“Family Silver” or Artefacts (in) Memories of Forcibly Displaced Germans
“Family Silver” or Artefacts (in) Memories of Forcibly Displaced Germans

Summary/Abstract: The study deals with the transmission of family memory in three three-generation families of Germans forcibly displaced from Czechoslovakia, in which the oldest generation, the so-called generation of experience, actually experienced the migration movement after the end of World War II. In the study, the family is seen as a specific social framework in which the past is retrieved. Generations are characterized in a biological sequence, with only the oldest “generation of experience” defined by Karl Mannheim. The research of generational family memory focuses on the actor’s reception through an analysis and interpretation of narrative and oral-history interviews with representatives of generations while exploring the way family memory is mediated. Specifically, the authors inquire into the role the memory media play in their materialized form, i.e. artefacts that act as an impulse and source of remembrance narrative, in the process of generational transmission of memories in families. The focus here is on remembrance narratives related to the forced displacement, which thematise material artifacts, with the focus being not only on what artifacts there are in connection with the recollection of this historical process and what stories are related to them, but also the effort to uncover the meaning and the function of these artifacts during family remembrance.

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