Contemporary witnesses report
The archive of the university and ‘oral history’
Besides the handling of the traditional tasks, archives were confronted with new demands which are close linked up with the transformation from an industrial society to information and media society. Today archiving of digital official and scientifically traditions has become a standard in the archival activity. While backup, assessment, indexing and evaluation of the written and digital traditions of the organizations is regulated by law, the backup of historical memories of contemporary witnesses, in particular from special witnesses with a higher position, require a higher engagement. In many cases a balancing between objective traditions and contemporary witnesses reports is necessary. It requires a trustful collaboration between archives and witnesses, whose subjective notice of special events should not be underestimated for an interested historiography compared to written sources. Wolf Singer, director of the Max Planck-Institution for brain research, has out of a scientific view the substantive notice and the memories characterized as a creative constructing process which process in a different way by every human and make a reconstruction of an objective reality impossible. There can’t be a ‘wise separation between players and observer’, ‘because the watching influences the process and become a part of the process’ [1].
In the past years the archive of the university has together with former members of the technical academy and of the University of Technology of Dresden a large number of reports captured, handled and published. It deals with reports from former students and professors of our alma mater. So reports of memories existent which cover a bout from the 20th to the present and keep records on 80 years of the history of the university. They offer a fullness of information which is not passed down in files. The contemporary witnesses provide with their reports own historical sources, which not only complete the written traditions but also make up the context and relations. Further more the autobiographical description gives an insight in the carrier study or the graduation. Interestingly have many former students and assistants a special relation to their former university, their teachers and to the special atmosphere of heir place of study. So the politician for traffic, Edmund Frohne (1891-1917), alumni of the technical academy 1914, keeps in touch with his university. Even as the first president of the German Railway he kept in contact as his son remembers. Just as the connection between Dr. Sibylle von Schieszl (born 1918), today living in Sweden, never break off with her former hometown and study place. Not even after her departure from the DDR. Detailed memories of her study and her function as scientifically personnel at the technical academy of Dresden, at least by Prof. Kurt Schwabe (1905-1983), were available at the archive of the university.1 A few contributions were stepwise completed in the following presentation and in extracts published. They should inspire to offer personal memories, documents and other interesting traditions to the archive of the university.
[1] Notice, Remember, and Forget. About the usefulness and vantage of the brain research for the historical science. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 226 from 28th September 2000 p. 10
1 From 1940 until 1943 she studied technical physics at the technical academy of Dresden. Later, from 1950 until 1952, she was assistant and assistant professor from Prof. Kurt Schwabe the institution for electrochemistry and physical chemistry. In 1952 she might leave the DDR with her family. Later she got an executive position by Volkswagen.