When times were better for us : expelling "Czech Germans" from official history and collective memory
Abstract
This article analyzes autobiographical accounts by members of the oldest generation of ethnic Germans living in the Czech Republic. Czech sociologists are interested in non-expulsed Germans because they have their own ideas about who the Germans living in the Czech Republic are and who they are not.
I demonstrate how these people, who have remained in the Czech Republic after the expulsion of most ethnic Germans following WWII, re-construct their visions of the past. Despite numerous analogies, there are serious differences between commonly accepted history and the ways in which "Czech Germans or/and German Czechs" conceive of it The collective memory of ethnic Germans in the Czech Republic is different from the "official" historical memory of Czechs themselves.
I study these differences by applying the constructivist approach to collective memory pioneered by M. Halbwachs.