Oblio collettivo e memoria storica. L’autorappresentazione identitaria in interviste autobiografiche a profughi della Prussia orientale

This paper presents some insights drawn from a broader study on the flight and migration of Germans from East Prussia in the last months leading to the end of the Second World War. In particular, the study analyses the language of the oral testimonies of three survivors, based on a set of autobiographical narrative interviews collected within a project entitled Flucht und Familiengeschichten aus Ostpreußen. The aim of the project is mainly to investigate the discursive strategies used by speakers with regard to places and emotions, but also to reconstruct their identity. Through the analysis of the linguistic strategies deployed in the process of remembering the past, this paper will show how the speakers, by recounting episodes from their lives, take on different identity positions relative to both the narrating and the narrated self, thus re-constructing their own difficult linguistic, religious and national identities.