Narrating Ethnicity in Oral History Interviews: Life Stories of People Resettled from Estonia to Germany in 1941

Abstract

This article demonstrates the possibilities of using oral history sources in the study of ethnicity. Interviews conducted with people who resettled from Estonia to Germany in 1941 were analysed for this purpose. It was asked why some interviewees are remarkably vague in their ethnicity narratives while some others present highly firm statements. The analysis that relies on the Communication Theory of Identity shows that interviewees’ pre-war ethnic, cultural and linguistic background was relatively insignificant. Instead, the most important distinguishing factor was involvement in the Baltic German or exile Estonian communities after World War II; the former was rather related to vagueness and the latter rather to firmness. Thus, it depended mainly on this factor what were the narrating strategies the interviewees made use of to present themselves in a desired way during the interview. In addition, the expressions, both vague and firm, were related to the widespread understanding of the primordial nature of ethnicity to which the interviewees tried to fit their own, often inconsistent, ethnic background and life stories. The results suggest that to understand the appearance of ethnicity in oral history interviews, the patterns of how ethnicity is narrated would be useful to trace and common perceptions on ethnic identity should be considered.