Introduction at the presentation of an
Expeditions Oral History publication by Frank
Vandenbroucke (Flemish minister of education).
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Wer baute das siebentorige Theben?
In den Büchern stehen die Namen Königen.
Haben die Könige die Felsbroken herbeigeschleppt?
Bertholt Brecht, Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters.
In this famous poem Bertholt Brecht criticizes the kind of historiography that focuses almost exclusively on the protagonists in the course of human history and on the glorious accomplishments of emperors, kings and military commanders. Until a few decades ago this used to be the predominant approach, not only in historiography but also in the way history was taught at school. Some slightly older readers might still have rather gloomy memories of the history lessons they were once subjected to, precisely for this reason. Names, facts and dates, battles and treaties, it used to be a dull and one-sided approach of a discipline that is sometimes considered to be "la reine des sciences".
Fortunately a lot has changed since the publication of Brecht's poem in 1935. Historians have learned to appreciate new subjects, to ask different questions, to address new topics. Since the middle of the twentieth century more and more attention has been focused on the likes of demographic developments, employment, income, nutrition or the role of societies and social organisations such as trades and unions …
A major shift has occurred in the sense that historians have started to concentrate less on the life and accomplishments of the mighty moguls and more on the history of everyday life. When walking into a bookshop and browsing around in the history department one notices immediately that nowadays a great many publications are about seemingly ordinary topics and common people. The social angle has taken root. Next to their growing interest in these new themes historians seem to have discovered the importance of a new and virtually untapped source of information: the story of the people. When studying the history of the pre-1900s historians still have to rely on the traditional sources of information, the written or printed word, which is sometimes backed up by images or archeological findings. But for the more recent past the idea has emerged that people and their memories can be a tremendous help in the writing of history. Those who seek answers to the questions Bertholt Brecht is asking in his poem may find that the written sources tell us relatively little about the actual life and thoughts of ordinary people. If common people were written about at all, this was done by those who ruled them or passed judgement on them. With regard to the twentieth century the situation is entirely different, owing to oral history.
On the whole the testimony rendered by ordinary men and women doesn't seem to contain that many spectacular items, but that doesn't mean it is not significant. I was particularly struck by a passage in Dimitri Vanderwaeren's text (Edition II, p.135). Apparently he had been rather sceptical when he embarked on his Oral History assignment, wondering " what on earth an elderly man would be able to tell him apart from his perpetual reflections about the good old days". However, the conversations he had with his 73-year-old grandfather made him change his mind completely. His assignment had sparked off "a journey of discovery through which it became clear that there was more at stake than you might think of at first". The original reservations that had haunted Dimitri's mind also tend to be present among the interviewees. Some informants feel their roles to be so insignificant that they find it very difficult to say anything about it.
Nevertheless the reporting of ordinary events in ordinary lives is a most precious undertaking indeed. For starters it teaches us how the important events and evolutions in the past century were experienced by the people themselves. Oral history reveals things. We may well read about the major breakthroughs in the field of medicine, but such information only becomes tangible when we are able to pinpoint what this actually meant in the lives of real men and women back then. A table or graph about child mortality in the beginning of the twentieth century will excel in clarity and objectivity but it won't grab you by the throat like a story of a mother who lost her child in 1930 due to a disease that would be easily treatable today. And how about toothache? In today's society toothache seems to have become a petty problem. In Benjamin Costermans and Sarah Van Cauwenbergh's contributions (Edition I, p.35-39 and p.41-48), however, we learn that until shortly after the Second World War treating a toothache was no sinecure. In case of a dental emergency one ended up with a family doctor who tried to cope with the problem the best way he could. Stories like this one illustrate the fact that public health services have come a long way far better than any scientific paper ever could. They also have the power to make us experience the uncertainties of living in an era when disease and death were much more present in everyday life. They also show clearly that the medical profession has changed dramatically since those days: in speeches about the bad times family doctors are experiencing today I have often quoted the story about Dr Corens..
The twentieth century was the age of technology, mechanisation, automation. We all experience the benefits from these evolutions in our everyday lives. Moreover, we would no longer be able to imagine living without television sets, computers, cars. Historians and sociologists have carefully entered the sale and distribution figures of radios and television sets in Belgium into neat little graphs. But the answer to the question how owning such a radio has changed the lives of the people is something we cannot find in their tables. In order to find that out we have to go and listen to the people themselves. In Edition II Frans Sorgeloos testifies that a radio was an article of great luxury when he was a kid (around 1930). In the neighbourhood he lived in only the headmaster of the local primary school used to own one. In Edition II (Contribution Femke De Clippel, p. 78-80) Jos Lemmens, born in 1910, states that movie theatres began to pop up in the mid-twenties and that - can we picture this? - there were hardly any cars on the roads back then.
