Jacquelyn Harris AMCV 2650 October 31, 2011 Potential for A Shared Authority in German History Museums In his

essay From A Shared Authority to the Digital Kitchen, and Back, Michael Frisch draws attention to the significant semantic differences between a shared authority and sharing authority in oral and public history. The former describes the nature of oral and public history [in which] we [the professionals] are not the sole interpreters. Sharing authority, on the other hand, implies that we have authority, and that we need or ought to share it.1 He offers an additional contrast in raw versus cooked information, where raw data (in this case oral histories) exist in databases or archives, while cooked information is synthesized into the more accessible formats of films, articles, or museum labels.2 In both cases, Frisch advocates for a blurring of the lines dividing these concepts:
This is what Ive termed a post-documentary sensibility, a stance directed less toward the either/or of collection stewardship and fixed outputs, and more toward the active in-between a more creative, more open-ended, less linear, and hence a more shareable space.3

German historical museums appear at first glance to be methodical, anti-authority-sharing institutions, an impression that obscures their potential for achieving Frischs shareable space. Exhibits in the national German Historical Museum in Berlin offer scant evidence of curatorial staff letting go of authority. The permanent exhibition depicts the narrative of German history along an expansive timeline running from the 1st Century BC to the present, displaying objects ranging from Roman swords to a Volkswagen Beetle, accompanied by volumes of explanatory text. Visitors find little variation in style in many of Germanys prominent museums. Such a straightforward approach to history comes at least in part, no doubt, from the German burden of the past, which they perhaps see as best dealt with dispassionately and authoritatively; difficult periods and events must be presented accurately, with no room for interpretation or personal meaning-making. But what of the less troublesome aspects of the German historical narrative? Closer to Frischs ideal of a shared historical authority is the much-praised German Emigration Center in
Michael Frisch, From A Shared Authority to the Digital Kitchen, and Back, in Letting Go?, eds. Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski (Philadelphia: Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, 2011), 127. 2 Frisch, 129-130. 3 Frisch, 130.
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Bremerhaven.4 Set in the city where many German emigrants left their homeland for North America, the Auswandererhaus allows visitors to Encounter History First-Hand.5 Each visitor receives a boarding pass card programmed to tell the story of one individual. Throughout the journey from Bremerhavens docks to Ellis Island, visitors use their cards to listen to snippets of their emigrants story as well as to general information (i.e. descriptions of the food on transatlantic voyages). While most of the emigrants whose stories are represented did not actively cooperate in the creation of the exhibits, their personal narratives, documents, and objects inform the museums authoritative representation of German emigration. The Haus der Geschichte in Wittenberg, although small and somewhat peculiar, offers real potential for a shared authority and synthesis of raw and cooked information la Frisch. The museum invites the visitor to be a virtual guest in homes of the 40s to the 80s as they existed in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).6 Similar in concept to Open House: If These Walls Could Talk7 each room reflects a different decade of home life in East Germany. Docents lead visitors through cramped quarters of post-war refugees from the formerly German eastern territories, toy-filled Kindergarten playrooms, and living rooms with brightly colored carpets and kidney-shaped tables of the 50s. Unlike Open House, there is no contextual information or direct connections to individuals. During my visit there, I strongly felt that German concept of cluttered kitsch, enhanced by the friendly docent who consistently drew nostalgic contrasts between quality and necessity of East German versus West German goods.8 She provided anecdotal oral history analogous to the stories in Open House, but her speech was by no means curated or consistent from one tour to the next. In addition to the tours, the Haus der Geschichte website advertises (but does not offer full access to) document and photo archives, as well as a Life Story Archive, boasted as unique not only in the new [former Eastern] German states [but in all of Germany].9 What the Haus der Geschichte lacks, however, is an active synthesis of its two components: the museum offers an experience with historical objects and minimal
