Oral History

Oral history is a method of historical science, which is based on speaking Let eyewitness. The witnesses should be as little as possible affected by the historian. In particular, people from diverse backgrounds should be able to represent their world and perspectives for posterity in this way.

Is the method used mainly for the everyday history and folklore, and local history. The term oral history came up in the 1930s and is also used in German-speaking countries since the 1960s. Erroneously, it is often applied to all forms of conversation with witnesses, although the method involves no call, but the free speech.

Starting point

Historians have to rely on sources. However, since only a limited number of people (written) leaves sources, there is a danger that people outside of this group of people are considered inadequate by posterity. This is mainly to members of the lower layer; but also, for example, managers do not necessarily have to write down on its own, the tendency, their memories.

A conventional interview technique, the fear of the followers of Oral History, narrows the respondents to be very. It is better to let the witnesses tell of his life as free as possible, so that the witness can decide for themselves what it deems important would. This involves little occur also about emotions and points of view, as described in other sources ( civil status records, obituaries, etc.). Also, could not know what questions a historian interested in later times a today's historians.

Method

Traditionally, you can tell freely in the oral history of his time witnesses. The Telling is held with a sound recorder. Finally, the historian must transfer the records in an appropriate manner in writing. Only then can the historian has a written source "self- created" from which he can quote. However, such an approach means a considerable amount of work. Alternatively, to work more efficiently and purposefully, you can

• Prepare the respondents
• Guide with questions
• Reminders such as photo albums, personal objects, diaries, etc. to employ.

In a reworking of what is said, possibly with the witnesses, contradictions or ambiguities can be clarified to be eliminated.

Projects

Steven Spielberg established the Shoah Foundation to record as many witnesses to the Shoah. The interviews with survivors are determined to keep the memory after the extinction of this generation. Especially in the memorials to the Holocaust play authentic interviews or movies with interviews an increasing role.

The project Archimob (Archives de la mobilization ) of the same association to the filmmaker Frédéric Gonseth, consisting of about forty historians and filmmakers, collected between 1999 and 2001 Documents of Switzerland during the Second World War. From 555 video interviews 22 short documentary films and the exhibition L' Histoire c'est moi emerged. Archimob is the largest in Switzerland conducted oral history project.

The core team of Archimob implemented since 2006, another audio-visual oral history archive with the title humem (of English. Humanitarian memory). In the years 2009 and 2010, full-day interviews were conducted with about eighty people from the development aid since 1945. From this emerged the first interactive documentary of Switzerland, which at the project exhibition is on view " The other side of the world" of 2011-2013.

The online archive " Forced Labor 1939-1945 " presents a collection of digital eyewitness reports. Nearly 600 former forced laborers and forced laborers from 27 countries tell their life story in biographical audio and video interviews. This reminds the archive to the more than twelve million people who had to do forced labor in Nazi Germany.

Criticism

Few historians operate the Oral History in the original, elaborate way, but use quite questions and demands. But this is nothing more than an ordinary interview, as it has always done. The term oral history is now often used as a mere synonym for interviews in historical research, or for a historiography that relies primarily on interviews as the source.

Especially in the early days of the oral history great expectations have been linked with the new method: a " democratic history" of the "official story" was compared. Nevertheless, the interviews with witnesses only sources that must be interpreted in conjunction with other sources. Source Technically, they are just as critical as seen autobiographies.