Oral history is also an extremely efficient method of finding out how people coped with the crises that we know out of books. The unemployment in Flanders shortly after the First World War and the seasonal work in Wallonia and France that resulted from it - also the Flemish people were migrant workers once. The poverty of the thirties, or the war in 40-45. Several testimonies in editions I and II clearly show how the Second World War made its decisive mark on the people that experienced it, not only those who underwent its horrors personally, but also those who had to live under the oppression of the occupation.
Such stories of ordinary people and their ordinary lives allow us to add colour to the big canvas of the recent past. They give an additional value to understanding the major events in our history books. The story of the way one subjectively experienced the facts and social developments of one's era thus becomes an objective source of information.
Moreover, the many contributions out of the two previous publications of Oral History clearly show that oral history can trigger a new kind of research into phenomena and instances when the traditional written sources are conspicuously silent or even completely absent. Thanks to oral history we can compile an image of many interesting and extremely important aspects of life and thus get access to the individual microcosm of earlier times. How did ordinary people experience solidarity or class distinctions? How did they think about priests, men of standing, employers? How did parents interact with their children? How did boys and girls come to grips with their sexuality: through mom and dad, in the street or on the factory floor? How did people spend their leisure time, if they had any? Oral history can provide us enormous amounts of information about interpersonal relationships. Or about the material context in which people once led their lives. What about the quality of the accommodation? Which modern conveniences appeared when? What pictures were hanging on the walls of working class people? Pictures of saints, king and queen, mountain views, Stalin? And so we have arrived in the spiritual realm. What role did religion play? What about superstition - Céline Serneels's folk stories prove that until a few decades ago people still believed in witches and werewolves (Edition I, p.87)? How did one experience the cultural differences between lower and higher classes? How important were king and country really in the hearts and minds of the people? What did one think about progress? Who will tell us? Our elderly oral informants will! Oral history is the the best tool one can imagine to penetrate into the hearts and minds of the lower sections of society. Oral history is by definition the history of the little people. One can never underestimate its importance and it brings me great joy that here in the Royal Academy of Aarschot the value of this kind of research and the opportunities it offers are readily acknowledged.
But I am also pleased with another result of this project namely the fact that it narrows the gap between the old and the young. This experiment in Aarschot has proven that by practising oral history young people have gained an additional appreciation for their relatives, neighbours or acquaintances. Lisse De Blick (Edition II, p.57-68), Dimitri Vanderwaeren (Edition II, p.135), Raf Verstraete (Edition II, p. 152-154) and others have realized through their assignments how little they really know about the lives of their grandfathers and how interesting and rich the lives of the older generations have actually been. Through this active exchange of information and communication young people come to terms with the recent local and regional history they themselves are in the process of continuing. This in itself creates a bond; it strengthens the shared identity and brings the generations closer together, which is extremely important in a society where soon four generations will be living together. The image young people have about senior citizens is changing for the better, they learn that older people have a lot of experience to show for. Imagine: someone who was born around 1920 learned to write with a slate-pencil or crown pen, shortly after the war the ball-pen became popular, then the typewriter, in the beginning of the eighties the word processor and now you've got the multimedia PC. From horse and cart to TGV, from double-decker to space shuttle, all in one lifetime. Never in the history of the human race have people undergone and absorbed as many changes as in the twentieth century. The senior citizens of today have lived through those turbulent times and our young people can learn from those experiences.
This human capital embedded within the older generations is of the utmost social importance and oral history is one of the ways to cash in on it. In my book Tien kleine Belgen (Ten little Belgians) Dirk Tieleman properly objects to the way our society treats our senior citizens. "We have to stop dumping people sooner and sooner", he writes, "we must avoid wasting the experience of the older generation" (p.53-54). And he is right. It is fundamentally important that the older generations keep on participating in society and this participation has to be stimulated in different ways. Learning to appreciate their knowledge and experience by putting it to use in our historiography must be an important element in this process. This historical role is one of the many different ways in which they can truly actively participate in today's society.
Throughout my speech I have stressed the vital importance of oral historiography for reasons of both a historical and a social nature. Now, when writing down these final sentences, it occurs to me that in a way submitting this text with this content for Edition III might be a bit like carrying coals to Newcastle. In the Royal Academy of Aarschot there is clearly nobody left that has to be convinced of the importance of oral historiography. This project's results speak for themselves. Thus maybe this humble contribution of mine had better be perceived as the expression of a shared enthusiasm and of my great appreciation for the social commitment of the Oral History Team.
translated by Koen Vermaelen