Photo: Funeral of my grandfather Erich Frütel, Essen, Germany, 1943, photographer unknown
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“The Operation Called Verstehen”

This individual coaching programme is aimed at history teachers (and German teachers in German-speaking countries) who want to address the topic of National Socialism in their classes in such a way that it it will raise their pupils’ awareness of the fact that they themselves are also susceptible to ideologies, authoritarianism and totalitarianism.  

“Do you know where your time is heading? Are you sure that the years of your youth will not one day be called the pre-war years, perhaps even ‘the last days of mankind’? Can you rule out belonging to a generation that could have seen, should have known that …? Historians have it easy. They explain in retrospect why everything had to turn out the way it did. Since they know exactly ‘what it all boiled down to’, they effortlessly find the right path through the labyrinth of a bygone era. They leave to the left or even to the right the aberrations and overgrown paths in which the people of an era confidently settled with their longings and hopes, certainties and fears. This is not a justification, but a warning.”
— Eva Sternheim Peters, The Time of Great Deceptions – A Girl’s Life under Fascism

In our school education system, the discussion of National Socialism still takes up the most space in the discussion of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Books such as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ or ‘The Wave’ are common readings to familiarise pupils with the topic. However, the information content of both books remains questionable: what historical knowledge should pupils gain from reading the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’? That there were likeable Jewish girls in Nazi Germany? If it were really necessary to teach this, reading a book would not be enough and otherwise the book, due to the fact that the first-person narrator is cut off from the environment in her hiding place, does not provide any observational data about relevant social processes that could lead to a gain in understanding what was actually going on. ‘The Wave’ doesn’t provide this data either, as it artificially and contrivedly places fascist behavioural structures in an American high school context, thereby wiping real life situations that led to National Socialism off the table and reducing the complexities of totalitarianism to a false narrative about people’s susceptibility to fascist behavioural aesthetics. 

But the relevant question would be: Why did people like you and me become Nazis? Much has been speculated and written about this. And the American sociologist Theodore Abel simply asked the Nazis by launching a biographical essay competition with cash prizes in a Nazi newspaper in the year 1933. The resulting collection of hundreds of personal biogrammes of early Nazis, and the ruthlessly honest autobiographical book ‘The Time of Great Deceptions – A Girl’s Life under Fascism’ by German psychologist Eva Sternheim-Peters are, in my opinion, far more productive teaching materials and I offer to show you in a process-accompanying coaching series, how you can use them in your class effectively, playfully and in a theatrical way, in order to give the pupils a personal encounter with totalitarian thinking and a good portion of self-knowledge about their own susceptibility. In his essay ‘The Operation called ‘Verstehen”, Theodore Abel himself made it very clear that ‘understanding’ the actions of another person is not suitable as a scientific tool to gain knowledge about the other person, as one can only understand the other to the degree one can understand oneself. The acting approach I offer utilizes precisely this treachery of ‘understanding’: We will approach the actions and thoughts of distant people with the aim of gaining knowledge about ourselves. Coaching can take place online and includes both project preparation and process support.


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