discourses is the way in which they do not freeze the on-looker in the spatial or temporal frame of the picture itself, but instead allow free movement across the individual’s memory lanes. People ‘step’ into the photographs as the children in the story The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe step inside the wardrobe, only to find themselves at the entrance of their own memory landscape. As a result, the discursive

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choices which people make in reaction to the image depicted is not at all constrained by the material representation – though as the ‘wardrobe’ metaphor indicates, it usually begins from there – but by the associated experiential ‘scripts’ made up of their own experiences. The movement from an indexical physical place – what the German language captures by the place adverb ‘Da-sein’ (being physically present) – to an indexical event – captured by the adverb ‘Dabei-sein’ (being experientially present), indicates lexico-grammatically what is happening at the conceptual level. This distinction is not captured by the English equivalent, since ‘da’ or ‘dabei’ can both be translated as either ‘here’ or ‘there’. The double-encodedness of the photograph as a material and an experiential present makes the movement away from the image-space easy, since the contiguity of experience is not – or at least not necessarily – determined by geographical contingencies. In a previous article (Meinhof and Galasinski, 2000:333–6) we analysed in detail several extracts from some of our informants in Tiefengrün which show this movement very clearly. In response to picture triggers illustrations 5.9 and 5.11, they easily transgressed the time/place frame of the image, moving further back in time (‘damals’ – ‘then’ – in the sense of even further back in time) as well as forward (now – the vantage point of today). The photos of the opening of the bridges across the river Saale in 1989 and 1987 respectively, represent and symbolize for our informants not only the re-connection of the two divided communities, but also the imminent and completed collapse of the GDR and what this means for their own lives and that of their communities. In our informants’ discourses, these images thus aroused multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives and evaluation of ‘then’ and ‘now’. Similarly, the couple from Tiefengrün (whose extracts we reproduced in Chapter 4) use the stimulus of the two images as an invitation to comment on the continuing division between the eastern Thuringians (the ‘Ossis’) and western Frankonians (the ‘Wessis’). This is endemic for the ways in which photographic triggers work in general and, we will present several instances below. But first let us consider another extract which typically demonstrates the movement across time and memory spaces which photographs can unleash. This next extract comes from an 86-year-old woman who grew up in what is now Gubin, and who has lived in Guben since the division of her home town. The extract is triggered by illustration 5.3, which


depicts the old ‘Café’ Schöneberger on the western banks of the river Neisse, and the ‘theatre island’ in the middle of the river in Guben at the time before 1945, when the German city Guben straddled both sides of the river. Extract 6 Grandmother Schwalbe, female, 86 years old 1. GS: That was the theatre, the civic theatre. That was Café Schöneberger. A wonderful café mainly frequented by the actors and all, they used to be there a lot. It was a magnificent building, and the long balcony directly above the water, it was wonderful. 2. UM: I can imagine that. 3. GS: Yes, but I mean in those days we … we had our work, I grew up on the other side, we had a lot of land my parents already as a child, and when I was married too, and … we didn’t have much time to go to these restaurants we stayed where we were. This was down in the city centre and what is on the Polish side, the ‘Berglehne’, going up to the right there– 4. UM: Ah, that’s where you were, you lived there, that must have been one of the nicest areas. 5. GS: Wonderful. It was wonderful. It was more rural, I’d say we were the last street of the town, and among the last houses, and then there was already the beginning of the next village, but also belonging to Guben, too … and therefore, it was all hilly, it was wonderful. 6. UM: And the famous blossoming hills, were they there, too? 7. GS: The blossoming trees … 8. UM: The blossoming trees, I was told a lot about them. It must have been very beautiful. 9. GS: We were in the middle of it. Where I was born there was only a narrow street, and back then as a child nothing had been done on the right and on the left-bushes as fencing, yes, and afterwards in later years tarmac was put on the road, but nevertheless I say I’m drawn over there from time to time, but I can’t walk it any more. My granddaughter sometimes takes me across in the car, I can’t walk it anymore. 10. UM: Thus for you it is a good experience when you go over there, because the area is so beautiful.

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11. GS: Yes, yes. It is painful when one goes over there. The parents’ house burnt down during the first shelling, I only see a little heap of stones there, when I go, it is painful, when one grew up there, and my our house, from when I was married, that was a bit away, about a quarter of an hour, it was situated – are you familiar with the Bismarck tower …? 12. UM: Yes, yes, I have had a look at that, I know my way round by now. 13. GS: Our plot of land, the one of the parents-in-law, was adjacent to the Bismarck tower, it stretched up the hill at the back, we had a wonderful house, it hurts to think of it. Nowadays we all have to pay high rent and there we would have all fitted into the house, my children wouldn’t have to pay the high rent, it was wonderful, nobody can replace it. Nobody can replace it … In this extract the photo initially releases happy memories of the beautiful café and the theatre in the middle of the Neisse island (turn 1) although as we learn later, she herself had not really frequented either of these, because her work on the land took priority (turn 3). But the image itself conjures up the beauty of the old city in general and especially the beautiful surrounding of her own family home (turn 5 onwards). This incantation of the beauty represented by the photograph quickly gives way to the perspective of the present (end of turn 9), when it is only thanks to her granddaughter that she can go and visit from time to time. This now becomes a story of loss and pain. Although she seems to agree with the interviewer’s suggestion that going over with her granddaughter is a good experience, the apparent agreement in turn 11 ‘Yes, yes’, is followed by ‘it is painful’. Turns 11 to 13 comprise vivid descriptions of the destruction or near destruction of all her family’s houses during the final years of the war. Turn 13 combines the hurt of having lost a ‘beautiful home’ which nobody can replace, with the injustice of having to pay high rent in the present day. Hence one single photograph here unleashes a story which embraces an entire life cycle from childhood to present day. Following turn 13, Mrs Schwalbe commences a long dramatic narrative about her double eviction from the eastern part of Guben, which ends with her being offered a temporary home in the western part of Guben. Because of its length, this text is not reproduced here. Her main narrative focuses time and time again on the lost home, though


she shows no bitterness towards the Polish people who now live in Gubin. Quite the opposite is the case: her strong sense of loss makes her sympathetic towards the similar loss incurred by the Polish people who were removed from their homes in the eastern part of Poland and made to settle in Gubin. We have elsewhere analysed a telling extract from the same woman in support of our more general argument that amongst the oldest generation of Poles and Germans in Guben/Gubin a co-constructed sense of homelessness furthers sympathy and understanding. Those old people who underwent the most traumatic experiences of wartime enmities against one another, seem the most prepared to accept their loss as a mutual, unavoidable and no longer changeable result of a cruel war (for a detailed account of this, see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002:44) In the next section we return to the ways in which a single picture can trigger multiple and even conflictual perspectives.

Triggering multiple and/or conflictual perspectives With the extract below we return to Tiefengrün on the West German former border. The interviewee, a woman in her 50s (that is, middle generation) from Upper Franconia, used to be at primary school with the interviewer, but has since moved away from Tiefengrün to neighbouring Hof. The extract contains three interconnecting narrative sequences, all dealing with the disappearance of the East–West German border. The theme is triggered by just one picture – illustration 5.9 – of the 30 December 1989, featuring the official opening of a new wooden footbridge across the river Saale. This meant that for the first time in Ingrid Rose’s generation’s lifetime, access to the neighbouring town of Hirschberg was feasible. Extract 7 IR, female, middle generation, Tiefengrün/Hof 1. I: I have got photos of this, were you down there, too? 2. IR: Wait, yes … We were at the civic hall that day, but … 3. I: You were at the civic hall, too? At Hirschberg? We were there, too. 4. IR: Yes … to meet the Hirschbergers … Well, it was a great joy, especially for my father, actually more for him than for me.

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5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

We thought it was great, for example on Boxing Day we went across via Töpen/Juchhöh, when they still stamped the passports, I have still got the old one, and we climbed up to the castle, first we walked round down there and then we climbed up to the castle and looked around up there, because we thought it was so great that one was able to look across from there and simply go there … where one could only go with one’s eyes. And we did all that on Boxing Day … I: [Laughter] … because mum and I went over on the 28th via Rudolphstein, amazing, two days before and exactly the same, up to the castle and all … IR: Yes, well, and I know that it was very moving for my father. He still knew several people, or many people … he cried tears of joy. It was very nice, I mean he was already quite frail, but I think to experience this was actually a great moment in his life. I: Yes. IR: Yes, and I mean, I still find it fascinating to be able to go over there, and every time I drive or walk over there, I think: ‘It’s a miracle.’ And it is a miracle! That it happened so quickly and wholly … without bloodshed and without great … without great terror. And we really are glad about it, well it’s … it’s simply great I think being near the border; we also have a different attitude to it than people living further inland. They don’t care, do they? I: They don’t really see it, they don’t feel it. IR: The fact that we don’t stand before this wall anymore, and that we can go there and that the land is open to all sides and that people can meet … that’s great.

Illustration 5.9 indexes the first day of the opening of the provisional wooden footbridge across the river. Shot from the east to the west, it shows people packed tightly on the bridge as each side ventures across for the first time underneath a banner which reads ‘Bridge of Freedom’. That this picture was taken during the transitional phase of 1989, ten months before the demise of the GDR, and not after official unification on 4 October 1990 can easily be identified even by non-locals by the hammer and sickle symbol which is still imprinted on the German flag – that is, it is still the official GDR flag rather than the united German flag. In looking at this image, Ingrid R. immediately recounts what she was doing during that day. Rather than focusing


on the time/place indexed by the picture, she prefers to tell a story of coming together with the people of Hirschberg in the Civic Hall. This she links to her visit with the children a few days earlier, when the bridge had not yet opened. The extract comprises three short interweaving storylines. Turns 2, 4 and 6 tell about the momentous events of late December 1989, both from the point of view of herself and of her father, whereas turn 8 puts this into the perspective of the present day. Altogether she interlinks three different layers of time as well as perspectives. In the first sequence (2) she talks about her joy and her father’s even greater happiness at being able to go across to Hirschberg and meet the people; in the second (4, 6) she refers back to her first excursion with her children on the second day of Christmas 1989 (that is, four days before the opening of the small wooden bridge), when it was still necessary to go with a passport via the FRG/GDR border crossing in Töpen. The emphasis here is on the pleasure of stepping into the unknown–known. In climbing up the rock to one of the major physical landmarks for both sides – the Castle of Hirschberg which towers above both Hirschberg and the adjacent lower village of Tiefengrün – she is not only stepping onto a ground which was never before in her lifetime physically accessible to Westerners. What strikes her as momentous is the possibility of looking across to her own village from the other side (dass man da jetzt von drüben rüber schauen kann: ‘from over there to over here’). In other words, it is the discovery of a vantage point from the other side back to her own space which strikes her as so remarkable.2 In (6) she shifts back to her father’s perspective, now on the 30th December, when he could meet up with several people he used to know before the division of Germany. This reunion constituted a climax in his life which was by that time marred by illness. In the third sequence (8) she shifts again, this time to the now time of the telling. It is in this extract where we find some hesitation in her otherwise fluent talk. As was the case with the Hirschberg couple in Chapter 3 (extract 1), she too experiences it as a miracle even today, that one can simply pass across this former border without any difficulty. But she also weighs this miracle against what could have happened – bloodshed or other terrible events. Considering these other possibilities together with her current situation, her speech becomes less fluent. In contrast to her earlier expressions of joy and heightened emotion: das war schon eine große Freude, wir fanden’s toll (‘that was a great joy’; ‘we

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thought it super’) – there is also a somewhat defensive note to her declaration in turn 8, with a stress on wir and the mitigating particles auch wirklich: ‘und wir freuen uns auch wirklich darüber, also das ist. … das ist einfach schön …’ (and we really are glad about it, well it’s … it’s simply great). The combination of stress and mitigation makes her sound as if she is disagreeing with someone, who would not be as pleased as herself. It is as if she has to defend this view against the other voices within her own region who have since turned negative or have become indifferent about reunification. Her next sentence then confirms that these negative voices were indeed on her mind, since she now suggests that the people living on the border have a different relation to these events than those further west (she refers to the Innern des Landes, clearly a reference to West Germany rather than united Germany) who – she suggests – would be completely indifferent. This observation is very interesting, since it clashes with the largely negative opinions which many of the interviewees of the Tiefengrün sample hold about the effects of the demise of the border, and who may be the implicit opponents against whom she has to defend her views that the disappearance of the border is a good thing. It also differs from the perception of many of our interviewees from the Hirschberg sample, who suggested that East Germans are more accepted the further away they get from their local border region. Ingrid R. is an interesting example of someone who has a very positive attitude to unification, and the possibilities that have arisen from it.3 Married to a protestant minister and herself a strong believer, her attitudes in general have a more unambiguously humanist tendency than many of her age group from the same village. Hence her oppositional groups are those from within her own society, and not those across the river. This is very typical for her way of making sense of her life, not simply the post-unification conflicts. She can articulate her tensions, and thus render them less problematic than those of her neighbours in the east. By contrast to the earlier informants who released conflictual perspectives in reaction to images from different periods within phase 3, all her shifts occur without further reference to later pictures. Illustrations 5.9 and 5.11 index the demise of the German border. Informants from both Tiefengrün and Hirschberg react to these in a variety of ways with a wide range of different stories and attitudes.


Invariably, but in highly divergent ways, they thematize at some point the relationship between eastern and western Germans and Germany: informants foreground positive or negative reactions to the unification of Germany; they evaluate life in the GDR and in the FRG during the Cold War period or by comparison to what happened since in united Germany. These pictures thus trigger narratives through which people dramatize their own lived perspective, which often includes a projected ‘other’ perspective. In the case of Ingrid, this was a symbolic projection: that is, looking at us over here from over there. Very often, though, such projections are discursive presences, most often representing a counter-position to the narrator which needs to be coped with or contradicted: explicitly these oppositional voices are dramatized as ‘what the others say against us’, but as we showed in the previous chapter, they can also be left implicit. On the Polish–German border the socio-political context of the photographs of the different phases of the communities have very different implications. On the German–German border the problems of political division and unification give the possibilities, or more frequently the difficulties of, and negative reactions to, living together once more in one nation-state paramount significance. Hence all discourses at some point circle around these themes. On the German–Polish border by contrast illustrations 5.3, 5.4, 5.7 and 5.12, 5.13 and 5.14 index the different phases from Guben as one city to when Guben East ceased to be German and became Polish, with subsequent independent developments in their respective nation-states. The political question of how to further better relations between people living on either side of the river is thus not one of reuniting a divided polity, but of the continued acceptance of national borders whilst at the same time transcending these in transnational co-operation: inter-communal and inter-regional at the local level and transnational at the EU level with the May 2004 accession of Poland to the EU, which was imminent at the time of our fieldwork. Whereas the former topic resurfaces time and time again in narratives of ‘the lost home’ by the oldest generation, this is not recurring amongst the middle or younger generation, who respond more often than not with indifference or, in the case of the youngest generation, with an often pronounced dislike for Gubin and its Polish inhabitants.

