Local and regional commemorative volumes by the SPD

Since the end of the 1970s, a new interest in regional history emerged in many places within West German society. The 1980s saw the development of a regular history movement, which was characterised by the desire to search for traces of the recent past, the will to work on memories, and an interest in micro history and the history of the everyday.

The interest in history increased in two ways. On the one hand, general interest now went beyond "major" politics, focusing on the history of the people, living and working conditions, especially of the man in the street, and on "in situ history" - attention now also covered social history and the history of the everyday. But on the other hand, the interest also expanded in that more people began to ask about history; it was not just historians any longer and those who dealt with the past professionally, but also many "laypeople", men and women who were politically involved, who asked about the past to be able to understand the present and cope with the future.

From the first, the Social Democratic Party and its local associations participated in this history movement. One result of this grass-roots historiography are the numerous commemorative volumes which were published by regional and local SPD associations and which are collected and made accessible by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library. These are independent publications inspired by or printed on the occasion of a holiday or day of remembrance and usually appeared outside of the publishing trade. The authors of these commemorative volumes usually do not know that they are required by law to deliver their works to the Deutsche Bibliothek (German Library), which results in the commemorative volumes not being listed in the national bibliography and remaining mostly unknown.

Active collection of these commemorative volumes and their appearance in the Library catalogue makes this material, which is not only important for regional historians, nationally accessible and documents just how often people have been searching for traces of the past in their own regions. (Recommendation for users: searching the central catalogue e.g. by entering the catchword "Festschrift" or "Festschrift der Arbeiterbewegung").

A reading recommendation on this topic (a digital full text publication): "Historische Spurensuche : Hinweise für die Praxis" / [Hrsg.: Historische Kommission beim Parteivorstand der SPD. Texte: Ilse Fischer .... - Völlige Neubearb.]. - Bonn, 1997. - 157 S.

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