1 - Narratives of the Past in History Textbooks

Summary

History—or, putting it more precisely, constructions of the past—have an important function for the self-image of states and nations. They explain the origin of the nation, they legitimate the existence of the present state, and they push citizens toward a common project that stabilizes and guarantees a common future. In the nineteenth century, when most of the Western nations were consolidated, the invention of founding myths contributed to their self-definition as a group of people bound together by destiny. They did this through emphasizing historic continuity, common traditions, overcoming a common enemy, or common suffering in difficult times. Germany, for example, imagined the origin of the German nation with the victory of a Germanic tribe over the Romans in AD 9. France's founding moment related to the baptism of the Merovingian king Clovis I around the year 500. The United States saw its continuity linked to the arrival of the Pilgrim fathers at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Colombia celebrates its independence in 1810 as the birth of a nation and a state.

Today, in a more global world, national myths may have changed. They may not be as belligerent as they used to be, and they even can, in a certain way, be supranational. The Holocaust, for example, turned out to be a reference point and a (negative) founding myth for many countries, especially in Europe (Welzer and Lenz 1–24). But the purpose of constructions of history remains the same. The cultural memory of a nation preserves what seems important to the group and what defines it. According to cultural scientist Jan Assmann, “The concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images and rituals specific to each society in each epoch whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image. Upon such collective knowledge, for the most part (but not exclusively) of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and particularity” (132). Yet, as the demands of the present can change, the contents of the past have to be reconstructed, reinterpreted, or even altered to meet the new needs. Indeed, within national memories, this revision of historical facts is a slow but permanent process (A. Assmann, Geschichte 11).