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Indifference, non-recognition and rejection of the past in Guben In the two extracts below the 41-year-old Rosemarie Rabe and the 16-year-old Jacqueline Heinrich react to illustration 5.3 – the pre-war shot of the Café Schöneberger and the theatre: Extract 8 RR, female, middle generation, Guben UM: Can I go back one step in time and show you these pictures here? RR: Er, my grandmother used to tell me that she went to the theatre here, there must have been a theatre, yes, here … there’s the old church and there must have been the vineyards, and she used to go dancing there, my grandmother. It must have been a nice time, according to what she said. UM: Your mother was a little too young. RR: Yes, but she went to this theatre here, too. And it was destroyed in the war. UM: Do you know how? RR: I guess through bombs. UM: Ah, so it’s not something one talks about much. It’s more, say, on the anecdotal level that one chats about what it used to be like. RR: Yes, my parents want it rebuilt like before and they have a whole lot of memories, but I don’t relate to it at all. I must admit that I don’t relate to history. That’s my fault, but that’s the way it is. Okay, I listen to it, but that’s all. UM: Thus an emotional connection to the old Guben on the other side of the Neiße – RR: I don’t have that at all. UM: And you have got no longing? RR: Nope. UM: Because when you talk to Polish people, they are sometimes afraid that the Germans want to come back and buy up their land. RR: Really? Not at all. RR belongs to one of three four-generation families we interviewed in Guben. At the age of 41, she is a member of the middle generation, that is, she was born and lived for most of her life in the GDR. To her,


the image of the old theatre in the middle of the Neisse arouses no emotions whatsoever – neither positive nor negative, except that she acknowledges her parents’ and her grandmother’s happy memories. The demise of the theatre – she vaguely refers to it having been destroyed by bombs (sic) – belongs to history, and history is something she does not care about, and which does not impinge on her present. Hence the pictures do not arouse any comment about the current state of affairs between Guben and Gubin either, where a mutual access to the river island from both sides plays a part in the envisaged ‘Euro city Guben–Gubin’, nor does it lead to any reflection about the past or present relationship between Germany and Poland. The generational difference from the oldest generation of Guben, for whom these pictures triggered the key narratives of losing and coming to terms with a lost home, and to some extent with their new Polish neighbours could not be more marked. When the interviewer mentions the fear we had often heard expressed by Polish people that Germans may wish to reclaim previously owned land, she rejects that out of hand. Like most of the people of the middle or youngest generation of Germans, these images do not relate to a mourned past, nor do they signal anything in the present that she would be interested in. On the one hand this registers a welcome recognition of post-war political reality, on the other hand it goes hand in hand with a widespread indifference about the Polish neighbours, even where the relations are said to be reasonable. In the youngest generation, however, this indifference is often – though fortunately not always – coupled with strong dislike (see also Meinhof, 2004). The second extract comes from 16-year-old Jacqueline Drossel, the youngest member of another four-generation family from Guben. Both her great aunt and her great-grandmother had expressed the strongest loyalty to the old pre-war Guben, and had grave doubts about the plans of creating a shared Euro-city and other cross-border projects, since all their loyalties were now with Guben and their new region, the federal state of Brandenburg. Her great-grandmother’s attachment to the region of her former home was so intense that during the interview she sent her daughter – Jacqueline’s great aunt – across to the other side of Guben to fetch her own photograph album so as to add some more pictures to those presented by us. Yet her 16-year-old great-granddaughter – whilst recognizing the old theatre – denies any knowledge of whether the theatre – one of the most

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famous shots of the old Guben (5.3) which was reproduced in the leaflet of the Euro-City Guben–Gubin – was still standing or not. In spite of her willingness to talk to the interviewer, her obvious resentment about being made to talk about the pre-war past comes over in waves. Yet as the extract reveals, she has indeed been exposed by her family to the family’s past in Guben east, but is not in the least interested in their old stories. Extract 9 JD, female, youngest generation, Guben UM: Now, first of all let me show you this, to see if you can identify it. [shows pictures] T: Hm … That’s the theatre. UM: Have you seen the pictures before? T: No, no. But I can’t relate to them. UM: You can’t. It’s not that you have been shown pictures and you have been told stories? T: No. UM: But do you know the time that those pictures were taken, roughly? No? T: No. UM: That’s okay. Is the theatre still on the island? T: Don’t know. UM: You don’t know when it disappeared? T: No. UM: Interesting, thus your great-grandmother or your grandmother didn’t tell you about it. They don’t talk about it. Or maybe you are not interested? T: I am not interested in it. UM: You aren’t interested in it, and you don’t know if it’s being talked about. T: They sometimes say that they have worked there and so on, but I don’t know when it disappeared. UM: When it disappeared … and are you ever taken to Gubin and being told stories about it? T: No, unless I go on my own to do some shopping or something like that. They don’t tell any stories. UM: Thus you aren’t being taken over to show you the house or the place where the houses were?


T: Yes, we went there once with my grandfather and he showed us where […?] they had lived but. … UM: Thus your grandfather, who … T: My mother’s father. UM: Did he live in Gubin, too? T: Yes, he lived in Gubin, too. UM: But you don’t know when he left? T: No. UM: It’s all too long ago … T: It’s too long ago. Jacqueline Drossel’s unwillingness to consider these old pictures or stories may of course simply be read as a typical 16-year-old’s indifference to things that happened long before her life-time, especially in a family which so pointedly guards and celebrates their past. On the other hand, it also typifies the wide-spread indifference of young Germans in Guben towards the neighbouring town and its inhabitants, which undercuts the many efforts made at official level in furthering better relations between local people in Guben and Gubin. This emerged particularly strongly in the failure to trigger comments about Europe and the EU via photographic triggers.

Indifference, avoidance and rejection of the European projects in Guben/Gubin Illustrations 5.13 and 5.14 are one of a series of photos through which we had hoped to elicit people’s attitudes and feelings about the larger transnational cultural identity which Europe offers, as well as the political entity of the European Union. At official level, the EU and EU policy have a strong presence in Guben/Gubin, not only because by May 2004 the border crossing between both towns and nations had become an internal border of the European Community, but also in having provided substantial financial support for a series of cross-border projects. Years before Poland joined the EU, a series of existing schemes, such as the Euro-region funds supported, for example, the building of a state-of-the-art waste water plant in Gubin following the most updated ecological guidelines of the EU (see illustration 5.13), a new extramural border-crossing to avoid the continuous traffic jams of the crowded town crossing, as well as a whole series of cultural exchanges and joint ventures. With the photographs and the

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booklet (5.14), which listed a whole series of these projects, we were expecting reactions from our informants through which we could gauge their feelings and attitudes about ‘being European’, and what this would entail. However, to our surprise, the pictures did not work at all in eliciting ‘European discourses’. Instead they unleashed a series of reactions about the other side – in this case, the Poles or the Germans respectively, or even more locally, the Gubinians or the Gubenians, and about the acceptance or rejection of the specific projects. Illustration 5.13, for example, invariably led only to a discussion of the waste water plant itself – usually couched in very negative terms by both Poles and Germans – but did not lead to any mention of the EU. The lack of reaction to photographic triggers representing Europe or the EU was not only typical for the situation in Guben and Gubin (see Meinhof and Galasinski, 2002), but was repeated right along the other East–West border communities of our subsequent research (for a detailed account, see Armbruster, Meinhof and Rollo, 2003). Buildings with the European flag or stars or any other reference to the support given by the EU to these regions were similarly bypassed by our informants. Europe or the EU did not feature in the narratives in reaction to our intended triggers, nor did they appear as spontaneous narratives in other contexts. EU and European photographs which we intended as symbols for collaboration and unification at transnational level did at no stage unleash the kinds of discourses which we found on the German–German border. There the combination of a temporal/spatial image – such as the new bridge openings in Hirschberg– Tiefengrün – was the symbolic trigger for a whole range of discourses about German division and unification. This translation of a material and symbolic image into an experiential narrative was entirely missing from the European context, leading us to depart from our normal indirect method. Hence it was only in reaction to direct questions that we gathered whether people had positive, negative or indifferent attitudes about European unification, whether they identified with the EU as a political/economic or cultural entity, or a combination of these in different contexts. But even in response to more direct questions ‘Europe’ and the ‘European Union’ were used ambivalently, once the simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reactions gave way to longer discourses. Several people articulated different attitudes to the EU or EU enlargement depending on where one would draw its boundaries, others unwittingly produced contradictory attitudes in


different discursive contexts. For example, some informants were in favour of the EURO currency when talking about their future holidays and anti-EURO when asked about their feelings about losing the German mark.

Conclusions The ambivalent and multi-layered reactions of our informants to photographic triggers on the one hand, and more direct questioning on the other, are strong evidence for the need for indirect qualitative measures in identity and attitudinal research. We do not wish to suggest that large-scale quantitative research instruments such as the Eurobarometer and the European Social Attitudinal Survey are without validity, but we would argue that their implications are much more limited in tracking consciously held beliefs and attitudes rather than experientially grounded identifications. These latter, as we have shown, require more in-depth studies and a more indirect approach. For discourse analysts in particular the photographic triggers proved an invaluable tool in eliciting spontaneous narratives of identity, which showed ambivalences, contradictions as well as significant absences of experiential identification. Our method of data collection via photography was subsequently mainstreamed in the fifth framework project European Border Discourse, co-ordinated by Meinhof with Galasinski as one of six European partners along the borderline reaching from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea. Altogether families from a further twelve split communities were interviewed, using a similar series of photographs, again selected carefully by the local experts following the criteria we discussed. This proved successful in all instances, with a range of key narratives emerging from within each community. Some of these proved to be specific to particular communities, others could be clustered along either side of the long borderline. In the latter case, we found similarities in perspective shared by all communities in the eastern (poorer) regions and the western (richer) regions (see the individual chapters in Meinhof, 2002 for an account of the former and Meinhof, 2003 for an account of the latter). Taken together, the photographic method proved to be a most sensitive tool for understanding people’s discursive rendering of their life and everyday life experiences in their rich complexity.

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Appendix: originals of extracts in Polish and German Extract 1 LK: to nie jest park czasem? – czekaj tu jest park. nie no kurde mol – nie wiem – no to jest dom kultury to widzj. I: a to dobrze LK: ALE TO::: – TEGO JA NIE PAMIJTAM WEBY TAKIE COG BYLO? I: no wie pani pani nie mowe tego pamijtac bo to bylo w tysihc dziewijcset pihtym roku. LK: to to ja wiedzialam we dom kultury ale ja mówij ale z której to strony do cholery jasnej. ja juw chcialam powiedziec we to w Niemczech …

Extract 2 PH: ⫽ bo to jest sprzed okresu przedwojennego to jest ja to sij tylko domyglam co to jest⫽ I: ⫽ no no no no⫽ PH: ⫽ to znaczy poznaje obecny fragment ze to jest teatr na wyspie a tutaj to jest ten budynek kolo przejgcia granicznego którym sij idzie przez most. tutaj jest wlagnie chyba jak widzj to jest odrestaurowane teraz nowo wybudowany most którego nie bylo teraz wlagnie na th wyspj zostal wybudowany ten mostek nie? no i tyle co mogj powiedziec na ten temat to co poznalem to wiem.

Extract 3 JF: zdjjcie z mostu granicznego po lewej stronie na parterze gdzie sh te kwiatki to miegci miegci sij chyba urzhd celny. … JF: no tak: tak: doskonale no: obecny dom kultury byly ratusz miejski to co pamijtam no i katedra wspaniala lampa do dzig sij utrzymuje która zostala zachowana … JF: to jest wejgcie jak na wprost patrzhc za to jest przejgcie graniczne gdzieg tam w prostej natomiast nie pamijtam ale pamijtam jeszcze gruzy na skwerze jak jest obecny yyy targowisko spowywcze⫽

Extract 4 CN: no ja tam tam wie pan duwo nie pamijtam. na pewno wijcej moja mama pamijta niw ja nie? ale na przyklad ta katedra. Pijkna stoi ta fara nie? stoi ruina: nie a nie lepiej by bylo jakby to bylo do uwytku oddane? I: mm CN: wspaniala rzecz. tak samo ten teatr. Duwo rzeczy mama opowiadala na Górze Gmierci kasyno pijkne bylo tam glicznie podobno bylo tutaj gdzie rolniczak byl tew podobno byl pijkny duwy szpital i to jeszcze jak moja mama przyjechala w czterdziestym pihtym roku to stal ten szpital ja nie wiem wszystko zburzyli. …


Extract 5 I: a jeszcze mi powiedz co sobie myglisz o tym zdjjciu. MN: to jest u nas przejgcie teraz I: mchm MN: tylko we to: bardzo dawno musialo byc poniewaw widzj tutaj takie powóz z konmi tramwaj u nas tramwai nie ma. i to tak wyglhda jakby to bylo jedno miasto weby nie bylo granic nie ma granic takich I: no? to to bylo jedno miasto czy nie? MN: bylo pewno widac we nie ma nic takiego jak granice. jest ulica prosto i jadj sobie i jest OK. nikt mnie nie zatrzyma: i sobie dojadj nawet tramwajem. I: no? MN: jest tak luxno nie ma takiego napijcia I: tego nie rozumiem. MN: yyyy przekraczajhc granicj czuje sij jakieg takie napijcia zawsze o: przepuszczh mnie czy mnie nie przepuszczh?

Extract 6 Das war das Theater, Stadttheater. Das war Café Schöneberger … ein wunderbares Café, wo hauptsächlich dann immer hier die … Schauspieler und alles, die waren da viel. Es war ein herrliches Gebäude und der ganze lange Balkon direkt so übers Wasser, es war herrlich. UM: Das kann ich mir gut vorstellen. GS: Ja, aber ich meine wir sind damals … wir hatten unsere Arbeit, ich bin drüben großgeworden, wir hatten viel Acker meine Eltern schon und … als Kind und wie ich verheiratet war auch, und … wir sind ja dann wenig in diese Gaststätten gekommen, wir haben [… ?] wo wir waren. Das war ja unten in der Stadtmitte, und was auf der polnischen Seite ist, die Berglehne, was dann rechts hoch geht so – UM: Ach, da waren Sie, Sie haben da gewohnt, da muss das ja mit die schönste Gegend gewesen sein. GS: Also wunderbar. Wunderbar war das. Das war noch so ländlicher, also wir waren eigentlich so von der Stadt möchte ich sagen die letzte Straße so mit die letzten Häuser so mit und denn fing schon das nächste Dorf an, was aber zu Guben gehörte auch … und dadurch, das war alles so Berggelände, das war wundervoll. UM: Waren da dann auch diese berühmten Bergblüten, diese … ? GS: Die Baumblüten. UM: Die Baumblüten, das hab ich jetzt viel erzählt bekommen, dass das so wunderschön gewesen sein muss. GS: Wir waren so mittendrin. Wo ich geboren bin, das war so’ne eine schmale Straße nur und damals wars als Kind, da wars noch gar nicht gemacht rechts und links Sträucher eingezäunt so und nachher die späteren Jahre da wurde ja dann schon Asphalt gelegt, aber trotzdem ich sage, michzieht’s immer mal rüber, bloß ich kann eben das nicht mehr laufen. Meine Enkeltochter fährt dann manchmal mit dem Auto rüber, ich kann das nicht mehr laufen.

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UM: Also für Sie ist, weil die Gegend so schön ist, ist das auch noch wieder ein schönes Erlebnis, wenn Sie wieder rüberfahren. GS: Ja, ja. Es tut ja weh, wenn man rüberfährt. Mein Elternhaus ist gleich beim ersten Beschuss abgebrannt, da seh ich bloß noch so’n Häufchen Steine liegen, wenn ich komme, es tut ja weh, wenn man da groß geworden ist, na und mein unser Haus, wo ich dann verheiratet war, das war ein ganzes Stück ab, ne Viertelstunde ungefähr, das lag wenn Ihnen der Bismarckturm bekannt ist …? UM: Ja, ja, ich hab mir das inzwischen angekuckt, ich kenn mich jetzt gut aus. GS: Unser Grundstück, von den Schwiegereltern, das hat direkt am Bismarckturm angestoßen, das ging rückzu den Berg hoch, wir hatten ein wunderbares Haus, das tut weh, wenn man dran denkt. Heute müssen wir teure Miete alle bezahlen und da hätten wir im Haus alle Platz gehabt, brauchten meine Kinder nicht die teuren Mieten bezahlen, das war wunderbar, das kann keiner ersetzen. Kann keiner ersetzen.

