Page 489 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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wartime mobilisation. Beside the touring exhibition the commanderships of each mo-
bilisation place arranged specific side events under their own auspices. This procedure
generated a wide variety of activities, which were adapted to the particular regional cus-
toms and which were open to the public. Every mobilisation place commandership had
to organise a so-called “remembrance convention” for all ex-servicemen which were
on duty during the Second World War. In contrast to the multifaceted side events these
conventions followed a nationwide identical dramaturgy: The commander of the mo-
bilisation place greeted the veterans with a short address; an invited politician held a
commemorative speech; a military chaplain spoke some solemn words; afterwards the
veterans were invited to a common meal, the so called “Spatz” – a genuine army meal –
which must be regarded as a medium of remembrance itself.
On the following pages we focus on the speeches which were delivered at the Dia-
mond Commemorations by politicians, officers, clerics and veterans. It is my aim to
trace the political usage of memory and commemoration by analysing these speeches as
a serial text corpus. I attempt to illustrate, which imaginations of history and which po-
litical narratives were utilized within these speeches, how these different imaginations
and narratives were linked and to display certain mechanisms for the creation of social
identities and the constitution of a group specific perception of the past.

Collective memories as a dispositive of power
If we read one of these speeches as a single text source, we will regard it as an inde-
pendent and autonomous work of its relative author. But if we analyse all the speeches
as a serial production, we can identify certain repetitive patterns: The arguments, state-
ments and opinions embodied in the single speeches are perpetually repeated. These
repetitions manifest the thought patterns in which the speakers were rooted in. From
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the inventories of the Swiss Federal Archives I assembled a corpus of 78 speeches from
all parts of Switzerland, in all four national languages, from urban and rural areas, from
protestant, catholic and rather secular regions. This quite comprehensive setting does as-
tonishingly not manifest any observable variations in relation to the regional or cultural
origins of the speakers. There seems to be a countrywide shared memory from which the
speakers could draw their imaginations: A collective memory.
This is not the place to give an adequate survey over the research concerning col-
lective memories, but it is necessary to declare which concepts of collective memories
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will be followed. Some of the speakers reflected the existence of a collective memory.
They assumed a biological or biologistic determined collective memory, based on the
thesis, that during the lifetime acquired characteristics would be passed to the following

6 Sarasin, Philipp, Metaphern der Ambivalenz: Philipp Etters «Reden an das Schweizervolk» von 1939 und die
Politik der Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg, in: Sarasin, Philipp, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse,
Frankfurt am Main, 2003, 177–190. Sarasin, Philipp, Diskursanalyse, in: Goertz, Hans-Jürgen: Geschichte:
Ein Grundkurs, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2007, 199-217. Bürgin, Die Diamantreden, 33-39.
7 Further reading: Alcock, Susan, van Dyke, Ruth, Archaeologies of Memory, Malden, 2003. Assmann, Jan,
Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis, in: Erwägen, Wissen, Ethik, Bd. 3,2 (2002), 239-247. Burke, Peter, Geschichte als
soziales Gedächtnis, in: Assmann, Aleida, Harth, Dietrich (Hrsg.), Mnemosyne. Formen und Funktionen der
kulturellen Erinnerung, Frankfurt am Main, 1991, 289-304. Erll, Astrid, Memory in culture, New York, 2011.