English: contemporary witness; French: témoin de son temps

Contemporary witnesses are people who can testify to contemporary history, that is, the ‘era of their contemporaries’^[1]. As bearers of experience, they function less as witnesses to external events – such as eyewitnesses or witnesses to a crime – and more as an authoritative source for ‘a particular view of the past’,^[2] as the embodiment of the events they speak of.^[3]

Those who lived through these events play a special role in many respects when it comes to the culture and history of Germans in and from Eastern Europe. Immediately following the loss of the German Empire’s territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, and following the resettlement of Germans from settlement areas where they had often lived for centuries as members of a national minority on foreign territory, the documentation of the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Central Europe^[4] served to a large extent as eyewitness accounts from this population group. The statements of these eyewitnesses, which were included as a broad source base in the documentation in the form of written reports, certified by statutory declarations and statements from third parties, were included in the documentation as a broad source base and published; these served primarily to reconstruct the events of ‘flight and expulsion’ with a view to subsequent peace negotiations^[5] and, in terms of both form and content as well as intention (on the part of the commissioning body), still bear a close resemblance to witness testimony in the legal sense. This large-scale project, initiated and funded by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, also introduced the concept of the ‘eyewitness’ into West German contemporary historical research, without explicitly using the term. This term only emerged in the mid-1970s and was initially used synonymously with the term ‘contemporary’.

In the context of oral history, as well as biographical and narrative research, the accounts of eyewitnesses subsequently acquired the status of sources, although the three main disciplines working with eyewitnesses adopted differing priorities due to their academic traditions and varying research approaches: Thus, in the field of history, oral history focused on the history of events and institutions; in sociological biographical research, the focus was on life course and life course analysis; and in folkloric narrative research, the emphasis was on questions concerning the formal, genre-related and thematic structure of the narrative itself, performance (the narrative situation) and transmission. The boundaries are now fluid, and interdisciplinary research approaches and methods are the rule rather than the exception.

Since the 1980s, when, in the context of more general migration research, the topic ‘flight and expulsion’ was taken up again following a marked decline in interest from the mid-1960s onwards; research interest has increasingly focused not only on the history of events but also on questions of the history of experience and mentalities. Furthermore, everyday life prior to 1939–1945 and in the immediate post-war period, issues of integration and the culture of remembrance, as well as stereotypes and narrative patterns, have come under the scrutiny of scholars from various disciplines, particularly folklore studies, European ethnology and empirical cultural studies.

We are currently witnessing a resurgence of interest in eyewitness accounts in Germany, which is often attributed to the impending passing of the so-called ‘experience generation’ and calls for efforts to document eyewitness testimonies ‘at the eleventh hour’; this view is based on an understanding of contemporary history that essentially covers the first half of the 20th century. Consequently, the number of people who can speak from personal experience about National Socialism, the Holocaust, the war, flight and expulsion is now so small that increasing recourse is being made to eyewitnesses who experienced this period as children or young people, or who recount ‘second-hand memories’.^[6]

Given that eyewitness accounts are always the product of complex cognitive, communicative and social processes, their evidential value is assessed in varying ways. Whilst popular science and journalistic contexts sometimes feature rather uncritical equating of eyewitness accounts with events in the sense of ‘that’s how it was’, scholarly source criticism demands a problem-oriented and critical approach to eyewitness accounts. This involves taking into account the specific circumstances in which they were produced, as well as the impact of public, media-driven and group-related discourses and social debates, which always influence eyewitness accounts to varying degrees as representations and assessments made from the perspective of the present. In this context, the manifold reshaping of memories through family, societal and group-related narratives and interpretations—as the distance from the event increases—poses heuristic problems just as serious as the expectations placed on eyewitnesses, both the unspoken (for example, through the selection of individuals) and the explicit ones that are brought to their attention and which they usually endeavour to fulfil.

Eyewitnesses are featured in media contexts such as historical documentaries on television, in contemporary history exhibitions via audio or video stations, or ‘live’ in educational settings (schools, memorial sites). The focus here is on generating empathy, making the content more accessible through vivid storytelling, and authenticating it through ‘personal or personalised testimony’^[7] are central to this.

• Hans Henning Hahn, Eva Hahn: The Expulsion in German Collective Memory. Legends, Myths, History. Paderborn 2010.
• Hans Günter Hockerts: Contemporary History in Germany. Concepts, Methods, Thematic Areas. In: Historisches Jahrbuch 113 (1993), p. 98–127, esp. pp. 108ff.
• Heinke M. Kalinke: On the History and Relevance of Personal Accounts for the History of Everyday Life, Mentality and Experience of Germans in and from Eastern Europe. In: Ibid. (ed.): Letters, Narratives, Diaries. Autobiographical Documents as Sources on the Culture and History of Germans in and from Eastern Europe. Freiburg 2000 (Publications of the Johannes Künzig Institute 3), pp. 7–22.
• Hans Rothfels: Contemporary History as a Task. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953) 1, p. 1–8.
• Martin Sabrow: The Contemporary Witness as a Wanderer between Two Worlds. In: Martin Sabrow, Norbert Frei (eds.): The Birth of the Contemporary Witness after 1945. Göttingen 2010, p. 13–32.
• Harald Welzer: Communicative Memory. A Theory of Remembrance. Munich 2002 (revised new edition 2005).
• Dorothee Wierling: Contemporary History without Eyewitnesses. From Communicative to Cultural Memory – Three Stories and Twelve Theses. In: BIOS. Journal of Biographical Research, Oral History and Life Course Analysis 21 (2008) 1, p. 28–36.

• www.bkge.de/43010.html (Eyewitness accounts of the culture and history of Germans in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, project page)

[1] Rothfels: Contemporary History, p. 2.

[2] Sabrow: Contemporary Witness, p. 14.

[3] Cf. Wierling: Contemporary History, p. 30.

[4] Documentation of the Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Central Europe. Edited by Theodor Schieder in collaboration with Werner Conze [from Vol. III onwards], Adolf Diestelkamp [up to Vol. II], Rudolf Laun, Peter Rassow and Hans Rothfels. Published by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims. Bonn 1953–1962, reprinted in Munich 1984. Vol. I, 1–2: The Expulsion of the German Population from the Areas East of the Oder-Neisse. Bonn 1953. Vol. I, 3: The expulsion of the German population from the territories east of the Oder–Neisse. Polish laws and regulations 1944–1955. Bonn 1960. Vol. II: The Fate of the Germans in Hungary, Bonn 1956. Vol. III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania. Bonn 1957. Vol. IV, 1–2: The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia. Bonn 1957. Vol. V: The Fate of the Germans in Yugoslavia. Bonn 1961. 1st Supplement: A Diary from Pomerania 1945–1946. Notes by Käthe von Normann. Bonn 1955. Supplement 2: A Diary from Prague 1945–1946. Notes by Margarete Schell. Bonn 1957. Supplement 3: A Report from East Prussia. Reprinted 1984.

[5] Mathias Beer: ‘Caught between politics and contemporary history. The major research project “Documentation of the Expulsion of Germans from East-Central Europe”’. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 46(3) (1998), pp. 345–389.

[6] A current trend is to replace missing eyewitnesses with actors in order to bring the testimony to life. See Rainer Gries: ‘From Historical Witness to Professional Performer: Problems of a Media Figure in Transition’. In: Martin Sabrow, Norbert Frei (eds.): The Birth of the Eyewitness after 1945. Göttingen 2010, pp. 49–70.

[7] Gries: ‘From Historical Witness’, p. 50.

Heinke M. Kalinke: Eyewitnesses. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2013. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32752 (accessed 18 June 2021).