Extract 7 1. JA: Jetzt hab’ ich noch mal Fotos von diesem, wart ihr da mit unten? 2. JR: Ja. Warte mal. Also wir waren … an dem Tag im Kulturhaus, aber … 3. I: Ach, wart ihr auch im Kulturhaus? In Hirschberg? Weil wir sind auch rüber im Kulturhaus. 4. IR: Ja, da ham mer die … die Hirschberger getroffen. Also, das das war schon eine grosse Freude, also vor allem eben jetzt … wie für meinen Vater noch mehr als … als wie für mich. Ich mein, wir fanden’s toll, wir sind zum Beispiel abends am 2. Weihnachtsfeiertag mit den Kindern über Töpen/ Juchhöh haben sie ja noch den Pass gestempelt, den hab’ ich noch, den alten, da sind wir praktisch dann zum Schloss hochgeklettert, sind wir erst unten rum gelaufen, weil, das war ja, es war also wirklich toll, und dann sind wir so zum Schloss geklettert und ham da oben rum geguckt, weil, weil wir das halt einfach so toll fanden, dass man jetzt da von drüben rüber schauen kann, und dass man einfach da mal hin kann wo man nur hinschauen konnte. Das haben wir alles am zweiten Weihnachtsfeiertag … 5. I: [Lachen] … weil die Munna und ich waren am 28. auch da. das ist schon scharf, 2 Tage vorher sind wir über Rudolphstein und ham [Lachen], genau dasselbe gemacht, zum Schloss hoch und alles, ne. 6. IR: Jaja. Naja, und ich weiß eben von meinem Vater, für den war das schon bewegend. Ich mein der hatte ja manche Leute halt noch gekannt, oder viele Leute … also der, der hat da viele Freudentränen vergossen. Das war sehr schön, ich mein da ging’s ihm zwar auch schon nicht mehr gut, aber er hat das aber schon noch sehr … also ich denk dass er das noch erlebt hat, das war für ihn schon noch so ein Höhepunkt seines Lebens. 7. I: Jaja. 8. IR: Ja und dann später, ich mein, diese, ich find’s immer noch faszinierend, dass man da nüber fahren kann, jedes mal wenn ich rüber fahr oder rüber lauf denk ich ‘Das ist eigentlich ein Wunder’. Es ist ja wirklich ein Wunder. Dass das so schnell und halt ohne … ohne Blutvergießen und ohne großes … ohne große Schrecknisse gekommen ist. Und wir freuen uns auch


wirklich drüber, also das ist … das ist einfach schön. Ich denk wir hier an der Grenze, wir haben wir auch da eine ganz andere Beziehung auch da zu, wie die Leute, die so im Inneren des Landes wohnen. Denen ist das völlig egal, gell!? 9. I: Die sehen das gar nicht richtig, die spüren das gar nicht so richtig, ne. IR: Also, dass wir einfach jetzt da nimmer vor dieser Mauer stehen, und dass wir da hinkommen, dass nach allen Seiten das Land offen ist, und dass die Leute halt sich begegnen können, das ist … das ist toll …

Extract 8 UM: Kann ich Sie dann nochmal, jetzt noch’n Schritt zurückgehen in die Zeit, die Sie ja nun auch nur aus Fotos kennen, ähm, weil die haben sie jetzt sicher bei Ihren Eltern viel gesehen diese Fotos, also diese Art von Bildern. Haben Sie da nun irgendeinen Bezug dazu zu dieser Zeit? RR: Äh, hat mir meine Oma immer erzählt, dass sie hier in das Theater gegangen ist, muss mal ‘n Theater gewesen sein. Und da ist sie immer gern hingegangen. Und denn hier drüben ist irgendwo, ja hier … das ist die alte Kirche und irgendwo müssen da die Weinberge gewesen sein, da war sie dann immer tanzen, also meine Oma, ja. Und, ach, das muss ‘ne schöne Zeit gewesen sein, hat sie jedenfalls erzählt. UM: Ja, aber Ihre Mutter war ja auch fast noch ‘n bisschen zu jung. RR: Ja, die war aber auch in dem Theater hier, das hat sie mir auch erzählt, ja. Und das wurde dann im Krieg zerstört. Hm. UM: Wissen Sie, wie das zerstört wurde? RR: Na, durch Bomben denk ich mal, aber … UM: Also das ist nicht was, wo man groß drüber redet mehr. Das ist also nicht so, sagen wir so, es ist auf der Ebene der Anekdote, dass man halt erzählt, wie das früher war, aber … RR: Ja, meine Eltern wünschen sich ja, dass es aufgebaut wird wie früher und ein Haufen Erinnerungen hängen da drin, aber ich hab überhaupt keinen Bezug dazu. Ich hab auch keinen Bezug zur Geschichte muss ich ehrlich sagen, ich hab überhaupt kein Interesse für irgendwelche Geschichte. Das ist so mein Negatives, was ich habe, aber, das ist eben halt so. Gut, ich hör mir das alles mal an und das wars dann auch, nicht. UM: Also diese diese … diese Bindung an das ehemalige Guben auf der anderen Seite von der NeißeRR: Die hab ich gar nicht, ne. UM: Die haben Sie gar nicht. Sie haben auch keine Sehnsüchte in der Richtung. RR: Nö. UM: Weil wenn sie manchmal mit den Polen reden, dann ist ‘ne Angst da, dass die Deutschen wieder rüberkommen und Land kaufen wollen. M: Ach so. Nö.

Extract 9 UM: Also, zunächst mal das hier, mal schauen, ob sie da überhaupt was damit anfangen können. [zeigt Fotos]

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T: Hm … Das ist das Theater. UM: Haben Sie die Bilder schon mal gesehen? T: Ne, ne. Ich weiss aber [? sehr leise, unverständlich] Kann ich nichts mit anfangen. UM: Können Sie nichts mit anfangen. Haben Sie gelegentlich mal Bilder, Sie haben also auch nicht Bilder, die Ihnen gezeigt werden, dass Ihnen was erzählt wird. T: Ne. UM: Aber Sie wissen, um welche Zeit das ist, können Sie sich vorstellen, wann das ungefähr gewesen sein …? Auch nicht? T: […?] UM: Ne, ne, ne, ist ja völlig o.k.. Also, dass das Theater noch steht, an der Theaterinsel. T: Weiss ich nicht. UM: Wissen Sie nicht, wann das weggekommen ist? T: Ne. UM: Interessant, ne, da hat also Ihre Urgroßmutter oder Ihre Großmutter haben da nicht erzählt. Die erzählen da nicht davon. Oder interessiert Sie’s nicht? T: Ne, interessiert mich nicht. UM: Das interessiert Sie nicht, also Sie wissen nicht, ob das erzählt wird …? T: Die erzählen manchmal, dass sie dort gearbeitet haben und so, aber weiss ich nicht, wann das weggekommen ist. UM: Wann das weggekommen ist … und dass man Sie mal rüberführt nach Gubin und erzählt und so. T: Ne, wenn dann geh ich alleine rüber und ansonsten, mal einkaufen oder so. Erzählen tun sie nichts. UM: Also Sie werden nicht rumgeführt und Ihnen das Haus, die Stelle gezeigt, wo die Häuser standen? T: Ne doch, wir waren mal mit meinem Patenopa und der hatte uns mal gezeigt, wo [?] gewohnt hatte, aber … UM: Also Ihr Opa, der …? T: Der Vater von meiner Mutter. UM: Der hat auch in Gubin gewohnt? T: Ja, der hat auch in Gubin gewohnt. UM: Aber Sie wissen nicht wann er da weg ist. T:T: Ne. UM: Ist alles schon. … T: Ist schon zu lange her.

6 The Voices of Neighbourhood

In our earlier work on these data (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002), we focused on the uneasy relationship between the Gubin and Guben communities. We showed, for the Polish part, that Poles perceive their German neighbours very often in terms of threat. We heard a number of stories in which our Polish informants expressed fear that the previous owners of the properties they live in would come to claim their properties. As one of our Polish informants put it dramatically: the German will come one day, show the deed and say: ‘It’s mine’. Germans are a threat, Germans are a problem. Bauman described the notion of Other as follows: ‘We’ share the same fate, grow rich together or get destitute together, while ‘they’ prey on our calamities and are hurt by our success. ‘We’ are supposed to assist each other, while ‘they’ lie in wait for our lapse. ‘We’ understand each other, feel the same feelings and think the same thoughts, while ‘they’ remain impenetrable, incomprehensible, sinister aliens. The frontiers of the ‘we-group’ … delineate the border of our intellectual security and provide the frame on which to hinge our loyalties, rights and duties. (1999:102) Our study provides ample evidence for these processes.1 Here we want to take a different approach. As much as our work is full of instances of problems, animosities and enmities, our informants also offered us positive stories. Although there were considerably fewer of these, there were instances where our informants also talked about their positive contacts with the people from across the river. 159

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Hence stories of neighbourhood are also a significant part of the texts we collected. The aim of this chapter is to highlight our informants’ positive stories of neighbourhood. We are interested in the ways in which friendly, non-conflictual encounters with Germans are constructed, given the mostly negative narratives associated with them, and particularly those which undermine the very essence of Polish presence in the two towns we investigated. To what extent, we wondered, are stories of unfettered good neighbourhood possible in our informants’ narratives? Can a Pole and a German be good neighbours, good friends?

‘A good German is a dead German’ In all Polish narratives of face to face encounters with German individuals there is an implicit or explicit presence of the negative stereotype of the German which colours whatever positive story is about to be told. The informants’ narratives are double voiced, with one voice explicitly telling the story of the pleasant, friendly encounter with a German individual, and the other voice, that of negativity, coming through. Put in a different way, whenever our informants talked about a friendly, good German, it was put as if this came as a surprise, either on the part of the speaker or their addressee. A good, friendly German is unusual, strange, someone who needs to be accounted for. The narrative thus invariably came with either explicit or implicit reference to the speaker’s awareness of the negative stereotype. Invariably, a reference to the German neighbour had to be put in the context of the speaker’s awareness that it is an unusual thing to find a good German. Before we proceed with the analysis, we would like to contextualize it in a story of one of our meetings at the beginning of our ethnographic work. Right at the beginning of our project in 1999, we went to the Polish town of Gubin to prepare and pilot our research. At this stage we were looking for historic photographs of Gubin immediately after the war, and were directed to an individual who was reputed to have such photographs. We were greeted in the flat by the man himself and his wife, both probably in their seventies. The conversation conducted in Polish went smoothly and pleasantly: they were telling us about their life

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after moving there, we were telling them about our planned research, with one of us (Galasinski) also serving as an interpreter for the other (Meinhof). We were served tea and cheesecake, and the meeting could not have been more pleasant. After some time, we were joined by the couple’s son, who was probably in his forties. The conversation still went pleasantly, with the son telling us also about difficulties on the labour market. After a while, the conversation veered to the topic of Polish–German contacts and relationships, which were said to be good and without major problems or conflicts. During that part of the conversation the younger man, out of the blue, said in Polish, that it all may well be so, but we must all remember that a good German is a dead German. Surprisingly, after his statement, and despite our shock and disbelief at what happened, the conversation went on as nicely and pleasantly as before, with more cheesecake and tea offered and accepted. There was hardly any discomfort on the part of the elderly couple, the hosts. So, how can such a thing be said in front of a visitor who is German and not meant as the ultimate offence? We believe that the answer to this can be found in the data we present below. It was a way to touch base between the Poles in the conversation, to re-establish the basics. It was nothing personal, it was not meant as an offence. The man simply made sure that ‘we Poles’ did not forget what we are really all about. After making certain that that happened, the conversation could go on and be as pleasant as before. This is, we think, what happens in the narratives we present here. The friendly contact with the German neighbour cannot be told without touching base, without the show of awareness that the speaker has his or her priorities right, his or her worldview the way it ‘should be’. We could say that as much as the middle-aged son of our hosts provided the voice of negative constructions of Germans, it is always implicit in our informants’ discourses. The narratives of the positive contacts with the neighbours across the river are always taken to task by the metanarrative of the enemy Germans. Below, we shall begin with discussing the implicit ways of referring to the negative stereotype, later on we shall explore those which are more explicit. Finally, we shall offer some comment upon a few instances in which our informants offered narratives of sympathy toward Germans. We shall end, however, on the more positive note, quoting from our youngest Polish participant, a voice of the future, we hope.

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Implicit voice One of the most interesting characteristics of the narratives describing positive contacts with Germans in general, or German individuals, was that they invariably addressed an implicit voice of negativity towards Germans. The positive accounts, the accounts of ‘good Germans’ were mindful of the negative German stereotype. The narratives always showed an awareness that positive accounts are problematic. In some ways, a contact with a German can never be innocent, as witness the first two examples in which speakers show such awareness: Extract 1 SG, male, oldest generation SG: In a shop we were talking and buying something and in the shop [they] talked and he asks where you could get gold and she says go go to the stonemason, it’s over there by the cathedral, somewhere. And there, she says, there’s a nice stonemason, a German, but a very nice guy. So we went, and yes, all well, and he says later when I paid and he says we would, I would like to visit you. He says the wife is Sorbian and we would talk. Extract 2 EJ, female, youngest generation EJ: I have a friend [female] who has a boy friend, she is my classmate. She has a German boy friend. They are same age, he is also 18. Well, she says he actually is a very nice boy. The visit to a German stonemason is cushioned in a justification that even though he is German, he is a nice guy. As one presumably cannot simply go and see someone on the other side of the river, the speaker’s decision to go and see the stonemason is preceded by his inability to get gold for lettering on his wife’s headstone (unquoted here). Furthermore, his decision is supported by a suggestion made in a public space, not just his. What is also interesting is that the German stonemason is not only just a nice guy, not only does he want more contact, but his wife is Sorbian, a fellow Slav. The reference to the Slavic wife can in fact be seen as a trump argument to get more contact with the speaker.


In the second extract, the reference to the German boyfriend, after a possible claim of his compatibility with the speaker’s friend, EJ makes a plea that the boy is very nice. The Polish wlagnie (rendered here as ‘actually’, but translatable also as ‘exactly’ or ‘just’) makes an emphatic statement that the boy, despite being German, is a suitable boyfriend. The statement is later followed by the claim about the boyfriend’s learning of Polish, aimed at understanding both his girlfriend and her friends. In the next two examples, the stories of positive encounters with Germans are, while being told, changed into insignificant instances. One is almost tempted to say that they are the exceptions that confirm the negative rule. Extract 3 LK, female, middle generation LK: Germans were wonderful to us. There were few of us I have nice memories. To the extent that in the meantime I had my daughter and imagine that I had such a foreman that he, without saying, came [to see me] with his wife and son I: Really? LK: I was shocked. My mum says you have visitors. I say what? From Germany? Mummy says you must be [joking] I, look, my foreman, Holy Mother of God. Because there were these famous markets. So they came and in the meantime they bought something. And he popped in to [see] me. Anyway I them really very much. Extract 4 UT, male, youngest generation UT: Recently I arrived back from Berlin in Guben and it was dark and I didn’t recognize which way I was to go to get out of the railway station. And I asked a German who was standing there which way. So he took me right away and got me right to the border, right? It was not on the way for him, I could see it was not, but he specially [took me] all the way to the border. Such a nice touch [akcent], right? LK’s initial statement that her German bosses were wonderful (she uses the word ‘golden’) is supported by the story of the foreman who

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paid her an unexpected visit after she had given birth. But the story seems just about too sweet and thus she launches into a narrative of how much she and her mother were actually surprised by the visit, how unexpected it was. It might be argued the visit is just simply surprising, regardless of the ethnicity of the visitor – a colleague, a supervisor would not normally make an unexpected visit. It must be remembered however that the story refers to the times of communist Poland and the GDR, when, especially in Poland, the rules of hospitality were also dictated by the acute shortage in telecommunications, with telephones considered a luxury. Unexpected visits from friends and acquaintances were the norm rather than the exception, simply because of the difficulty with contacts between people. It is quite interesting that it is just about impossible to pin down who was in fact surprised or who said what. It seems that the mother who is telling LK about the fact that the visitors are from Germany is at the same time surprised by her own words. But what we would like to argue is that the story is not supposed to make sense in terms of its accuracy or truth-conditionality, so to speak. The story is to show how surprised the two women were with the visit. They would not have expected a German to go all the way across the river to pay a visit. Indeed, she continues, as if to be on the safe side, with undermining the foreman’s intentions by turning the special occasion of the visit into one where the foreman was just popping in while on the way back from the market. In such a way, the German came to Poland with other Germans to do shopping, with the visit tagged on, and not the other way round. What promised to be a story of a significant event turns into a brief encounter. One might wonder of course to what extent the interviewer’s ‘surprise’ aimed at eliciting a further narrative of the event is taken as a challenge, based on the disbelief that there might actually be nice and friendly Germans. Arguably what starts as a story of something important finishes as a story of something less and less significant. Similarly in (4) the speaker who is describing a favour done to him by a stranger ends the story with a disavowal of the story. He uses the word akcent in the sense of ‘little touch’ – the scene he describes is just a little element of the whole picture. The lift he gets, the kind gesture, is a token event, insignificant in the overall negative picture of Germans. In the final extract of this section, we would like to show a speaker who not only shows positive neighbourly contacts, but implicitly


also attempts to show them as a potential for further development of Polish–German relations. Extract 5 EJ, female, youngest generation EJ: I mean I work at this children’s club, Gawrosz. It’s a Polish–German group of children, from four to eighteen, I think. And there are Polish–German activities. So German and Polish children come and they can play together nicely, or paint. There are such activities and they bring their equipment from Goerlitz, I don’t know, clay modelling, or better toys or something. And the children play nicely. There is nothing of sorts that not, because this is a Pole or a German I will not play with them. But together. Positive and encouraging as the extract purports to be, the speaker is constructing the play between Polish and German children as an extraordinary instance of Polish–German relations. The children can do it, the informants seems to be saying, why can’t the adults. By stressing that the children can play, she implies that the world outside the club is different. This might be where the rule of not ‘playing’ with someone because they are a Pole or a German might not apply. What we have shown so far is that the negative metanarrative of Germans is omnipresent even in our informants’ discourses of positive contacts with the neighbours across the river. What these stories show is that actual encounters between people undermine large-scale prejudice in that individual Poles’ experiences with Germans challenge the stereotypes. In telling their stories they show awareness of a historic and ongoing negativity about Germans, but their actual experiences make these less rigid. This challenge to the stereotype is, however, considerably more implicit than the present negative voices of the negative stereotype, which, we think, still provides the framework within which to see the experience. As we said before, the presence of the stereotype is a means of getting the ‘Polish bearings’ right, touching base with other Poles. Explicit voices The difference between the implicit acknowledgment of the negative metanarrative and its explicit challenge is that in the latter case, the

