Interpretations of Socialism between the Politics of History and the Stubbornness of Pedagogical Actors. A German-Polish Comparison

The project "Interpretations of Socialism between the Politics of History and the Stubbornness of Pedagogical Actors. A German-Polish Comparison" has set itself three central goals: First, by analyzing German and Polish curricula and history textbooks, state-preferred interpretations of history of the socialist past were to be reconstructed and compared. Second, on the basis of the material to be collected in biographical interviews, it was to be worked out to what extent history teachers in their memoirs refer to the cultural interpretation patterns elaborated in the analysis and how they integrate them into the respective life stories. Third, the aim was to examine how the relationship between cultural memory and individual memories affects the teaching of socialist past.

A comparison of Polish and German textbook narratives on the socialist past revealed serious differences. These lie on several levels. First, Polish students are confronted more clearly and directly with the violence of Stalinist rule than their German peers. Second, Polish textbooks portray the People's Republic of Poland primarily as a foreign-controlled country, while German textbooks focus much more on the responsibility of the country's own elite. Third, Polish textbooks are much more explicit in attributing a negative attitude toward the socialist system to members of their own society. German textbooks, on the other hand, paint a very differentiated picture. If it was possible to observe a dynamic in the content of German textbooks in the period 1989-2012, Polish textbooks remained largely unchanged.

The textbook analyses were followed by the collection, transcription, and evaluation of empirical data in the Polish and German research fields. As an example, the project focused on teachers teaching in Gdansk and Leipzig schools. Thus, those two cities were chosen for the study that are considered to be the triggers of the political changes in the two former socialist countries - Gdansk as the origin of the Solidarność movement and Leipzig as the birthplace of the Monday demonstrations. After reviewing the collected material, it was possible to determine that the patterns found in the textbook narratives are adopted as points of reference in the narration of one's own life story. In framing their own life stories, teachers made an effort to find different ways to identify with the leitmotifs prevalent in the textbooks. German teachers found it much easier to find the entry point into the narrative and to build the lines of connection between their lives and the interpretations known from the textbooks, among others. Polish teachers tried to interweave their lives with the political events they were familiar with from the master narratives and to shape their narrative through this prism. However, since they usually did not have individual and primary memories of the "big story" they knew from literature and the media, the narrative horizon seemed very limited.

In the classroom, instructors appeared primarily in the role of faithful public servants and relied heavily on curricular cues. This refutes the theses found in the literature that a number of teachers idealized the socialist period and reconstructed it through the prism of their positive individual memories in the classroom.