Gedenken und Gedächtnis: Memory and Commemoration in Contemporary German Speaking Literature

he digital media repository Gedenken und Gedächtnis is an extensive collection of interviews with authors and their various approaches to the representation of memory and commemoration in the works of literature. The interviews were taped in 2002 and 2004 in Berlin. The collection is for intermediate to advanced-level students of German language, literature and culture and provides information on the authors’ views and reflections on their work, such as the choice of the event remembered, narrative and subject construction, and background information about the text as well as biographical information.

The repository engages learners to explore the complex interconnections that form literary texts, such as the interconnections between poetic writing strategy and text content, between text and culture and between text and the author’s biography. By means of a flexible interface, students can focus on specific interview segments and build collections, collaborating with each other and comparing their findings. Students can investigate the multiple interconnections that form the literary text and compare different approaches to writing, as well as aesthetic concepts, and different ways in which writers construct memories. They can support their findings with excerpts from the authors’ texts. The module enables students to enhance their linguistic abilities, deepen their understanding of the authors’ concepts and motivation for writing, and the overarching discourses of memory, history and identity. The digital media repository may be used either in conjunction with the authors’ literary work or as a standalone, providing students with a rich view of a variety of approaches to the literary construction of memory and commemoration.

Pedagogy -- Gedenken and Gedächtnis creates a community of learners where students build interview collections, compare their findings, draw conclusions and construct arguments about their hypotheses of the multiple interconnections. The repository deepens students’ ability to analyze literary work, discuss the process of writing, and interpret the construction of memory. It also enables the students to understand the complexity and interconnection among memory, history and identity. The individual interview segments enable students to pursue questions such as:

Which past is remembered? How do the authors construct and create the text? Which poetic strategies are used to remember the past? How are the present and the past juxtaposed? Is there a connection between the kind of memory that is brought to light and the poetic strategies or the authors’ biographical background? What is the structure of the narrative: is the event told chronologically, or is the narrative fragmented and interrupted by memory? Is personal memory embedded in a collective memory? How is this linked to the construction and destruction of the protagonist?