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speaking Poles could be seen as siding with the Germans. They explicitly reject the universal principle of ‘bad Germans’. There are very few such instances in which our Polish informants explicitly reject the negative attitude towards German individuals or Germans in general and, in a way, side with Germans against the negatively thinking compatriots. Let us start with a story from a member of the youngest generation telling a story of how Polish shop assistants treat their German customers. It is worth saying that quite often we heard of stories of how Polish customers are treated badly by German assistants. The stories of the reverse were very rare. Extract 6 EJ, female, youngest generation EJ: For example, a friend of mine and I, we sometimes queued in a shop, with clothes I think, so this German lady asked for example how much is that blouse, for example, fifty zlotys which is twenty marks. She said forty marks for example, she could not calculate that and so she paid as much as the assistant wrote, because she could not even say, so intelligent she was, so she cheated her and she looked at us so, and I to the friend, can you see what that lady is doing? This is also a human being and why did she cheat her? … The story of the not-so-streetwise German woman who cannot translate Polish currency into German marks finishes with a condemnation of the shopkeeper. The German does not deserve to be treated in such a way, after all she is also a human being. The phrase, a figure of speech, is used in particular circumstances, with two conditions attached. First, the person must have been wronged, treated harshly; second, and more importantly, the person must be perceived as not conforming to some sort of expected standard, and by a long margin. The person must be perceived as significantly deficient and thus easy to take advantage of. Thus, the informant would not have used the phrase in reference to another ‘normal’ customer (read in this context: Polish). Germanness is positioned as deficiency, as a problem, it required a reminder that a German is also a normal human being. The informants’ words should not be taken as a confirmation of German humanity, rather, as a protestation. She reminds us of the


fact and rejects the stance to the contrary. But despite the high moral ground the informant is reaching in her utterance, not only does she confirm that very basic level for regarding the German neighbours, but in fact she also uses the same vantage-point. The German woman is not a fellow customer who deserves good service, she is a German who deserves it. This is more discourse of human, rather than customer, rights. In the second extract, the positive contacts with Germans are accounted for, as if in an attempt to respond to a potential protestation from the interviewer. Extract 7 IW, male, middle generation IW: … and Germans, exactly, Germans on balance went through, because you know, not every one was a Nazi. They let themselves be pulled into this and also went through, as I did. I meet now sometimes over there. They once dug up … and there was a letter there which I have. I have those things. A German’s letter who in 1945 buries it. And he writes that he is not a Nazi, he is not, that he is Catholic, that during the war he was in some work unit, he was an officer of sorts there. The first noteworthy aspect of this positive statement is that in fact it is not unreservedly positive. The w sumie (lit. ‘in sum’, more aptly rendered as ‘on balance’, though) cushions the statement. The problem is, however, that it is difficult to gauge what kind of statement it is. The speaker refers to Germans who przeszli (‘went through’, ‘experienced’) something, yet we do not really know what. The verb implies something negative, yet the speaker avoids specifying it. It is as if sympathizing with the other side, the enemy, is something unsayable. The hedge w sumie seems to be pre-empting the interviewer’s protest. The speaker is directly addressing the interviewer and, as if in expectation of her surprise, or disagreement, he decides to counter the apparently commonly held belief that all Germans were Nazis. They were also victims, even though the construction of their victimhood is more to do with the grammatical form of the utterance, rather than with the explicit content. Germans are positioned as objects of someone else’s actions, drawing them into the conflict.

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What is particularly interesting, however, is that the story of some unburied things confirms the earlier statements. The German whose letter was found seems aware of the Polish belief that Germans were all Nazis, and protests about that. Even more fortuitously he happens to be Catholic, the religion that is commonly held to be followed by 95 per cent of Poles. The story proposed by IW is substantiated by ‘real events’, by what happened. The initial statement that Germans might have gone through some suffering is finally justified. In contrast to the previous extract, this time the informant seems to need to justify his rejection of the stereotype. This might have to do with the fact that in (1) the informant was talking about cheating, which is normally held as reprehensible. Here the informant simply wanted to make a positive statement about Germans, and before any reaction from the interviewer, he launches into a justification of the statement. In the final extract in the section, the informant perceives the continuation cue from the interviewer as a surprise, or doubt and she justifies what she said. Extract 8 RF, female, oldest generation RF: You know, as those Germans were [there], they were very good. I: [They] were good? RF: Very good. This was their farm, and the German [female] had a daughter, because she didn’t have a husband any more, but there were relatives with her and they shared everything, they didn’t look that this was a Pole or something. The initial statement made by RF, ambivalent between referring to the German family she goes on to speak of, and the Germans living in the area, contains an implicit contrast, a presupposition that, normally, Germans are not good. It is rendered by to, normally translated by ‘then’ as in an implication (‘if a, then b’), here used as a means of singling out the group referred to. It is a means of stressing the pronoun ‘they’. Implicitly the speaker acknowledges the stereotype of ‘bad German’. But what is meant as a continuation cue from the interviewer is taken as a doubt, one which requires further justification from


the speaker. And indeed she launches into justifying what she said before. The implicit rejection of the stereotype is turned into explicit justification. What we have shown here is the experiential and linguistic challenge which Poles have to face in accounting for the actions of their German neighbours and vice versa. Historical outgrouping based on long endured enmities, reinforced by socio-economic inequalities in the present, and a general uncertainty about the future, have established discursive patterns of stereotyping which are difficult to ignore even when telling positive stories. Every positive encounter in this sense represents a departure in the opposite direction. What these extracts are pointing to is the huge significance which actual experiential encounters have, since without them the stereotypes remain unchallenged. Galasinski and Meinhof (2002) and Armbruster and Meinhof (in press) contain several German instances from the oldest generation, where negative views about Russians and Poles as enemies at the end of World War Two are challenged in the narrativization of face-to-face encounters. By contrast, Meinhof (2004) gives a detailed account of the ways in which the younger generation in Guben, that is, Germans on the eastern border with Poland outgroup, and stereotype people from Gubin, that is Poles, and how the same generation of Frankonians outgroup the Thuringians on the other side of the former but long dissolved West–East German border. In both cases, and in the striking absence of any mutual encounters, identical stereotypes are employed to ‘out-group’ the others.

Competing discourses We said at the beginning that the function of the negative stereotype of Germans in our informants’ discourse is a means of touching base, of re-asserting the basics among the Poles. But we also think that this is merely part of the reason for what is happening. What we have found in our informants’ narratives are two competing discourses. One has to do with neighbourhood, two groups of people getting on with their lives; the other is to do with the nation, consisting, in parts, of the knowledges (on discourse as knowledge see Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) of conflict, animosities, threats, and so forth. What we would like to point to are the historical contexts in which the two discourses have been evolving.

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The discourse of nationality, enmity, has not only been part of the community more or less since the outbreak of World War Two, (although obviously one can seek its roots much earlier than that), but, more importantly, it has been a very strong part of the public discourse about Germans and Germany. This is the discourse of Polish communist propaganda, education and media. This is the way generations of Polish children were taught. Any deviation from (quite literally) the ‘party line’ was unacceptable, as one of us (Galasinski) was able to find out at school. At the age of about 13 he and his school mates one day were taught about withdrawing Nazi troops (always referred to simply as Germans) from Poland, crushed by the victorious Soviet Army with its Polish side-kick, the Polish army formed on the territory of the USSR. The Wehrmacht put up a fight in Kolobrzeg (Kolberg), and the battle was described as the most nonsensical and unreasonable. The 13-year-old Darek decided that perhaps that was an over-exaggeration, and said that as much as the cause was reprehensible, perhaps this average Wehrmacht soldier was also possessed of honour and did not want to give in without putting up a fight. All hell broke loose. The Galasinski parents were summoned and given a good dressing down for allowing their son to develop these strange and clearly dangerous ideas. The Germans could do no right. Even though this was not in the Regained Lands, but in the territories which were never disputed, the propaganda in the west of Poland was that much stronger, that much more aggressive. The real problem, however, was that this discourse had no real competition. For most of the time under communism the borders were closed, leaving the people in Gubin or Zgorzelec in no position to develop the discourse of neighbourhood. Neighbourhood meant, at most, looking at each other from across the river; or for individuals working in a German factory, in an environment even more politicized than that in Poland. Why is it not acceptable to go to a stonemason who is a nice guy, or to accept a visit from a friendly foreman? The answer is precisely because they are nice or friendly: this does not fit into the Polish worldview, the metanarratives underpinning the discourses of our informants from the Polish–German border. These are discourses of temporariness and German threat, discourses of a precarious life on the border in German houses. The shift between these discourses and the opposite discourse is just too extensive.


What we see in our informants’ discourse is a struggle. It is a struggle to develop a discourse of neighbourhood while the other is still there, is still lingering, and is reinforced by the economic inequalities between the two communities. It is a struggle to shed the discourse of the nation, and adopt the discourse of humanity, or neighbourly relations. And despite the millstone of about 45 years of communist propaganda, this discourse of neighbourliness then is on the increase.

The way forward? The question we asked ourselves was, therefore, whether a story with a German character must necessarily be double-voiced? Is there no other way of speaking of Germans in our informants’ discourse? Interestingly, it seems there is. We did find a few extracts in which references to Germans were not cushioned in the reference to the negative German metanarrative. Witness the following examples: Extract 9 SG, male, oldest generation SG: Well out of curiosity, one has always been always curious. How so? What? Only that in the first in the first time we had a shop, groceries and confectionery at the beginning in 49 in 47 and 8 Germans came across the border illegally for the food. I: And they really came? SG: Yes. I: Please tell me more about it. SG: Well, there was even such a young lad across the border because some places it was easy to cross when the water, he came to us with a rucksack and he took bacon and sausage or other things and carried over there. Extract 10 IW, male, middle generation IW: Down here where we are, there was the Neisse kind of less guarded, and here they threw cigarettes to Germany and from Germany they threw lighters, you know. I: Seriously?

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IW: Yeah. So a stronger lad he would throw a pack of cigarettes through the border, through this Neisse. So they made appointments even for the time when they were there. I: Seriously? IW: Yes something like that, particularly on this meadow over there. There you are. Neither speaker makes any attempt to invoke the negative stereotype of the German; there are no attempts to justify or otherwise account for what is happening. On the one hand, we have a story of Germans crossing the border almost immediately after the war, presumably with the war sensitivities at the highest level, to get some food. This search for something to eat is not even construed as out of the ordinary. Similarly the other story, another illegal activity, refers to smuggling by means of throwing goods across the river, an activity which requires at least at the beginning quite a lot of mutual trust. After all, after throwing the goods or the money, their equivalent might not be forthcoming, with the options for complaining practically nil. There is hope in these extracts. They describe the business of everyday life where going about daily things, albeit smuggling, does not require any evaluation. The purpose of getting food, or goods across the river is more important. Getting on with life seems to overrule the concerns of discourse. One of our interviewees put it very aptly: Extract 11 AJ, male, oldest generation AJ: dear lady, here it was like that Germans had a power plant and we had water. And people collected food because over there usually in Germany there was no food. And they went to arrange for electricity. he would take a rucksack of food [unclear] There are no spare details in the story. They had electricity, we had food. One person took food and went to haggle for electricity. A meeting with an Other dedicated not to symbols, but the bare necessities of life. Similarly, consider the next extract, in which the


speakers describe the current customer relations for Poles: Extract 12 BJ, TJ, females, middle generation BJ: For example, [my] daughter was in February, she chose a jacket and we were short of money, and I say in Polish, normally, that for an hour, an hour and a half TJ: They understand everything. BJ: Not a problem, OK. she just wrote down the forename, put it aside, it was so nice. At least in this [shop], whether in each one, we don’t know. The focus here is on the practice of helping customers who happen to be Polish. Once again, there are no details of the German shop assistant, just her facilitating of the purchase of a jacket. Once again, it is a story of getting on with life. And perhaps that’s the way forward. ‘Life will find a way’ to quote the ‘chaotician’ from Jurassic Park, a helpful shop assistant, a nice passer-by, a friendly stonemason and scores of others will gradually create a context in which Poles from the borders, and others, will be able to drop the discourse of nationality and adopt that of neighbourhood. Consider also the final extract, one from our youngest Polish informant: Extract 13 NO, female, youngest generation I: … and would you like to study in Germany? NO: Yes. I: Why? NO: Because it’s something new. Polish [university] studies, whichever faculty, it’s the same. Over there it’s different, something new, something new to be discovered, something different. I: mmm NO: … and for example now, in secondary school I chose the language profile, and after two on to the Euroschule. And for example, something like that interests me because I will be able to be in touch both

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with children from Guben, and there will be children from Gubin, and you can make friendships, and it’s not like here NO, just 15 years old at the time of the interview, presents us with a view of the Other on different terms than just about all other Polish informants. What is perhaps the most striking is that the people she talks about are not constructed in terms of their nationality. She sets up a parallel between children from Guben and children from Gubin, two groups of children from neighbouring towns. And Germany itself is an opportunity to explore, to learn more. Germany for the informant is something in the future, something unknown, but definitely worth learning about. NO seems to be too young to be burdened by the two competing discourses to the extent that her parents’ generation is, and unaffected by the stereotypical discourses of her older peer groups. Having her whole life in front of her, she seems to be able to make the most of it, and turn living on the border to her advantage.

Conclusions In this chapter we have offered insight into the discourses of the Other. As we earlier (Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002) wrote about the dominant negative discourses of neighbourhood, we wanted to show the positive side of the encounters across the border. And yet what we found was that the positive encounters were also laced with the negative discourses, were being framed by the negative stereotype, by the stories of enmity. The ‘grammar of identity’, the resources provided by years of anti-German propaganda, education and media output weigh like a millstone on the communities’ discourse. But there were exceptions to that, albeit rare, which we found in the everyday stories of getting on with life. Getting on with life, especially when it is survival which is at stake, overrides the concerns of the national imagined community. There is no time to do the imagining, so to speak, when you have to barter food for electricity, or the other way round. This now develops into a discourse of neighbourhood, one which will, hopefully, be fostered by more and more stories of positive contacts. In such a way the lived experience can take over and replace the discourse of enmity. In these difficult contexts of inequality and historical hurt (see Meinhof, 2003, and, in particular,


Holly et al., 2003; Wastl-Walter et al., 2003) stereotypes fossilize through lack of encounter. As everyday experiences continue to grow, these will become increasingly challenged. The old ‘grammar of identity’ could be replaced by a new more hopeful one. Appendix: originals of Polish extracts Extract 1 SG: … w jednym sklepie rozmawialigmy tam cog kupowali i w sklepie rozmawiali i on pyta gdzie tu mowna by dostac te zloto te na a ona mówi idxcie idxcie do kamieniarza tam to jest kolo tej katedry gdzieg tam. i tam mówi z nim mówi fajny jest kamieniarz Niemiec ale bardzo fajny gogc. no i poszligmy i ta:k i on owszem dobrze i tak i póxniej mówi jak ja kupilem zaplacilem i on mówi chcielibyg/ chcialbym do was przyjgc. ja z wonh. mówi wona jest Serbska i troszkj bjdziemy rozmawiac.

Extract 2 EJ: bo ja mam kolewankj która ma wlagnie ma chlopaka do mnie do klasy chodzi. ma Niemca chlopaka. sh w równym wieku tew on ma osiemnagcie lat – no i mówi we jest wlagnie BARdzo fajny chlopak.

