Account books, amateur literature and true stories. The practice of rural life writing in 20th century Austria (original) (raw)

Personal Historical Narrative Shaping the Past and the Present

European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2009

The twentieth century proved to be a fateful era for the majority of European Jewry, who experienced prosperity and emancipation, persecution and destruction, and rehabilitation in their newly founded state or in the West. Based on several research projects, the present essay examines the narrative responses of formerly Austro-Hungarian Jews (presently Israelis and Hungarians) to these events and processes. In addition to telling their personal experiences, some of them also wish to confront generally accepted views and images of their past lives and communities in the inter-war period and-more acutely-in WWII and the Holocaust. The essay reads their contentions on the background of historical and literary-cultural research and vice-versa, thus enabling these narrators to voice disagreements and grievances that are otherwise rarely heard. The essay likewise highlights the function of personal narrative, as part of folkloric repertoire, and its study in enriching research and public awareness with less known and exposed people and experiences.

Personal Historical Narrative Shaping the Past and Present

HOLODOMOR ORAL HISTORY: THE PECULIARITIES OF ORAL HISTORY SOURCES NARRATIVE

Наукові праці Кам’янець-Подільського національного університету імені Івана Огієнка. Історичні науки, 2024

The goal of the research is to reveal peciliarities of Holodomor oral history sources through the prism of oral history theory and trauma studies. Scientific novelty is revealing of the peculiaritites of Holodomor oral history as a historical source basing on the analysis of oral history sources. Conclusions. Th e article suggests a set of signs of Holodomor oral history, established with the help of approaches, used in oral history theory in three angles. The fіrst sign is tied with coexistence of two spheres «official history/personal narrative». The author concludes that taking into account pressure of the state, caused by the ideological factors, information pressure of the state became visible in 2000s, when a reasonable part of oral history testimonies had been already written; and politics of the state on ban of presence in public sphere of information about the famine had resulted into reverse reaction – rootenization of famine in individual memory. In the frames of block “time/memory” the article separates age and gender specificity. The author points that the earlier a testimony is separated, the more details and social life of a village can be received; about mostly children memories with their specificity (fragmentary, with fixation on smell-taste-colors). Th e article points at distinctions of female (emotional and family oriented) memories from male (try to define experience of survival of a community, with at- tempts to provide background of events). The majority of peculiarities is revelaed in the spheres of «trauma/recalling» – fi ve: specifi c terminology («graze», «to die out», «kurkul», about food); emotionality that blocked the road as a historical source to academic studies and information fi eld; frequent articulation or observation of high traumatism of seen and lived through during the famine; victims as almost exceptional authors of the narrative; unifi cation of narrative that allows separation of factographic core and refl exive component of oral history source.

Life Writing “from Below” in Europe: Authors, Archives, Avenues, Arenas

European Journal of Life Writing

Drawing on a large body of scholarship from the last forty years, this article offers an overview of the diverse forms of life writing “from below” (by authors from low down in a class or status hierarchy) in Europe since the early modern period (including autobiographies, diaries, letters, as well as transcripts of oral testimonies); and the varied and developing national traditions of collecting and archiving which have developed since the mid-twentieth century. It locates such writing within a field of force between an exteriority pole constituted by the state (or by organisations of civil society, or informal community pressures) which compel or otherwise elicit life writings from below, and an interiority pole of the impulse of someone hitherto excluded to narrate their life in some public sphere; and examines diverse ways (state compulsion or solicitation; citizen engagement, challenge or resistance) in which these pressures give rise to the production of texts. It identifies ...

Autobiography’s Back Story: Personal Memory and European History

It was not a consequence of brain damage that once caused me temporarily to lose my memory. I suspect now it was the traumatic experience of my family history, my European parents and the way in which I had sought to slide over the broader facts of history, simply by rote learning them without understanding anything of that history. My father’s father had been chief archivist at the Registry for Births, Deaths and Marriages in Haarlem, Holland during the 1930s. He took a particular interest in his own family genealogy and kept accurate records of all those ancestors that had preceded him. He was obsessed with factual memory. At the same time he confused family boundaries by taking his older daughter as his wife, for which he was eventually imprisoned in 1945, the charges brought against him by his then nineteen-year-old daughter. Less than twenty years later on the other side of the world in Australia, my own father behaved similarly with my older sister.

Memoria Y Civilizacion Anuario De Historia, 2002

This article deals with diverse aspects of what may be called a "second autobiographical revolution" -the rise of autobiography to the status of most favored source among historians. This new situation of privilege is due in large measure to the tendency to attribute to these sources the all too little discussed condition of "witness". Following some remarks on the work of Marc Bloch, a historian who devoted distinctive attention to the question of witness, it examines the specific case of artisans who wrote autobiographical texts during the early modern era. To that end it summarizes several strategies for the study of these documents, particularly those contextual approaches aimed at reconstructing the wide range of motivations of artisan autobiographers.

Account books, amateur literature and true stories. The practice of rural life writing in 20th century Austria (original) (raw)

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