Dominik Streiff Schnetzer: “Oral history gives a voice to the voiceless”
When historians interview contemporary witnesses, they make history visible that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. The national network ‘Oral History’ offers advice to researchers about how to use this method. But it has its own pitfalls, as becomes clear from the following interview with Dominik Streiff Schnetzer, a historian and joint chairman of ‘Oral History’.
Dominik Streiff Schnetzer (right) carries out an interview with Stefan Keller for the ‘journalistory.ch’ project. | Photo: Peter Hammann.
Dominik Streiff Schnetzer, let’s imagine this: a historian interviews a contemporary witness about certain difficult experiences. Let’s say she was discriminated against, or persecuted for belonging to a minority group. Why do we need oral history in order to get to grips with such topics?
You’re a journalist, I’m a curator. We belong to an elite that has access to the public sphere. A core concern of oral history is giving a voice to those who are otherwise voiceless. They also need someone who won’t exploit them.
But who would want to exploit them?
Let’s look at a current research case in the canton of Thurgau: Roland Kuhn, who ran the Münsterlingen psychiatric clinic that carried out drug tests on people from the 1950s onwards. If you, a journalist, have to interview a contemporary witness about it, you could conceivably do it in the firm conviction that Kuhn did everything right. The questions you would ask would then reflect that stance. But oral historians won’t exploit an interview to prove or disprove any particular thesis. We simply wish to record memories in all their multifariousness.
In Europe, this method has been gaining ground in the past 20 years or so. From 1999 to 2001, the Archimob association carried out the biggest oral-history project in Switzerland to be funded by the public purse. It recorded 555 video interviews about people’s experiences in the Second World War. The SNSF is currently supporting some 30 projects that employ oral history methods.
What can subjective sources tell us in general about the past?
Oral history does not claim any ability to depict whole epochs. But by using the method, new sources emerge. Historians can then work with these, comparing them with other testimony and evidence from the period in question – such as official records, photographs or court files. Then they draw their conclusions. There are no objective sources.
But if people have undergone painful experiences, aren’t they re-traumatised by giving interviews about them?
That’s a dilemma indeed, because in historiography, we do like to focus on areas of conflict and disruption. And people who have endured difficult experiences are especially deserving of protection. But we historians lack the expert knowledge needed to be able to interview such people in a psychologically informed manner. This is an area where oral history has potential for development, because it is rare for historians to try and collaborate with psychologists.
What conditions have to be met, if an oral history interview is to be considered scientifically accurate?
Three groups are needed. One will carry out the preliminary interviews in order to find out who is best suited to being interviewed. Another will carry out the actual interview – it has to be someone else, otherwise the person being interviewed will constantly think: “But I’ve already said that!”. And finally, a third person or group will evaluate the interview. The interviewers can’t do that, because their proximity to the interviewee means they are automatically prejudiced. Also, you have to be aware that subjective memories are always influenced by outside discourses and collective memories. This is also why oral history is practised only hesitantly in German-speaking countries. The Anglo-Saxons are less inhibited in this.
That sounds complicated.
Oral history is very demanding – also in technical terms. Interviews ought to be recorded audiovisually, so that you can see the gestures and the facial expressions of the interviewees. That’s a hurdle for many researchers, because videos ultimately have to be transcribed and stored in a sustainable form – the best thing is to put them in an archive. All these aspects are resource-intensive, which is why the professional use of oral history tends to be confined to large-scale projects such as Archimob (see box). But project directors should always treat oral history seriously. After all, contemporary witness accounts are part of our cultural memory.
