Balkan Lessons in German Textbooks?

Georg Stoeber, researcher at the Georg Eckert Institute for Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany

A couple of weeks back one of my interviewees in Kosovo told me about a school in the country where ethnic Albanian Kosovan children go in the morning and ethnic Serb Kosovan children go in the afternoon. Both are taught completely different versions of the war in Kosovo. I was not surprised.

Living in the Balkans, I can imagine how difficult it is to be on two different sides of one powerful and painful event that can define your life. Still, I couldn’t understand why no one is trying to change this ‘method’ of learning about the war, in order to tell the truth but also to help new generations in Kosovo build a future together.
 
Dealing with the past is not such an easy thing, but history text books are a useful way to remember the past and understand it. This idea brought me directly to Braunschweig, a small city in Germany where the Georg Eckert Institute, a prestigious centre for text book research is based.  

The weather was appalling as I arrived at the institute, but I was greeted with a rather nice and useful surprise. Instead of meeting a researcher to discuss how history text books impact societies and help change prevailing attitudes, I met two colleagues who represent very different generations in Germany.

Georg Stoeber learned from the text books of the 1950s, immediately after World War Two came to an end. He says the history books of his youth usually described the war in limited, technical language. These older textbooks did not speak much about civilians and crimes.

“History textbooks are an instrument to learn the past, educate people and, on the other hand, they are mirror of society,” he told me.
 
The books of the 1950s were, however, completely different from those textbooks from which his younger colleague, Almut Stoletzki, learned about the history of World War Two and the Nazi era. She studied during the late eighties and early nineties and says that the Holocaust and war crimes were a very important study topic during her time of school.

Both explained me that Germany went through a very long and difficult process of admitting war crimes and this was reflected in textbooks that changed from decade to decade.

On the other hand, both stressed that the changes in the textbooks themselves helped society to gradually accept a more realistic view of the war over time.

Remembering the war and educating people through history textbooks could be a very difficult mission, but it seems to me that is the only way ahead. Although in Balkans, much more time is needed to heal the wounds and understand the truth.

Elira Canga is a Tirana-based journalist who is participating in the 2011 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

She will be writing regular updates on her investigation into how public recognition of war crimes in the Balkans and across Europe.