Extract 3 LK: … Niemcy zloci ludzie byli dla nas. nas bylo tam bardzo malo ale te lata to bardzo mile wspominam. nawet do tego stopnia we ja juw w mijdzyczasie po roku urodzilam córkj i se pani wyobrawa ze mieligmy ja mialam takiego majstra ze nawet do mnie nie zapowiadal sij przyjechal Z WONH w niedzielj i z synem swoim. I: naprawdj? LK: ta:k we ja oczy zrobilam. mama do mnie mówi gogcie do ciebie przyjechali. ja mówij CO? z Niemiec. mamusia mówi ty chyba war/ ja patrzj mój majster matko gwijta boska. no: bo to wtedy byly te slynne rynki nie? to przyjewdwali u nas tam se cog w mijdzyczasie i kupili nie? no i potem zahaczyl akurat i do mnie. w kawdym bhdx razie ja ich tam bardzo naprawdj.

Extract 4 UT: ostatnio przyjechalem tam z Berlina do Guben i bylo ciemno i nie poznalem w którh stronj mam igc weby wyjgc z dworca nie? i spytalem Niemca taki stal którjdy. no to on zaraz we zaraz mnie aw pod granicj podwiózl nie? nie bylo mu po drodze bo to widzialem ze mu nie bylo ale specjalnie mnie aw pod granicj .… takie mile akcenty nie?

Extract 5 EJ: ⫽znaczy ja pracuje¸ jestem w gwietlicy … to jest taka polsko – niemiecka – grupa dzieci one sh od chyba czterech lat do osiemnastu. i sh takie wlagnie

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zajjcia polsko – niemieckie. we przychodzh i niemieckie dzieci i polskie i potrafih sij razem ladnie bawic tam malowac czy: sh takie zajjcia wlagnie oni przywowh swój sprzjt z Goerlitz jakieg nie wiem lepienie w gli:nie: – takie te lepsze zaba:wki bo czy cog. i dzieci sij ladnie bawih. – nie ma nie ma jakig tam wlagnie takich we nie. bo to Polak czy to Niemiec ja sij z nim nie bjdj bawic. tylko razem.

Extract 6 EJ: na przyklad nieraz mygmy z kolewankh stalygmy w kolejce to byl sklep chyba – z odziewh to ta pani Niemka sij pytala na przyklad ile ta bluzka kosztuje na przyklad pijcdziesiht zloty to to jest dwadziegcia pijc marek. ona powiedziala CZTERdziegci marek a na przyklad ona nie umiala sobie przekalkulowac tego no i zaplacila tyle ile tamta pani ekspedientka napisala bo nawet nie umiala powiedziec – taka byla inteligentna – no i oszukala jh no i tak sij na nas patrzyla a ja do kolewanki no widzisz co ta pani robi? tew to jest czlowiek i czego go oszukala …

Extract 7 I: ⫽a Niemcy? IW: a Niemcy? – no wlagnie. – Niemcy tew w sumie przeszli nie? no bo wie pani to: – nie kawdy byl faszysth – dali w to sij wcihgnhc no i tew przeszli to co ja wie pani no – spotykam sij nieraz teraz tam – kiedyg gdzieg tam wykopali … no i tam byl tew list który mam. mam te rzeczy. list Niemca który w czterdziestym pihtym to zakopuje. no i pisze wlagnie we nie jest nazisth we nie jest – we jest katolikiem we we w czasie wojny byl w oddziale jakimg roboczym tam byl jakimg oficerem nie? …

Extract 8 RF: no i wie pani jak Niemcy ci byli to oni byli bardzo dobrzy. I: dobrzy byli? RF: BARdzo dobrzy. i to ich bylo gospoda:rstwo wie pani. i Nie:mka córkj miala ta Niemka bo mjwa juw nie miala ale miala i byli u niej krewni to wie pani oni sij dzielili wszy:stkim – oni nie patrzeli ze to Po:lak czy co:g …

Extract 9 SG: no z ciekawogci zawsze czlowiek ciekawy byl. jak to? co? tylko we to tylko w pierwszych w pierwszych czasie jak MY prowadziligmy sklep ten spowywczy cukierniczo spowywczy na poczhtku w czterdziestym dziewihtym roku w czterdziestym siódmym i ósmym to Niemcy na przez zielonh granicj przychodzili do nas o wywnogc. I: PRZYCHODZILI naprawdj? SG: tak. I: niech mi pan cog o tym opowie.


SG: no jak? nawet jeden taki mlody chlopak przez granicj bo to niektóre miejsca bardzo: latwo przejgc jak woda przychodzil do nas z plecakiem bral sloniny bral kielbasy czy wjdliny jakieg i inne rzeczy i niósl TAM.

Extract 10 IW: … tutaj na dole tu gdzie jestegmy tu byly tak Nysa mniej jakby pilnowana i tu przerzucali papierosy do Niemiec a z Niemiec zapalniczki przerzucali wie pani. I: powawnie? IW: no. i to tak jak taki silny chlopak to przerzucal paczkj papierosów przez grani/ przez tj przez Nysj. tak we umawiali sij nawet na godzinj i kiedy bjdh

Extract 11 AJ: pani kochana tu bylo ta:k we Niemcy mieli elektrownij my mieli wodj. i ludnogc zbierala panie takie warcie bo tam przewawnie w Niemczech to nie bylo warcia. i chodzili zalatwiali panie prhd. plecak bral panie wywnogci

Extract 12 BJ: … na przyklad córka byla w lutym takh sobie kurtkj wybrala i zabraklo nam pienihwków i ja mówij po polsku normalnie we na godzinkj mowe póltora⫽ TJ: ⫽rozumiejh wszystko⫽ BJ: ⫽nie ma sprawy dobrze. napisala tylko imij odwiesi:la tak tak no takie fajne. przynajmniej w tym. a gdzie w kawdym to nie wiemy. nie?

Extract 13 I: a chcialabyg studiowac w Niemczech? NO: tak. I: czemu? NO: poniewaw to jest cog nowego. polskie studia to jest yyy obojjtnie jaki wydzial ale to jest to samo. tam to jest cog innego cog nowego cog nowego do odkrycia cog takiego takiego innego. I: mchm NO: i: na przyklad teraz w liceum poszlam na profil jjzykowy i tam po dwóch latach do Euroschule. i na przyklad takie cog wlagnie mnie interesuje poniewaw tam bjdj mogla kontaktowac sij i z dziecmi z Guben i bjdh dzieci z Gubina i naprawdj mowna tak jakog znajomogci nawihzac to nie jest juw to samo co dzieci z Gubin a raczej⫽

7 Frames of Belonging: Crossing Local, National and Transnational Spaces1

In the previous chapter we focused on the voices of and about the neighbourhood, emphasizing the strategies which our informants were using to relate to their ‘neighbours’ across the river. This showed that, positively or negatively, on national borders people often invoked national categories as a reference point for placing the others: we/you the Germans vs we/you the Poles. By contrast, people on either side of the Saale river, which ceased to be a national border in 1990, nevertheless retained categories of otherness. No longer couched in national terms – since everyone was now a (re-united) German – other terms of reference replaced the national as key identifier: the federal state, the region, the town/village, or newly coined terms for easterners or westerners (Ossis vs Wessies; new/old federal staters). In this chapter we will investigate the ways in which people self-identify within and across the available spaces of public identification, drawing in turn on discourses of the local, the regional, the national or the transnational. We will introduce various models for conceptualizing the interaction between these layers, by differentiating between those which are embedding layers in complementary ways (the Russian doll model), or those which are more conflictual in nature. Continuing the arguments developed in Chapter 3, we will also point to the flexible and often paradoxical nature of these layered or overlapping identification discourses of individual informants. 178

Frames of Belonging 179

Researching cultural identity in Europe For post-1990 Eastern Germany, and for Poland in anticipation of, and in the aftermath of, May 2004, the European Union in particular has been, and is offering, a new transnational collective identity on a Western model, a new ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) which could resolve the traumatic divisions of the twentieth century caused by wars and cold wars. It could herald a dissolution of deep historical divisions such as those between Western European and Eastern European nations, including a weakening of ethnic identity markers with long and often problematic traditions such as, for example, ‘Germanic’ or ‘Slavonic’. But is this vision of a shared transnational space of identity taken up by those citizens who live along the fault-line of this division, in our case the border between Poland and Germany? Since there is widespread agreement in the social sciences that people hold multiple identities (the multi-disciplinary authors in Herrmann, Risse and Brewer, 2004 all share that assumption), there is in principle no reason why a European identity could not be one of several socio-political layers of identification. A person from Guben might construct her identity as a citizen from Guben, the new Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany, and the European Union, without experiencing these as conflictual, just as citizens from Gubin could construct their identities in relation to their respective local, regional, and national Polish and European layers. In that sense, they would be adopting a ‘Russian doll’ model of identity, where each small doll in turn is encircled by a larger one, with the largest doll – the European – offering a shared home for all the different dolls inside. Remaining with the metaphor of the Russian doll, they may, of course, miss out on one or more of the possible figurines – by ignoring one or another layer altogether. People may not identify with the federal state or the region, but nevertheless hold a strong local identity attached to their city (see, for example, Galasinska, Rollo and Meinhof, 2002); or they may bypass the national altogether and jump from the region to the supra-national. This may be caused by indifference to any one of the potential layers, but in principle missing out one layer does not disturb the consensual nesting of multiple identities. However, people may also experience some of the layers as inherently conflictual. Using the metaphor of an avalanche or an earthquake,

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some forms of identification may be perceived as incompatible or conflictual by their implications for one another: for example, holding a strong regional identity may be felt to be incompatible with a national one – a threat to the national interest and national cohesion from below (The earthquake model). This we have seen in many separatist movements, resulting, for example, in the break-up of the former Yugoslavian nation into several independent nation-states. In the German case, such an oppositional stance to the nation can be signalled quite openly as a rejection of post-1990 unification in the choice of a pronounced East or West-German identity. Or, as is the case in many discussions in the media and in everyday talk, the EU may be perceived as a threat to the nationstate from above (for an extensive discussion of different models of European identity see the contributions in Herrmann, Risse and Brewer, 2004, including Meinhof, 2004 and for an excellent summary, Risse, 2004: section IV). In our work we were not interested in ‘popping the identity question’ by asking people to tell us their conscious choices amongst offers of cultural identity, or rank them in some order of priority. Instead, as we explained in detail in Chapter 5, we used a highly indirect method of eliciting discourses and narratives. Through these we could identify patterns of context-sensitive positive and negative identification. Drawing on these texts allows us to investigate a series of questions which are of immense significance for the citizens of Europe: is the opportunity of a shared transnational space or identity taken up, or are traditional ethno-political boundaries between East and West still valid? What does Europe or being European actually mean, and where are the boundaries of that Europe? How do people construct their different positive forms of identification, and how do these interrelate or intersect with one another? Are there patterns which allow generalizations of similarity or difference within and across national boundaries? In analysing the results in relation to the different stimulus methods we used, let us repeat and expand on the discussion of pictorial European triggers in Chapter 5: ●

First, in using photographs of key locations and symbols of Guben and Gubin, we found that those triggers, which to us suggested a European dimension (especially images of EU-related projects in


●

●

the area), were interpreted by our informants as purely interregional and cross-national, and virtually never as European. Positive, negative or indifferent reactions to these triggers were thus directly encoded as corresponding discourses about the respective ‘Other’ – the Germans or the Poles on the other side of the river. Secondly, Europe or issues relating directly to Europe were rarely mentioned by anyone without any prompting. This was in sharp contrast to the frequent occurrence of local, regional and interregional reference points in the case of our German, and national and intra-regional reference points in the case of our Polish, informants. Thirdly, it was only in the self-identification section of our data that Europe featured in any significant way. But here the meaning with which Europe became invested again varied, sometimes focusing more on a cultural (European traditions) or a civic (EU and EU institutions) dimension, but equally often straddling both of these (for the civic/cultural distinction see Bruter, 2004).

Geographical demarcations showed a similar flexibility in our informants’ discourses. Sometimes German references to being European stopped at the border to Poland and emphasis was placed on the EU as a Western (even just northwestern) group of nations excluding Poland (see extract); sometimes its emphasis was specifically on the Eastern expansion. For Poles the meaning of Europe shifted from a notion of a Europe for which Poland is the very centre (return to the ‘heart of Europe’) – to a Europe of the West and particularly a Germanic West which, though economically desirable, was nevertheless imbued with anxieties about rights which might accrue to non-Poles as a result of European Union integration. In several cases reference to the identical phenomenon – as, for example, attitudes to the Euro, or, as in the example below, to Euro-inspired projects, shifted across all of these levels within the same conversation. In the next section we would like to demonstrate the ways in which our different stimulus methods shifted our informants’ narrative perspectives and attitudes about Europe. We will quote from three typical extracts from a 75-minute interview with GM, a middleaged woman who was born in pre-1945 eastern Guben, and who after division settled with her mother in the western part, today’s Guben.

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‘A true Guben woman, who was born in Guben, well, in what’s now Gubin’ In the first extract GM is responding to a picture cue: a pamphlet entitled Modellprojekt Eurostadt Guben–Gubin (model project Euro-city Guben–Gubin: see illustration 5.15) which lists different collaborative projects at different stages of realization, which are partly supported by the EU and the regional administrations on both sides of the border: Extract 1 GM, Female, middle generation, Guben GM: Yes, yes [laughs] The model project European town Guben and Gubin … Well, what can one say. Against the political mainstream … I’d say, yes, I have to put it very carefully … Well, then let me tell you that we are sick of hearing it. Mum will tell you the same, my sister and my family, We are true Gubeners and we are sick of hearing it. One is sick of hearing it. I am telling you this and I restrain myself in this institution because I am working here after all, I am employed here, and I have to … I am employed here and I restrain myself in this issue here in this institution. UM: Yes. GM: If only one of the deputies who are so keen on it would listen to what the citizens on the street say, they are sick of hearing it … It’s being forced politically, the citizen doesn’t support it, well, to a large extent, and those are the old Gubeners. In this first extract, GM gives an unsolicited account of where her main identity lies, namely that she is a woman from Guben. This selfidentification is sparked off by an official pamphlet advertising what is to her a deeply undesirable project, namely that of linking the two towns by various sets of projects. These include, amongst others, already existing infrastructural projects, such as the shared waste water plant built in Gubin, but with western aid, a new border crossing which at the time of the interview (autumn, 1999) was in the process of being built, and the plan for: … joint use of the historical island … in the Neisse [Polish territory] by the construction of two bridges from the German and Polish side, and creation of a public park as a recreation and meeting centre in order


to promote the cultural cooperation between both people. (Expo, 2000, leaflet, p. 8) This project not only upsets her and her family personally but, she claims, all the old Gubeners. Note her linguistic manoeuvres of constructing an ingroup: from the smaller ‘we’ which includes her mum, her sister and her family, she moves to an abstract generality: ‘one is sick of hearing it’ to the ‘citizen in the street’. She thus claims that her dislike of the project is shared by the people of Guben in general, though she finally qualifies this to those who are genuinely ‘Gubenians’. The outgroup, that is, those who support the project, are said to be ‘the political mainstream’, her colleagues in the municipal administration, and the deputies, and those others who are not genuinely Gubenians: Extract 2 GM, female, middle generation, Guben UM: Could you repeat that please? You are proud to be the only true Gubener… GM: Yes, in the management of the town of Guben, the Guben town administration, I am the only true Gubener. UM: I like that so much, it would make a good final sentence. GM: A true Guben woman, who was born in Guben, well, in what’s now Gubin. The pamphlet, issued by her own administration thus sets in motion all the rejection that she feels for this enforced collaboration between the two cities and nations. However, in the next extract, a different narrative context brings out a much more ambivalent assessment of the very same project. Extract 3 GM, female, middle generation, Guben UM: Yes, it’s difficult to get it going once the young people have left because one needs the people. Maybe that’s behind those European projects, maybe one tries to promote the east to establish new markets.

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GM: Yes, one tries to, it’s just that Gubin has the same problem, they have got a lot of unemployed people, too and they had to close their shoe factory and several other things, and these ideas to create a town centre on both sides, but there aren’t any citizens. UM: To populate it… GM: To populate it, and to bring life to it, that’s the problem that no one wants to acknowledge, you know. UM: I’ve heard a little bit about this island project and that seems to be going in the same directions that it is being pushed by the officials. It’s not that the Gubeners think, oh, wouldn’t it be nice to go to this island. GM: But they do, yes, but I am going there from the Polish side [laughs]. UM: I mean, it’s a very beautiful island. GM: Yes, and it was so nice for mum, when the island was opened to the Gubener for the first time, I think in 1997, and the army built a makeshift bridge, and we were able to go there from our side. UM: Really? GM: And I had mum with me of course, and we walked all around and she was able to sit there, yes, that was great. UM: And the theatre that’s here. It’s lovely, isn’t it, but maybe it’s foolish to think that there’d be enough money to ever rebuild it. GM: Yes, many would want that. In this extract the issue of the shared city centre is again touched upon, initially under the same institutional frame of a European project. This causes GM to reiterate the problematic aspects of such a plan. However, when the interviewer repeats the argument previously given by GM, namely that the island project is simply being pushed by officials, but not embraced by the population, GM contradicts her by pointing out that it is easy to go to the island from Gubin (since the bridge to the island from the Polish side was rebuilt by western money in the 1980s). But it is the evocation of the beauty of the island by the interviewer which suddenly changes GM’s accounts from the critical analysis of the political and institutional conditions she was giving until then, to the anecdotal. That reference makes her think of a happy day when during a special collaborative festival (Neisse-fest) a temporary bridge was erected from the western side and she and her mother were able to go there directly ‘from our side’.