Winner of the European Museum of the Year Award in 2007. Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Center), http://www.dahbremerhaven.de/english/ english.html (30 October 2011). 6 Haus der Geschichte Lutherstadt Wittenberg, http://www.pflugev.de/Haus%20der%20Geschichte %20Wittenberg%20-%20Museum.engl.htm (30 October 2011). 7 Benjamin Filene, Make Yourself at Home Welcoming Voices in Open House: If These Walls Could Talk, in Letting Go?, pp. 138-155. 8 Ostalgie is the German word which describes a nostalgia for certain aspects of East German (Ostdeutsch) life. 9 Life Story Archive, Haus der Geschichte Lutherstadt Wittenberg, http://www.pflug-ev.de/Haus%20der%20 Geschichte %20Wittenberg %20-%20Lebensgeschichte.engl.htm (30 October 2011).
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first-person context provided by docents, and the archive offers research capabilities. The Open House exhibit presented first-person histories, but cooked the information through curation and contextualization. It would be exciting to see the Haus der Geschichte utilize its full resources to transform itself into a more dynamic exhibit space similar to Open House. A final German example of Frischs shareable space is LeMO (Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online Living Virtual Online Museum) organized by the German Historical Museum and the Center for History of the Federal Republic of Germany. The LeMO homepage consists of a timeline from 1850 to the present, with each era divided into subsections (i.e. Post-War Years 1945-1949: Allied Occupation, the Burden of the Past, Emergence of Two German States, etc.).10 In each subsection there is a curator-voiced narrative text replete with linked terms and with clickable images of museum objects in the left margin. At the bottom of each page are links to the Kollektives Gedchtnis (Collective Memory), where ordinary people submit their own stories, which are then sorted by topic. Although seemingly as wide open in its canvassing, LeMOs request for submissions isnt nearly as sentimental as the oral history machine StoryCorps mission to tell the stories of ordinary Americans with dignity, celebrating the power and poetry in their words.11 LeMO frames its request plainly: Collective Memory offers [you] the possibility to publish personal memories connected to 20th Century German history. Accompanying photos are also welcomed.12 Although LeMO is cosponsored by two prominent German historical museums (both of whose websites post a conspicuous but nondescript link to LeMO), it does not seem that the personal narratives are incorporated into either museums exhibitions. The overarching narrative remains that of curatorial design, the information uncooked and unutilized by the authoritative institutions.13 Frischs Lewis and Clark analogy presents a fitting parallel to how German history museums could present history to the public. Frisch asserts that the explorers are more
Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online, http://www.dhm.de/lemo/home.html. Benjamin Filene, Listening Intently: Can StoryCorps Teach Museums How to Win the Hearts of New Audiences? in Letting Go?, 176. 12 LeMO-Kollektives Gedchtnis, translated from German, http://www.dhm.de/lemo/forum/ kollektives_gedaechtnis/index.html (30 October 2011). 13 There was another surprising parallel to the Letting Go? Case Study of the Greatest Generation Film Contest. LeMO and the German Historical Museum partner with an investment company and senior center in Was fr ein Leben! (What a life!), a historical biography contest. Three historical sketches (written by the person him/herself or on his/her behalf) are chosen as winners in the categories Witness to History, Personality, and Social Engagement, with each then produced into a biographical film. The tone of these narratives is decidedly different from Minnesotans Grandma Lucy or Bill Ehling, but they are no less historic in their merit, and many do in fact cover the same period. http://www.was-fuer-ein-leben.de/index.html
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important because of what and how they explored than because they answered a search engines request for the Pacific Ocean.14 In the museum buildings themselves, German history is presented in this search engine fashion. A visitor wonders, What happened in Germany immediately following World War I?, and the answer stands before him in objects and text. Yet the methods used to arrive at that answer remain hidden, unshared by the authority of the museum staff. But outside of the museum buildings, German institutions do embrace the multifaceted nature of historical knowledge. As the intervening history between World War II and the present is further explored in Germany, the potential for a shared authority in composing the historical narrative increases, while the necessity for such an approach becomes even more important. The dual German state system during the Cold War created by default divergent historical narratives; people from East and West experienced the same historical events in vastly different ways, and now strive to reconcile those experiences as one nation. If institutions reject a shared authority on Cold War German history, the result can only be inaccurate and incomplete.

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Frisch, 132.