Cultural Memory

The Internet is changing the way people remember. Original historical texts enhance the websites of amateur historians, online encyclopaedia do not always provide reliable information and in a matter of seconds search engines list thousands of arbitrarily selected references without any form of quality control. The question is however – what role can academia and political education play in the digital age of remembrance. Goethe.de discussed this with Thomas Krüger, the President of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Political Education).

Herr Krüger, how is the Internet changing our culture of remembrance?

The way we remember the past is becoming multi-perspective – these days there are suddenly all kinds of interpretations, documents, photographs and films relating to just one single historical event. On the Internet anybody can get involved in writing history. Alongside the banal, the kitsch and the erroneous it also provides a forum for stories that are not so important for public debate. New, unexpected perspectives come to light, a sort of “bottom-up remembrance”, as is the case, for example, in our a href="http://www.wir-waren-so-frei.de" target="_blank">www.wir-waren-so-frei.de Internet archive that has over 7,000 photos and more than 100 films from the years of change, 1989-1990.

Crash barriers along the digital information highway

The gatekeepers seem to be disappearing, the way history is interpreted is becoming more and more random, is there anybody out there providing orientation?

That is right, but I think there are more opportunities to be had than risks. Democratisation, in this case the democratisation of historiography, is never without risk. On Youtube you can see a Holocaust survivor dancing in Auschwitz with his granddaughters to the tune “I Will Survive” – this is something only the survivor can do and it is a strong contribution to remembrance culture. The Internet offers many new opportunities, it calls the interpretive power of academic and national versions of history into question and provides a forum on the validity of individual opinions and viewpoints. In the battle for recognition public forms of remembrance have to be able to stand up to debate – political education accompanies this process. We are one of those institutions that are also active on the Internet themselves, we offer orientation and provide crash barriers along the digital information highway.

Can you give me an example of this?

The multimedia chronicle of the Chotzen family (www.chotzen.de). The site enables users to follow the fate of a Berlin family from 1914 up to the present day, with the aid of personal notes and information that are accompanied by a historical timeline.

The Internet arouses curiosity

What role is going to be played in the future by museums, libraries, archives, history books and textbooks for schools? Are all the documents going to end up in online archives?

First of all one thing has to be made clear – thanks to the digital era there has never been so much access to archives and libraries. The internet arouses interest in people to visit an archive or a museum. For example, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. You can take a virtual tour and there is also a 3-D model of the building. It has been calculated that on average people spend 17 minutes looking at the site (www.annefrank.org/de) - that is a very long time for your average Internet surfer.

Is access to these digital archives going to remain free of charge?

Opinions differ on this. In my view historical knowledge is a common public property and should remain free of charge. The Deutsche Bibliothek (German National Library) has digitalised all its stocks and made them freely available. There are other libraries that make their books available via Google Books, for example – that is one road however that at some point will lead to commercialisation.

Open source – simplified copyright law

Who decides who is entitled to access a digital archive? How does this affect copyright laws?

Attitudes are beginning to change on this issue – in Anglo-American circles the “Open Source Principle” applies and this makes for considerably easier access. New models covered by licensing laws like the “Creative Commons” (CC) have brought new dynamism to the realm of educational and cultural politics. CC is a non-profit organisation that provides a range of licence choices for the publication of media content. The licences enable authors in a most simple way to grant rights of use in their work to the public, thus creating free content.

Are new ways of teaching history coming into being?

These days history teachers can access contemporary witnesses “on demand”, there are interview data banks, photo-archives, documentaries – everything is a mere click away. According to the current Shell Study 96 per cent of all young people are online. Almost all young people between the ages of twelve to 25 use the Internet as a source of information for their school, training or university studies. This of course has changed the way lessons are taught. The latest challenge facing us is how can we deal correctly and critically with all the information we have at our disposal. This is where political education comes in. Only those people who access information properly, who critically analyse the information source and who can then pass it on, only they will be successful in the digital community.

What is going to happen to our traditional history books?

The Internet is not going to replace museums or history books, it serves as a further way to access history. I am of the opinion that digital programs and services are not going to replace analogue methods of remembrance, be it a history book or a memorial site. In much the same way that television did not replace cinema, radio and newspapers.

An app as a place of remembrance

What places of remembrance are already available digitally?

I have already named a few. At www.memoryloops.net, for example, there are virtual historical city tours; we set up the www.jugendopposition.de website that deals with resistance in the GDR. One of our biggest successes however was the Berlin Wall app for iPhones that can be downloaded free of charge. The user can follow the historical course of the Wall, there are suggestions for tours, at certain points along the wall information is given on important events that happened there. Since the beginning of August the app has been downloaded 50,000 times.

What do the developments for the future look like?

Progress in Internet development is coming along in leaps and bounds – at the German Federal Agency for Political Education our online section has long since overtaken our print department. The focus is now on social media, the formation of new communities and virtual communities is now on the agenda. The Internet presents us with new challenges and opportunities. It is vital that we go along with these new formats – and develop them further.