Such moves between a rejection of (often EU-driven) projects at institutional level, and yet a parallel embracing of cultural or recreational values made possible as a result of these ventures, occurs frequently in our data. Hence under such contextual conditions where different experiences and memories come into play in the construction of our informants’ narratives, we find much more complex and often self-contradictory layering. In the last extract from the same interview, GM responds to the direct interview question about her preferences in identification, with a specific mention of the EU as a possible identifier: Extract 4 GM, female, middle generation UM: And what about the EU, this idea of Europe, what do you think about that, if you consider the western alliance first, and not think about the enlargement to the East just yet. GM: Er, it’s going to be good, this united Europe and well, I think it has to, it would be, yes, it should develop, yes, it would definitely be good in terms of economics, although I am saying that every state should keep its borders. UM: You’d prefer that, even when looking at the West? GM: Yes, but I don’t mean the Federal Republic, but the adjoining countries. UM: Of course, that’s what I was referring to as well. Thus, you’d like to have every state to have secure borders? GM: No, not the security, but the border as Germany. UM: As Germany… GM: Yes, well, the border as Germany. UM: And if you had to establish a hierarchy, you’d consider yourself a Gubener and then a German? GM: That’s right [laughs] and then a European. Yes. GM’s account of how she sees her own identity is straightforward: she is pro-European as long as it is a western alliance, pro-united Germany, and especially pro-Guben. Hence her model resembles the nesting circles of the ‘doll-in-the-doll’ model. However, if one looks at the breaks in her otherwise highly articulate speech patterns, it is easy to see that there are some very substantial hesitations, which are

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then further qualified by her insistence on the need to retain national borders.

Constructing multiple identities This sensitivity to context in narratives of identity can not only be observed in relation to different story triggers. In this part of our chapter we would now like to concentrate on the role which Europe plays in our informants’ discourses. We begin with a series of extracts from our Polish data, followed by those from the German data. As we pointed out before, Europe only featured in the most directive parts of the interview where we specifically thematized identity questions at various local, national and transnational levels. There is a sharp difference between our Polish and German informants as regards the perception of, and the attitudes towards, different identities offered up by the nationstate, the regions, the home town and the transnational community of Europe. The Polish stories For the people living in Polish Gubin, their overriding construction of identity is the national identity of being Polish. This Polish identity is almost always related to some ‘Other’, and for ‘Other’ read mainly ‘the Germans’. The European Union in this context is a group of nation-states, dominated by Germany, and thus arousing highly ambivalent feelings. Even the constructions at the non-national level are almost always ‘nationalized’: the people of Gubin are simply Poles living in Gubin. There is some sense of local identity, but it is subsumed by the more important national identification: being from Gubin means being Polish and any Gubinian identity forms part of that more salient national identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that none of the Polish citizens of Gubin ever experienced a united (though German) Guben on both sides of the river, there is no sense of a lost or potential future community which might subsume those two towns under the umbrella of a transnational structure. Official attempts at interregional, bi-national, and European level which suggest a Euro-region of Neisse-Spree, or a Euro-city Guben–Gubin, do not unsettle in any way the perceived division between those structures which matter: namely that between Poland on the one side and Germany on the other.


Here are two extracts from the narratives of members of the youngest generation: Extract 5 BG, male, youngest generation DG: Do you think that in one way or another one could speak of Guben and Gubin as of one town? BG: Absolutely no. DG: Why absolutely? BG: Because here it’s Gubin and over there it’s Guben. Here it’s Poland and over there it’s Germany. Extract 6 MG, male, youngest generation MG: Germans are always, in my view, punctual and orderly and have always been – I mean everything had to be in its place, and Poles can tell Germans and simply when he sees him, at least I feel that that when I can see a German, I don’t simply know that it’s a German, but I can feel it’s a German. It’s like he had it written on his back. And Poles and Germans, Guben and Gubin in my view should never be one town in the future. DG: Why not? MG: Too much separates them. DG: mmm. MG: Culture, language. The Gubinian identity for our Polish informants, though demarcated from their German neighbours in such decisive ways is not, however, accompanied by the expression of any civic pride or other form of positive emotions. One of our informants described the town as a ‘town of losers’, which had attracted people from all over Poland, but with no one taking any great stake in it. The oldest generation often expressed their emotional allegiance to the home towns in the East which they left or were forced to leave at the end of the war (for a discussion of this see Galasinski and Meinhof, 2002), but even the middle or younger generation who were born in Gubin or came to it

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as small children rarely construct a positive identity of belonging to their home town or region. Adopting the identity of a Gubinian is a positive construction only insofar as it implies being Polish, but a negative construction insofar as it means not being something else. The extract below shows this clearly in relation to ‘being European’. The choice of a Gubin identity here is not something TS aspires to, it’s something he is resigned to in the absence of a different, desired choice. Provincial Gubin, constructed negatively, is something he is condemned to. Extract 7 UT, male and MT, female, middle generation DG: … Who are you? UT: eeeeh, I would like to be a European, you know. DG: OK. And are you? UT: I would like to. I think I am just a person from Gubin. Nothing more. DG: [laughs]. OK. Fair enough. MT: You know this is exactly what it is. A similar thinking that for the time being we are … UT: What kind of European am I? One needs to speak a language. MT: Yes. Mmm. We are laughing that we are going to this Europe barefoot. It is also noteworthy that the Europe that TS is talking about is not necessarily associated with the EU; it is more reminiscent of the ‘return to Europe’, a slogan present in the Polish media after the ‘Polish revolution’ of 1989, where it referred to Europe as host of certain democratic and cultural values that Poland wanted and could espouse again. The European Union, however, does not seem to have much to do with this mythical Europe, even though almost universally the interviewees are in favour of joining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Across the board the European Union is perceived from two perspectives. On the one hand, the EU is a purely economic organization that will provide Poland with certain benefits once it has become a member. On the other hand it is an organization through which other nations, particularly Germans, could start dominating Poland, or Poland could be getting a raw deal. These two perspectives are often intertwined.


The particular historical context in which Gubin is situated is particularly conducive to perceiving the European Union as a platform from which Germans could demand the return of their lost properties in the present territories of Poland. Extract 8 HE, male, youngest generation HE: … The inhabitants of the member-states of the European Union will have the right to buy land. DG: mmm HE: … in Poland. and this seems to me a little in a sense dangerous. DG: Why? HE: Because after a time it could turn out that most of Poland belongs to the people of the West, and we have nothing to do here because we are bought out by them. DG: mm. HE: Just the land, you know. DG: mmm HE: And this is what I am afraid of simply. Let it last for tens of years, but they want to have us for themselves. DG: Who? HE: Well, the EU mainly – I am afraid of that from Germany. Extract 9 RI, male, middle generation RI: … they are assuring us here that there is no such possibility that the German might come here and take this away. But when we join the Union, and when the Union’s regulations are in force, one doesn’t know, does one? He will come and show the deed and will say: It’s mine. DG: mmm RI: I left it. DG: mmm. So are you in favour of joining the Union of against? RI: I mean, I am of course in favour of joining the Union, right? But these matters like property should be clearly settled before joining the Union? DG: So would you be against Germans being able to buy land here? DG: If it were on equal rights, that I shall be able to buy land in Germany. RI: I see, yes.

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RI: Then no problem. DG: I understand. RI: … but with a reservation that for example it’s now known that a German in Poland when we join the Union will be able to do everything, including work, and we in 10 years’ time. The apparent declaration that Germans could buy land in Poland as long as it is on a par with Poles buying land in Germany is immediately undermined by the assumption of the non-symmetrical rights of Poles and Germans. In other words, whatever happens PH assumes that Poles will be worse off. These constructions of the European Union are quite typical. Firstly they are heavily nationalized – the European Union is a group of nation-states, with Germany being the dominant one, and the principal economic threat to Poland. In the narratives there is no sense that Poland would join the Union as an equal partner, there is also no sense that there is an entity called the EU that transcends the sum total of its nationstate parts. Poland is constantly constructed as the poor relative of the European Union and Germany, a country that cannot put up a sufficient defence of its interests. These constructions are quite typical of the entire sample – right across the age spectrum. The threat of Germany coming back to Gubin, which is particularly strong in the case of the third generation, is then applied to the European Union as a potential platform for German endeavours in Poland. There is also no sense of constructing ‘us’ as Europeans. The nationalization of the European Union is good evidence of the lack of the European dimension of identities of our interviewees, which are dominated by the national identity. The interviewees are Poles, rather than Europeans, they are Poles rather than ‘Gubinians’. There was one attempt, however, of constructing Poles in terms of transnational identity, but that was done in terms of Slavs, rather than Europeans: Extract 10 NT, RT, youngest generation RT: But somehow the French were able to agree with Germans over there on the other side, but I think there was a financial factor, and there were not such animosities. After all, what Germans did in the East.


NT: But remember that the French are not Slavs. DG: Why are you saying there will never be a reconciliation? NT: Why am I saying that? Because DG: Why do you think that? NT: Because a German is Aryan and a Pole is a Slav. And it is so, so I don’t’ know, I don’t’ know. DG: Sure, I am not passing judgement. NT: It sounds so bad, but this is what I think. The inability of reconciliation is given the ultimate evidence. Poles are Slavs and Germans are Aryan – whatever that may actually mean. As we were once somewhat shockingly told by one of our culture brokers, someone who liked both the project and its German partner, the river Neisse is a borderline between two tectonic plates. On one side there are the Slavs, and on the other side there are the Germanic people, and those people have nothing to do with each other. And the cross-border co-operation between Poles and Germans should not fool us and make us forget this simple fact. It must be stressed that the explicit Slavonic self-identification occurred only once, although some of the west–east differentiations (also quite rare) could be seen as categorizing the world into the world of Slavs and non-Slavs. What is important here, however, is that, rarely or not, Poles have found a transnational identity which not so much unites them with the ‘rest of Europe’, but rather separates them from it. The potential of the European identity is that it would create some common ground for living with the German ‘arch-enemies’. And yet, instead of claiming this common ground, Poles opt for something that divides. If this is so, one could go further and see that the Slavonic identity is an extension of the Polish national identity that is constructed predominantly in reference to the German neighbour. If the Polish identity is constructed in opposition to Germanness, then the Slavonic identity is a useful and politically motivated tool with which to stress the opposition in a way that the European identity (one which is associated with the European Union) cannot be. To repeat, the identities constructed in the Polish interviews all have a clear core – Polishness. The other aspects of this identity, localized or transnational, cannot be seen as sitting in parallel, under or on top of this core. They are in one way or another ancillary to the articulation of the Polishness.

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The German stories In sharp contrast to the overriding emphasis on the national discourse of Polishness, and a concurrent mainly negative construction of town and region, German national identity appears in any number of contexts in our informants’ discourses. We found many different connotations, from the most positive and all-embracing to the more critical or even dismissive. The same is true for other layers of identity with the exception of the regional one, which is usually, though not always, positive. There is thus far less uniformity in the ways in which our German informants aligned themselves than in our Polish sample, and different combinations of positive or negative constructions of identity. Indeed, this lack of uniformity is one of the few generalizable outcomes across our German samples, not only across the different communities, but also if one looks at the individual communities separately. There is more common ground between our informants if one compares individuals from the same generations within each and across some of the communities, as we will show below. We will illustrate the range of options and combinations that we encountered with people living in the neighbouring town to Gubin, the German town of Guben. To narrow the sample down even further, we selected examples from those informants who had a positive identification with Europe. The extracts below cover three generations, but not individuals from the same family. Each of them identifies positively with more than one entity and in each a European identity features positively. They differ not only in the type of layering they wish to adopt, but also in the conceptualization of their ‘imagined’ Europe. Imagining Europe: a German is also a European In the first extract our informant opts for Germanness as his key identifier, but immediately goes on to embed this into the transnational context of being European: Extract 11 AE, Male, oldest generation, Guben Well, yes, I’m a German, yes, well, we, I am for German unity, am most of all happy that it came about without violence, nicht ? [nicht ⫽ German ‘tag’ form inviting minimal response] Of course if


one is a German, one has to be a European, nicht. We’re now keen on the fact that the borders are no longer so fixed nicht. We have seen this for ourselves on our trip to France just now, and there no more border controls. Later the same informant differentiates this desirable Europe as a Western community from an expanding Europe which would include Poland: Extract 12 AE, continued … the risk which one incurs [by Eastern expansion of the EU] from the State’s perspective is indisputable as far as criminality is concerned. And that [integration of] with Poland, I mean, Poland, here we are now on the European border, the EU border, that will stay like this for a while. I think the pre-condition that the, that Poland enters the EU is also the Polish structure, how they are going to manage that, the preparation, and surely also the wealth differential. In the extracts above, especially in the first one, there is an interesting switch between the personal and the impersonal pronoun. Although the connotations of the choice between ich, wir and man is less marked in the German language than it is in English ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’, or ‘one’, our informant switches from the personal ich to the impersonal man at that point where he appeals to what he claims as a general truth: namely that to be German means that one has to be a European at the same time. But this Europe ends at least for the time being on the border to Poland, for reasons which are again stated as general truth (‘it is indisputable’). Only when he considers the possibility of a Polish entry to the EU does he switch back to expressing a personal opinion. Brandenburg in Europe By contrast, the informant in our next set of extracts (female/middle generation) specifically expresses her wish for a better connection with Poland. Her reasoning is strategic: she has instrumental reasons for wanting a united Europe, in particular because of her strong allegiance to her region – the new federal state of Brandenburg – which she sees as economically interdependent with the Polish neighbours.

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Emotionally, it is on the one hand the newly discovered multicultural diversity of Europe as part of a global vision which attracts her, and on the other the retention of an Eastern German (Ossi) rather than the adoption of a united German identity:

Extract 13 CH, female, middle generation, Guben CH: Brandenburgian, yes I’m a Brandenburgian UM: Did you feel like that during GDR times? CH: No, only now, that didn’t exist during GDR times, at that time I was a Gubenian … Now we are Brandenburgians. Later on in the same stretch of narrative, she qualifies this further by giving reasons for these choices:

Extract 14 CH: Gubenian or Brandenburgian. Brandenburgian because I want to remain an Ossi [⫽East German] UM: … because you CH: … want to remain an Ossi UM: … want to remain an Ossi. Ah so being a Brandenburgian implies also to be an Ossi. CH: Yes, and when I say German, then it’s all … [trails off] Here our informant provides an unsolicited explanation for her strong identification with the new federal state of Brandenburg. To her, this signals her identity as a citizen from the former GDR. Her deliberate and somewhat defiant and self-ironizing use of the world ‘Ossi’ underlines the strength of the constructed identity since the term ‘Ossi’ as well as its counter-part ‘Wessi’ have aquired mainly negative connotations, and are used in many even more negative compounds such as Jammer-Ossi (Whiny Ossi and its counter-part the Besser-Wessi, the ‘know-all’ from the West). The incomplete utterance ‘and when I say German, then it’s all …’ suggests a rejection of a united German identity, something which is confirmed by other sections of her discourse, but by leaving the sentence unfinished it also suggests some unease about voicing too strong a rejection of


being German. Her attitude to Europe is positive, as the next extract shows, but with different motivations. Extract 15 UM: And Europe. Has that got a positive feel to it? CH: Yes … it should be open towards Poland, but not because of anything particularly to do with Poland as such, but in general because it would help our region. UM: For economic reasons? CH: Yes, it would help us a lot. Otherwise it doesn’t matter, whether they are Poles or French, in general I like them all. UM: Yes, but I mean the EU and the Euro, that doesn’t have to be… CH: The [common] currency, that doesn’t have to be. I’m rather more against that, but otherwise I’m in general open for other people. UM: Because you like travelling? CH: I’m interested in that. I’m interested in the life-style, nicht, in what they do, how they live, and the people themselves … we had many of them here, we had a Frenchman here for three days, and a woman form Slovakia. Slovakia is also very beautiful, yes so it’s more for economic reasons that I would say, let’s immediately integrate Poland into the EU, that can only be good for our region, because those around Berlin, Potsdam region, they’re in a good position, that’s not feasible from here, and we don’t want to abandon our Heimat. This identification with Europe and the region of Brandenburg, which effectively bypasses the national level, occurs several times amongst our informants. In this particular collocation, allegiance to the newly created structure of the federal state of Brandenburg implies allegiance to a former GDR identity and a negative identity construction for being post-unification German. This combination of positive identifications at regional and transnational, and a negative identification at national level is echoed by several of our informants from the Thuringian town of Hirschberg, but in both locations it occurs only in the discourses of the middle generation. Boring Guben, exhilarating cities of Europe The last extracts in this section come from the conversation with two young Gubenians (a brother and sister interviewed together).

