11 Working with sources

Look around! Can you find a note with the words ‘Deutschland Erwache!’ (‘Germany Awake!’) written on it? Look at waist level too.

The note is exhibited without any further information. Thus one can only speculate as to what it is all about.

This note has been preserved, along with many other pages, in a file held by the Cologne public prosecutor’s office. The office was particularly enthusiastic about investigating criticism of the Nazi regime, which became a specific criminal offense in 1933.

The file was compiled on Matthias Schäfer, a 28-year-old mechanic at the time. In November 1933, he was suspected of distributing several communist leaflets. These were kept in the file as evidence.

Matthias Schäfer was walking along what is now Theodor-Heuss-Ring on the evening of 11 November 1933 when he was arrested by an SA patrol. The reason: communist leaflets had been found nearby calling for people to vote against leaving the League of Nations in the upcoming referendum.

Statement of Matthias Schäfer, 14 November 1933

Schäfer came under suspicion because he was lingering near the discovery site – according to an SA man, ‘in a very suspicious manner’ – and was unable to provide identification. Since the interrogations failed to yield any further evidence, Schäfer was released from custody on 15 November 1933. The investigation was discontinued.

The exhibition tells us nothing about the leaflet operation or about Matthias Schäfer’s arrest. Nor is there any information about the date or location of the discovery.

Exhibition curators prepare sources for presentation in the museum and decide whether or how to supplement them with information. In some cases, they are also modified: for example, photos are enlarged or cropped.

Interviews of contemporary witnesses are often highly edited sources.

Go to the media station ‘SPD and Trade Unions’. Here you will find excerpts from an interview with the trade unionist Willi Schirrmacher. Two interviewers asked him about his experiences under National Socialism, probably in 1980. Watch the first excerpt, ‘Before 1933’ here!

The video consists of a compilation of three sentences. The curators have therefore heavily edited the recording of the conversation: some of Willi Schirrmacher’s sentences have been cut short.

Here you can watch an unedited version of the beginning of the interview for comparison.

The two versions emphasise different things: The unedited version shows what Willi Schirrmacher says, in what order, and how he speaks. The edited version, on the other hand, allows viewers to quickly grasp important biographical details about Schirrmacher’s political career.

Which clip did you prefer watching?

Here’s what you said:

If you want to learn more about how the interview went:

If you’re more interested in why exhibiting interviews is a challenge, scroll down.

Some of the things Willi Schirrmacher talks about are revealed not on his own accord but because the interviewers prompt him to do so.

The interviewers interrupt the dialogue several times. What they discuss during the break is not part of the recording.

Some of the topics that are important to the interviewers are not ones that Willi Schirrmacher can talk about.

Willi Schirrmacher talks about some things even though he believes they are not relevant to the interviewers.

Many excerpts from the interview are not suitable for exhibition.

But they are important to understand the source: they reveal the dynamic between the interlocutors and provide clues as to what both sides expect from the conversation.

Interviews are important sources for depicting people’s experiences and giving a voice precisely to those who have been persecuted. At the same time, they are particularly difficult to exhibit because they are often very long and include stories from other contexts, such as the private lives of the contemporary witnesses.

However, when they are edited, new correlations arise and often the original context is no longer clear.

‘The appropriate presentation of interviews of contemporary witnesses is not only a question of respect, but also one of source criticism. … However, the aspiration to treat them in a biographical and source-appropriate manner regularly conflicts with the limited time available for an interview as part of an exhibition tour.’

Cord Pagenstecher, historian

Museums are increasingly explaining how they handle sources or inviting visitors to work with them in the exhibitions.

Many exhibitions now display sources in the context of their transmission: visitors to the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre, for example, can leaf through a photo album instead of simply being shown a single photograph.

The exhibition ‘Excluded: Archaeology of Nazi Forced Labour Camps’ makes transparent how the objects came to be in the museum: the story includes the site where they were discovered during archaeological excavations at former camp locations.

In the learning lab of the Nuremberg School Museum’s exhibition about school under National Socialism, visitors were able to work independently with sources.

The touring exhibition ‘nevertheless here!’ explains how the interviews came about. Visitors can watch longer, unedited passages.

What would you like to learn more about in the future?

Multiple answers are possible.

Here’s what you said:

Continue through the exhibition. The last thematic station is in the rooms dedicated to the war.

Credits:

1. © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, rba d018325-24; 2., 4. & 6.-9. © NS-DOK; 3. & 5. Landesarchiv NRW, Abteilung Rheinland, Ger. Rep. 112, Nr. 4459; 10. © Bergen-Belsen Memorial © 11. © Obersalzberg Documentation Centre / Kradisch; 12. © Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre; L. Sommerfeld; 13. © Stephan Minx / Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds; 14. © NS-DOK / Jörn Neumann;

Interview:

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