Lutz Niethammer. Questions for German Memory. Oral History Articles

German historian Lutz Niethammer's book, "Questions for German Memory," does not claim to present the actual history of the 20th century "as it really was." Its goal is to tap into the personal, subjective, and emotionally charged memory of Germans, their perceptions of historical events, and their own biographies. Drawing on a large body of biographical interviews, Niethammer outlines the main contours of the landscape of memories preserved by the wartime generation of Germans by the mid-1980s—memories of the war, of life at the front and in the rear, of the early postwar years in West Germany, and of the turning points in the history of the GDR.