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Their most positive identification is that of being European, but they strongly dissociate themselves from Guben (and even more so from Gubin) and the immediate region. As in the first extract, but contrary to the second, their Europe is a western concept coinciding with the then current EU territory. Interestingly, their highly personal discourse switches at that point to an impersonal formulation (‘Well, when one says Europe, one usually means the western part, not so much the East’). But as the extracts and the unquoted parts of their conversations show, this Europe is a specifically metropolitan version – a Europe of big and attractive cities – which is part of a world of cities. Even the otherwise negative or indifferent references to Poland become positive in a specifically metropolitan context. In another section of the interview SG says ‘Warsaw is almost like Berlin’: Extract 16 SG and TG, younger generation, Guben [Talking about the centre of Guben, which they call ‘the ‘triangle’] SG: Well, that’s what most call the centre, as if, well, Berlin street… TG: Berlin Street, Frankfurt Street, that bit before the border up to the railway station. UM: And what does one do in the triangle, at the triangle, on the triangle, in the triangle? SG: At the triangle you do nothing, there it is usually… TG: There are the drunkards. Well… That’s what its SG: There are lots of park benches, under the trees, and there the alcoholic are sitting… [continues to talk about the alcoholics and the absence of a proper shopping area] UM: And I mean, would you like that. Is it that what you’re missing? SG: No, not really, because then one would always have to stay in Guben, and this way one can go to Cottbus or Berlin. That’s not bad. But only to do shopping that’s not it either. At least not for me. UM: And where do you like going most of all? TG: Berlin! UM: Berlin? SG: When I want to go shopping? UM: No, I mean in general when you want to get out.


SG: Well, to get out of Guben I like Berlin best of all, because there I know lots of people and one can do things. It’s not as boring as Guben. Whereas in the above extract the expression of the informants’ preference for Berlin came up spontaneously in the context of their dislike of their own town and region, the stated preference for being a European in the next and last quote occurs in response to the selfidentification question posed towards the end of our conversations to all our interviewees. As we mentioned before, European references did not occur spontaneously in the discourses of our informants, irrespective of whether Europe or the EU turned out to be a positive or a negative reference point. Without wanting to exaggerate the significance of this omission, it does suggest that European identity may not be as high up on the experiential agenda, whether positive or negative, as other more immediate and possibly more ‘lived’ alternatives. The unambiguous choice by our informants of an European identity in response to a specific question about preferences is interesting in this respect, since it does throw light on a possible bias which questionnaires may create by thematizing certain areas. In such instances, a less directive mode of enquiry will provide alternative perspectives and possible correctives to the overall results. Extract 17 UM: Is there anything you are more likely to identify with? Or what would be your number one, if we had to do a hit parade: who am I? F: Europe. UM: Ah Europe, you think? SG: Yes. UM: Yes, yes, yes, you think the same. And what sort of Europe? SG: Well, when one says Europe, one usually means the Western part, not so much the East. UM: Ah, so more like the current EU. SG: EU UM: OK, that kind of Europe. But what about this opening to the East – they’re all waiting! SG: No, that doesn’t interest me, really. F: No, not me either. That doesn’t interest me …

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UM: And Brandenburg as your reference point [Interviewees shake their head in denial] No, I see. SG: No, not Brandenburg … Dresden, that I could imagine, Dresden is a beautiful city. UM: Dresden, hm S: That’s also got an eastern country next to it, the Czech Republic, that I could imagine, but otherwise … [trails off] The extracts in this section were meant to illustrate some of the different and unpredictable collocations of multiple identities which our German informants construct for themselves: ●

●

●

firstly, a national identity which simultaneously implies a transnational Western one. secondly, a regional and local identity where a strong form combines with a transnational Eastern and Western concept, but by-passes the national level. thirdly, a weak local, regional and national identity combined with a strong metropolitan transnational western construction.

However, to summarize the results in this form gives the misleading impression that (a) these are fixed and unambiguous categories of collective identities, and (b) that people HAVE or POSSESS these rather than construct them discursively in particular contexts. Neither of these is the case. All identity labels are problematical. Depending on the discursive contexts in which they appear, they signify differently and their evaluation might shift accordingly. Even the short extracts reproduced here made that clear. Although in the German section we only selected quotes from people who had positive identification as Europeans, the meaning of that Europe was very different for each of them. In the first example – the man from the oldest generation – it was a clearly Western construct closely related to the EU before enlargement. For the woman from the middle generation, it combined co-operation with Poland with a universalist culture – and life-style – oriented multicultural space. For the youngest generation it was a Europe of cities – a global Western metropolitan culture. If we had added to these other examples from those informants who are expressly ambivalent in their attitudes to Europe, we could have


demonstrated even more complex mappings of identity spaces. The expression of positive or negative feelings and attitudes about Europe or things European is clearly not restricted to an abstract collectivity, but is much more concretely related to the associations which people form in particular contexts. These are not fixed once and for all, but often appear in tension with one another, even during one particular interview session. So even if we make allowances for shifting meanings of abstract collectivities such as Germany or Poland or Europe under different contextual conditions, we cannot restrict our enquiry to the level of consciously expressed attitudes. Such a limitation would not allow for the complex and fluid ways in which people construct and confirm identifications at discursive level through the lexico-grammatical choices that they make in everyday talk and storytelling. From these discursive constructions we may well draw different and more ambivalent conclusions than self-declaration or conscious self-assignment to particular group formations would indicate. We have shown in Chapter 4, that the strains of coming to terms with the discreditation and disappearance of the GDR created discursive breaks, discontinuities and contradictions in the narratives of her former citizens, but most noticeably in those of the middle generation. We have also demonstrated that the ways in which people expressed themselves was as important as the content of their narratives. The Polish informants constructed their identities in more homogenous fashion than the Germans ones, with a much more pronounced collective national identity, and the perception of one overwhelming ‘Other’ in the form of the Germans. But even their discourses reveal more complexities and contradictions in the realization of such overall constructions than the expression of opinion and belief alone would indicate. For our German respondents with their highly problematical and deeply divided recent history, there is no collective construction of identity which easily combines the communities at the national or transnational level. In sharp contrast to the Polish articulation of identity as a continuing enactment of separation from the German ‘Other’, the identity constructions of our German informants did not show any such marked dividing lines. This is true for every one of the demarcations of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’ that appeared in the narratives. In this chapter we only cited a few examples of the criss-crossing of positive and negative identifications which our informants created

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during our 60 to 80 minute conversations. The variability of these maps of multiple identities could easily be demonstrated by quoting extracts from our other set of communities on the former German/ German border. Only the latter sentiment, a positive identity based on the region and labelled as loyalty to a new federal state, unites almost all of our informants from the former East, though this was particularly strong amongst the middle generation. The replacement of the former East German administrative units of ‘Bezirke’ by the new political structures of the federal system may well offer some form of resolution to this generation for the disturbances created by the loss of their former state, and for their unease with a united Germany. But even amongst the West German informants, the regional identity came out strongest, though in their case it was not the federal state of Bavaria, but the culturally and linguistically distinctive area of Upper Franconia.

Conclusions We have come to the conclusion that the most meaningful construction of identity by our Polish informants remains that of being Polish. In the case of our German informants there is, however, evidence of a multi-layering of different forms, with the national dimension considerably less important than the regional, and no more important than the town/village or even the transnational levels. In that sense, post-war Germans fit better the postmodern concept of multiple and hybrid identities than their Polish neighbours. However, these multiple identities do not map as concentric circles of ever-widening mutually compatible circles. Neither the Polish nor the German data suggested that a strong national identity by definition challenged a European one, nor was there evidence for the opposite assumption, namely that a strong national identity went hand-in-hand with a strong transnational one. The context in which the different identity markers appeared proved significant in that European or transnational identity markers other than those relating to their immediate neighbours hardly ever appeared spontaneously in any of our informants narratives. These different discursive engagements with collective identities may contain the clue for the discussions in political science and social psychology about the relationship between peoples’ national and transnational identities, where one group is arguing for the


‘antagonistic version, whilst another suggests a positive correlation between different layers of identity (Ingelhart and Reif, 1991; Ingelhart, 1997), especially between various national and European identities (see for example, Bruter, 2004; Castano, 2004; Duchesne and Frognier, 1995; Mlicki and Ellermers, 1996).2 What our research shows is that because collective identifications at regional, crossregional, national or transnational levels are complex, potentially multi-layered and often self-contradictory, they cannot be placed on oppositional scales of mutual antagonism or complementarity. More traditional forms of identity research, such as the questionnaires on which the Eurobarometer is based, or even the more complex experimental designs in social psychology, still seem to build on the assumption that identity or identities are stable, albeit multi-layered formations (Herrmann, Risse and Brewer, 2004). If we wish to account for the complexities of the more fluid, and context-dependent alternatives, such methods need to be complemented by other more qualitative research designs based on the analytical approaches of ethnography and discourse analysis. With our research we can show that identity is a discursive construct, highly sensitive to the contexts in which the constructions are taking place and responsive to the different stimuli that trigger storytelling. Appendix: originals of Polish and German extracts Extract 1 GM: Ja, ja. Modellprojekt Eurostadt und Guben, und Gubin, und … GM: Hm. Ja, was soll man sagen … Entgegen … der … politischen Linie.., will ich mal jetzt sagen, ja, da muß ich mich sehr vorsichtig ausdrücken … Ja, dann sag ich Ihnen, daß wir’s nicht mehr hören können. Daß wir’s, das wird ihnen Mutti auch sagen, meine Schwester, meine Familie, wir sind echte Gubener und wir können das nicht mehr hören. Man kanns nicht mehr hören. Das sag ich ihnen so, und ich halte mich im Hause zurück, weil ich nun mal hier arbeite, angestellt bin, das muß ich auch, und da kommt dann auch wieder der Zwang, den eigentlich keiner gewollt hat, man muß arbeiten gehen, ja, man braucht seinen … Lebensunterhalt, will ich mal sagen. Ich bin hier angestellt und halte mich also … in diesem Punkt hier im Hause zurück. UM: Ja GM: Aber wenn einer von diesen Abgeordneten, die das hier so forcieren, und auch, Ja … nur mal hören würden, was der Bürger draußen sagt, die können’s nicht mehr hören… Es wird nur politisch forciert, der Bürger steht nicht dahinter, also, ein großer Teil, ja und das sind die alten Gubener.

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Extract 2 UM: Jetzt muß Sie direkt jetzt bitten, das nochmal zu sagen, weil, können Sie das nochmal Wiederholen? Daß Sie hier stolz drauf sind, daß Sie die einzige waschechte Gubenrin sind. GM: Ja, als, ja, im Leitungsteam der Stadt Guben, der Stadtverwaltung Guben bin ich die einzige waschechte GubenerinUM: Das hat mir jetz so gefallen, dachte ich, das wäre so’n schöner Schlußsatz. GM: -waschechte Gubenerin, die in Gubin auch geboren ist, also, jetzt in Gubin geboren ist.

Extract 3 GM: Ja, man versucht es ja, nur Gubin hat ja das gleiche Problem, die haben ja jetzt auch sehr viel Arbeitslose, ja, haben ja auch Fabriken, hab ich jetzt gehört, die Schuhfabrik zugemacht, und Verschiedene andere Dinge, und jetzt auf beiden Seiten, zwar ein Stadtzentrum zu entwickeln, aber die Bürger sind nicht da UM: Um das überhaupt zu bevölkern.GM: Zu bevölkern, zu beleben, das wird das Problem, das will ja keener wahrhaben, nich … UM: Weil ich hab jetzt so’n bißchen gehört von diesem Inselprojekt auch, das läuft dann in die selbe Richtung rein wahrscheinlich, daß da irgendwas wieder praktisch forciert wird. Also, es ist nicht so, daß sie jetzt als Gubener irgendwie denken, ach, wär das schön, jetzt auf die Insel zu gehen. GM: Doch, doch, ja, doch, aber ich geh auch von der polnischen Seite rein, ich - (Lacht) UM: Ich mein, diese Insel ist natürlich sehr schön, GM: Ja, ja, und das war auch für Mutti sehr schön, wie wir dann, ich glaube es war ’97, wie die Brücke, wie die Insel dann das erste Mal für die Gubener aufgemacht wurde, da wurde dann so’ne Pontonbrücke gelegt, von der Armee, von unserer Seite konnten wir dann raufgehen. UM: Ach tatsächlich. GM: Und da hatte ich natürlich Mutti auch im Gepäck, wie wir alles abgelaufen sind und sie sich dorthin setzen konnte, doch es war schön., ein Supererlebnis. UM: Dieses Theater, das hier steht, ist das, ist das im Krieg zerbombt worden oder wodurch ist das? GM: Da müssen sie Mutti fragen, das weiß ich nicht. UM: weil das ist ja zauberhaft schön, aber das ist wahrscheinlich illusorisch zu denken, daß da Gelder da wären, um so was wieder aufzubauen. GM: Das würden sich viele wünschen. Ja…

Extract 4 UM: Und so mit der EU, hat sich das nun, dieser ganze Europa-Gendanke, ist der nun, wie ist der nun bedeckt bei Ihnen, also, wenn man da jetzt mal dran denkt, zunächst mal, also, westliches Bündnis, jetzt maldas ausklammern, daß es jetzt nach Osten ja auch erweitert werden soll.


GM: Öh, das wird gut, also, dieses ganze einheitliche Europa, das ist schon, also, ich sehs gut, bin der Meinung, es muß, es wäre, ja doch, es sollte sich entwickeln, doch, wirtschaftlich wäre es auf alle Fälle gut, wobei ich dann auch wieder sage, jeder Staat sollte seine Grenzen behalten. UM: Ist Ihnen dann schon lieber, auch nach Westen gesehen? GM: Ja, aber ich meine jetzt nicht die Bundesrepublik, sondern jetzt die angrenzenden Länder. UM: Ja, natürlich, so mein ich das schon auch. Also, sie würden lieber, daß also jeder Staat, auch die Grenzen so’n bissel als sichere Grenzen...? GM: Nein, nicht die Sicherheit, sondern die Grenze als Deutschland. UM: Als Deutschland. GM: Ja also, die Grenze als Deutschland. UM: Wenn Sie jetzt so’ne Größenordnung schaffen würden, dann sind Sie in erster Linie Gubener und dann Deutsche? GM: ja, [lacht], genau. Und dann Europäerin.

Extract 5 DG: a czy myglisz we teraz w jakig sposób mowna mówic o Gubinie i Guben jako o jednym miegcie? AH: nie: absolutnie: DG: dlaczego absolutnie? AH: bo tu jest Gubin tam jest Guben. tu jest Polska tam sh Niemcy.

Extract 6 LF: Niemcy sh no zawsze byli moim zdaniem punktualni porzhdni zawsze byli to znaczy u nich wszystko musialo byc na kawdym miejscu yy po prostu Polak odrównia Niemca i po prostu jak go widzi to bynajmniej ja tak to odczuwam ze jak widzj Niemca to po prostu nie wiem ze to jest Niemiec ale czuje ze to jest Niemiec. jak mial no wywieszone na z tylu na plecach Niemiec. i Polacy i Niemcy Guben Gubin moim zdaniem nie powinny byc nigdy znaczy teraz w przyszlogci jednym miastem. DG: dlaczego? LF: wlagnie duwo ich dzieli: DG: mchm LF: kultura: jjzyk:

Extract 7 DG: … kim pan jest? UT: … eeee chcialbym byc Europejczykiem wie pan? DG: no? a jest pan? UT: chcialbym. no myglj we tylko Gubinianinem. nic wijcej. DG: [lacht] OK, dobra. aha MT: wie pan co we to chyba jest tak samo wlagnie. to jest chyba podobne myglenie we na razie to my jestegmy UT: a gdziew Europejczykiem: trzeba jjzyk znac.

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MT: tak. mhm wlagnie sij gmiejemy we idziemy do tej Europy ale trochj na bosaka jeszcze.

Extract 8 HE: … czlonkowie mieszkancy tych panstw nalewhcych do Unii Europejskiej bjdh mieli prawo wykupu ziem DG: mhm HE: w Polsce. i mi sij wydaje we to tew jest trochj takie: w pewnym sensie dla nas niebezpieczne. DG: dlaczego? HE: no bo: po jakimg czasie mogloby sij okazac we wijkszogc Polski nalewy do do ludzi z Zachodu i praktycznie my tu nie mamy nic nic do szukania bo jestegmy jestegmy przez nich wykupieni DG: mchm HE: albo chociaw same ziemie nie? DG: mchm HE: takwe tego sij boje we oni po prostu: niech to trwa nawet dziesihtki lat ale oni chch nas w pewnym sensie jakog sobie przygarnhc. DG: kto? HE: no: Unia Europejska glównie wlagnie obawiam sij tego ze ze strony Niemiec.

Extract 9 RI: … tu na przyklad zapewniajh ze to jest nie ma takiej mowliwogci weby Niemiec przyszedl i zabral to. no ale gdy wejdziemy jest cihgle to ale. gdy wejdziemy do Unii kiedy wejdh wejdziemy w te przepisy unijne: no nie wiadomo? on przyjdzie i pokawe akt notarialny i powie to jest moje DG: mchm RI: ja to zostawilem. DG: mchm to jest pan za wejgciem do Unii czy przeciw? RI: to znaczy: ja jestem oczywigcie za wejgciem do Unii nie? ale weby to byly te sprawy yyy ziemi powiedzmy tego wlasnogci wyraxnie uregulowane przed przysthpieniem do Unii⫽ DG: ⫽ to bylby pan przeciwko temu weby Niemcy mogli tutaj ziemie kupowac? RI: jeweli by to bylo na równych prawach ze ja bjdj mógl kupic ziemie w Niemczech⫽ DG: ⫽ no tak. tak RI: to proszj bardzo: DG: rozumiem RI: ale z zastrzeweniem bo na przyklad jeweli chodzi o to na przyklad juw z góry dzisiaj wiemy ze Niemiec w Polsce gdy wejdziemy do Unii bjdzie mógl robic wszystko: wlhcznie z praca a my za okres dopiero dziesijciu lat.

Extract 10 RT: no jakog ci Francuzi z Niemcami tam po drugiej stronie sij dogadali ale to myglj czynnik finansowy tez mial no i nie bylo aw takich zadrawnien nie? no przeciew na terenach wschodnich to co Niemcy robili.


[interview interrupted] NT: ale pamijtaj ze Francuzi to nie Slowianie. [interview interrupted] DG: dlaczego pani mówi ze nigdy nie bjdzie pojednania? NT: dlaczego tak mowie? poniewaw⫽ DG: dlaczego pani tak mygli? NT: bo Niemiec jest Aryjczykiem a Polak jest Slowianinem: i to jest takie nie. to jest takie ja wiem ja wiem z⫽ DG: ⫽ dobrze dobrze ja tego nie oceniam⫽ NT: ⫽ ze to xle brzmi ale ale ale tak uwawam.

Extract 11 AE: Naja, also ich bin Deutscher, ja, nicht, wir, bin für die Einheit Deutschlands und erfreut, vor allen Dingen, dass das so gewaltlos abgegangen ist, nicht. Natürlich, wenn man Deutscher ist, muss man auch Europäer sein, nicht. Uns liegt ja daran nun, dass die Grenzen nun nicht mehr so starr sind, nicht. Wir haben das ja auch schon erlebt bei unserer Fahrt nach Frankreich jetzt und es gibt keine Kontrollen mehr.

Extract 12 AE: … das Risiko das man damit auch eingeht, von seiten des Staates, ist natürlich unbestritten, bezüglich der Kriminalität. Und na das mit Polen, ich mein Polen, wir sind ja jetzt so an der Europagrenze, an der EU-grenze, dass wird ja noch ein Weilchen so bleiben. Ich glaube Vorraussetzung, dass die, dass Polen der EU beitritt ist ja auch die polnische Struktur, wie sie das bewerkstelligen, die Vorbereitung, und sicher auch ein bisschen das Wohlstandsgefälle.

Extract 13 CH: Brandenburger, ja ich bin Brandenburger. UM: Was das schon in der DDR-Zeit so oder … ? CH: Ne, das ist erst jetzt, das gabs ja zu DDR-Zeiten nicht, da war ich eben Gubener … Jetzt sind wir Brandenburger

Extract 14 CH: Gubener oder Brandenburger. Brandenburger deshalb, weil ich Ossi bleiben möchte. UM: Weil Sie … ? CH: Ossi bleiben möchte. UM: Ossi bleiben möchte. Also Brandenburg bedeutet Ossi Zu sein auch. CH: Ja, und wenn ich jetzt sage deutsch, dann ist ja alles. … [trails off]

Extract 15 UM: Und dann Europa? Ist das positiv belegt bei Ihnen?

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CH: Ja … Nach Polen hin sollte (es) offen sein, aber nicht jetzt unbedingt wegen Polen, sondern allgemein, weils für unsere Region jetzt helfen würde. UM: Aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen. CH: Uns würde das wirklich sehr gut helfen. Ansonsten ist es egal, ob das jetzt Polen sind oder Franzosen, ich mag allgemein alle. UM: Ja, aber ich mein, pro-EU und so gemeinsame Währung, das ist nicht unbedingt da? CH: Währung muss nicht unbedingt sein, da wär ich eigentlich mehr dagegen, aber ansonsten, ich bin allgemein sehr offen für andere Menschen … UM: Weil Sie gerne reisen … CH: Das interessiert mich. Mich interessiert auch so die Lebensart, nicht was die da machen, wie die da leben und auch die Leute an sich … wir hatten ja unu viele hier, wir hatten einen Franzosen schon mal hier drei Tage, und auch ne Slowakin, Slowakei ist auch wunderschön, ja also das ist mehr aus wirtschaftlilchen Gründen,dass ich sagen würde, also sofort Polen eingliedern in die EU, das kann unserer Region nur aufwärts helfen, weil wir wirklich hier in … um Berlin rum, Potsdamer Region, die sind noch gut dran, aber das ist von hier nicht machbar und wir wollen unsere Heimat halt auch nicht verlassen.

Extract 16 (talking about the center of Guben, which they call ‘the ‘triangle’ SG: Also, was man, also das bezeichnen die meisten als Zentrum, aber ob’s nun ja … Berliner straße … halt da … TG: Berliner Straße, Frankfurter Straße, denn da vor der Grenze und so zum Bahnhof hoch. UM: Und was macht man da im Dreieck? Am Dreieck, auf dem Dreieck, im Dreieck? SG: Also am Dreieck macht man gar nichts, da is es meistens … TG: Da sind die Säufer … Ach das heißt so, also das is so’ne. SG: Da sind’n Haufen Parkbänke, so unter Bäumen und da sitzen meist die Alkoholiker …[continues to talk about the alcoholics and the absence of a proper shopping area] UM: Und ich mein, hättet ihr das gerne? Is das was, was euch abgeht oder is … SG: Nö eigentlich nicht, weil dann müßte man ja immer in Guben bleiben und so kann man nach Cottbus oder Berline fahren. Is schon nicht schlecht [alle lachen] Aber nur zum einkaufen ich meine, das bringts auch nicht. Also für mich nicht. UM: Und wo gehst du am liebsten hin? TG: Berlin. UM: Berlin. SG: Also wenn ich einkaufen … UM: Nö überhaupt so, wenn man raus will. SG: Also raus aus Guben, da fahr ich am liebsten nach Berlin, weil da kenn ich viele Leute und na da kann man was machen. Also es is nicht so langweilig, wie in Guben.


Extract 17 UM: Gibts da irgendwas, womit ihr euch da eher identifizieren könnt? Older was wär denn Nr. Eins, wenn wir jetzt ‘ne Hitparade aufstellen müßten, wer bin ich? TG: Europa! UM: Europa meint ihr? SG: Ja! UM: Ja, ja, bei Dir auch? Und und was, was in Europa. SG: Ja, wenn man Europa sagt, meint man meist auch den westlichen Teil, nich so den Osten UM: Also, eh mehr so EU jetzt im Moment? SG: EU! UM: Also, dieses Europa. Und und so jetzt mit dieser ganzen Öffnung nach Osten, die stehen da alle ja und warten drauf. SG: Ja, interessiert mich eigentlich nicht. TG: Nee, mich eigentlich auch nicht. Also, das interessiert mich nicht richtig. … UM: Und so Brandenburg als Bezugspunkt? [Interviewees shake their head in denial Nee, nicht.] SG: Nee, Brandenburg über … UM: Nee! Und das andere … ? SG: Dresden Könnte ich mir noch vorstellen. Dresden is ‘ne schöne Stadt. UM: Dresden, hm. SG: Hat man auch ’n östliches Land, Tschechien gleich dran oder so. Ja, das könnte ich mir noch vorstellen, aber ansonsten … [trails off]

Notes

2 The Language of Belonging 1. The possibility of avoiding a need to talk about deeply uncomfortable facts was, of course, provided by our method. Since we were not interested in the ways in which people would defend themselves against charges, but rather in self-selected discursive constructions of their identities, we did not ask or challenge people, but only reacted to their cues. Hence deeply hurtful, guilty or surpressed memories of pre-war and war times by our informants could be avoided altogether, or would only surface in nonlexical phenomena of talk – such as hesitations, broken off sentences, avoidance strategies – when they themselves provided the narrative context (but see Holly 2002 for a more explicit thematization of the Third Reich on the German/Czech border).

4 Stories of Belonging and Identification 1. Original German: ‘gerade Tatsachen gibt es nicht, nur Interpretationen’ (Nietzsche 1965/1844–1900: 903).

5 Photography and the Discourses of Memory and Identification 1. Even in referencing the regional level it proved significant when Frankonians referred to Thuringians as ‘Saxons’ – a label they rightly reject, since Saxony is a separate federal state with an often ridiculed dialect; or when Thuringians referred to Upper-Frankonians as Bavarians, a political nomenclature since Bavaria is the federal state to which Frankonia belongs, but not an acceptable label for Frankonians on the basis of their distinct dialect and other cultural traditions. 2. Ingrid is not alone in her sense of astonishment here. The interviewer herself together with many ‘Westerners’ who had grown up in this area during the time of the divided Germany stressed their amazement of achieving a reversed vision onto their own well-known territory once the border had disappeared. This can partly be explained by the topography of Tiefengrün and Hirschberg. The lower part of the long stretched out village of Tiefengrün (also called ‘Untertiefengrün’) consists basically of houses built on either side of one asphalted road which drops down a steep hill for about 2 kilometres and ends at the mill and the river. From there the larger neighbouring Hirschberg, with its omnipresent factory clock and the castle on the rock behind it were powerful visual landmarks for the people of Tiefengrün as well as for those of Hirschberg. 208

Notes 209

3. In IR’s family we have an instance of sharp discontinuities between oldest and middle generation, and similarity between middle and younger. IS’ mother who still lives in Tiefengrün, expressed extremely negative views about the opening of the border, and the people from ‘over there’, even though she has a friend in Hirschberg who regularly picks her up in her car and drives her around, whereas one of her daughers whom we also interviewed shared the positive values and attitudes of her mother. One further daughter currently studies at a university in the east.

6 The Voices of Neighbourhood 1. It must be noted, however, that the two Polish corpora differed somewhat in that the overwhelming presence of the German threat in the Gubin corpus was not mirrored in the Zgorzelec one. We think this might be to do with the fact that Zgorzelec is constructed as a town organism in very negative terms, as quasi-town, not a real one, in contrast with the beautiful Görlitz. Secondly, the border crossing in Görlitz–Zgorzelec is one of the major crossings between Poland and Germany, attracting much crime such as smuggling. The general undesirability of Zgorzelec, together with the concerns of the day, seems to suppress the possibility of the narrative of the threat of Germans ‘coming back’ to their households. Gubin seems to be the opposite, relatively more attractive architecturally and with a quiet local border crossing seen to be more desirable for ‘reclaiming’.

7 Frames of Belonging: Crossing Local, National and Transnational Spaces 1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in JEMS (Meinhof and Galasinski 2002). 2. We would like to thank the Idnet group and their June 2000 conference at the European Forum of the Schumann centre in Fiesole for the stimulating discussion of these points. Special thanks to Thomas Risse, Michael Bruter, Laurent Licada and Emanuele Castano (see also the papers in Herrmann, Risse and Brewer, 2004).

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Index

Agency, 29–32 Banal nationalism, 11 Contexts of belonging, 20–41 place, 33–6 social encounters, 39–41 social relations, 36–9 time, 20–33 Discursive resources, 51 Grammar of identity, 50–66, 174 grammatical resources of, 57–61 lexical resources of, 52–7 in structure of agentivity, 61–5

Levels of belonging, 18–20 and thematization of experience, 71 Metanarratives, 51 Narratives, 71–102 argumentative, 76, 91–6 conversational, 78, 85–91 definition of, 75 embedded, 78–85 and identity, 72–3 memory and, 112–13 and narrativization, 72 prototypical, 76, 78, 96–101 structure of, 74 Narrativized stories, 76

Helplessness, 64 Other, 159–75 Identity, passim anti-essentialist view of, 7 articulation of, 9, 17 context-boundedness of, 18 contextualization of, 16–18 cultural, 179–81 as discourse, 8 markers of, 11, 13–49 multiple, 186–91 ‘nationalization’ of, 186 as process, 1–2, 8 provisionality of, 10 Ideological dilemmas, 73 Interactional dialogic sequences, 75

Photography iconicity of, 133 indexicality of, 133–4, 138–9 and memory, 112–13, 134, 139 as social practice, 133 as trigger, 2, 112–16, 143–8, 180 Self-identification, 178–201 Voices, 32, 34 explicit, 165–9 implicit, 162–5

216

The Language of Belonging (Language and Globalization)

Language and the City (Language and Globalization)

Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe (Language and Globalization)

Globalization of Language and Culture in Asia: The Impact of Globalization Processes on Language

New Ethnicities and Language Use (Language and Globalization)

Language, Citizenship and Identity in Quebec (Language and Globalization)

New Ethnicities and Language Use (Language and Globalization)

Globalization and Language in the Spanish Speaking World: Macro and Micro Perspectives (Language and Globalization)

Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language: An Intercultural Perspective

Imagining Globalization: Language, Identities, and Boundaries

The Language and The Language varieties

The Handbook of Language and Globalization (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)

Language, Language-Games and Forms of Life

Telicity in the Second Language (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders)

The Logic of Language: Language From Within

Language Form and Language Function (Language, Speech, and Communication)

Theories of Democratic Network Governance (Language and Globalization)

Language

Language and Space (Language, Speech, and Communication)

Language and Gesture (Language Culture and Cognition)

Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging

Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging

Who sings the nation-state?: language, politics, belonging

Theories of Democratic Network Governance (Language and Globalization)

Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language

Language and Gesture (Language Culture and Cognition)

Language

Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics (Language and Globalization)

The Language of Sand

The Language of Belonging (Language and Globalization)

Language and the City (Language and Globalization)

Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe (Language and Globalization)

Globalization of Language and Culture in Asia: The Impact of Globalization Processes on Language

New Ethnicities and Language Use (Language and Globalization)

Language, Citizenship and Identity in Quebec (Language and Globalization)

New Ethnicities and Language Use (Language and Globalization)

Globalization and Language in the Spanish Speaking World: Macro and Micro Perspectives (Language and Globalization)

Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language: An Intercultural Perspective

Imagining Globalization: Language, Identities, and Boundaries

The Language and The Language varieties

The Handbook of Language and Globalization (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)

Language, Language-Games and Forms of Life

Telicity in the Second Language (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders)

The Logic of Language: Language From Within

Language Form and Language Function (Language, Speech, and Communication)

Theories of Democratic Network Governance (Language and Globalization)

Language

Language and Space (Language, Speech, and Communication)

Language and Gesture (Language Culture and Cognition)

Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging

Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging

Who sings the nation-state?: language, politics, belonging

Theories of Democratic Network Governance (Language and Globalization)

Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language

Language and Gesture (Language Culture and Cognition)

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