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Oral History Project

Wall in the Minds: An Oral History of the Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall

The John F. Kennedy School

Oral history is the dynamic process of gathering and preserving historical perspectives through recorded interviews. This method of historical inquiry gives a voice to people who have been hidden from history and provides researchers with a forum to speak with history face to face.

The John F. Kennedy School Berlin Wall Oral History Project is the culmination of the efforts of fifty students. Each of the students in my two tenth grade history classes played a role in the creation of this book. Thirty students conducted, recorded and transcribed extensive interviews with Germans who lived in a divided country. They interviewed individuals from various backgrounds and encountered a diversity of experiences and perspectives. In all, their interviews amount to over 250 pages of raw qualitative data (the full text of the interviews is available at this page). Adding to this data bank, four students took on the responsibility of gathering quantitative information. These quantitative researchers, armed with the knowledge that numbers can speak volumes, provided the charts, graphs and maps used in the book. Another four students compiled archival photographs of divided Berlin. One student created a video documentary which, through interviews with student participants, offers valuable insights into the process undertaken for this project. Finally, eight students wrote this book. These students synthesized the data gathered by their classmates with published works in order to create a scholarly oral history text. Their collaboration was nothing short of beautiful, their sacrifices are the lifeblood of this endeavor and I admire their devotion.

It has been my responsibility, as the editor of the John F. Kennedy School Berlin Wall Oral History Project, to facilitate a student-directed effort by encouraging and coordinating their efforts. This book is for and by my students and my objective was to support them in bringing forth the voices of those who stood in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. What stands before the reader is the culmination of the efforts of conscientious, compassionate and curious tenth grade students.

It is a pleasure to present Wall in the Minds: An Oral History of the Rise and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

You are encouraged to offer feedback in the “comments” link situated on the bottom of this page.

Alaina Mack documented the processes that we engaged in as we wrote this book. In this video documentary, she captures the challenges that we faced and some of the lessons that we learned:

In addition to documenting the making of our book, Alaina quoted our transcribed interviews as the basis for an historical documentary, titled “Just a Day”, which offers valuable insights into life in a divided city and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On 30 April 2008, we held a book release seminar for all those involved in this process. This gathering served the dual functions of celebrating the release of our book and commemorating the experiences of those who lived in a divided Berlin. We had a panel of interviewees who joined us to elaborate on their experiences.

The project made a splash at JFKS. Read an interview with Anna Zychlinsky and I from the JFKS student-run newspaper, The Muckraker.

Students utilized various online resources for the this project. Feel free to explore the resources here

The assignment sheets and accompanying rubrics for the various contributors to the project are available at this page

Primary Source Readings on Imperialism

Your assignment:

1. Print  the one document assigned to you.
2. Read that document demandingly, i.e. annotate: underline, highlight, take notes in the margins. Bring the demandingly read document to class. 
3. Answer the questions provided below.

  1. Jules Ferry on Colonial Expansion
  2. Dadabhai Naoroji: The Benefits of British Rule
  3. Macaulay on Empire and English Education
  4. Qian Long: Letter to George III, 1793

The four documents

Response questions to all four documents

New Yorker Book Review of The Insurgent: Garibaldi and his Enemies

Suddenly you are looking in his eyes. Officially, they’re brown, but for you they’ll always be blue. He is speaking in a soft, seductive voice. Glory if you follow, eternal shame if you don’t. Rome or Death. In a moment, your destiny shifts. Incredibly, you have volunteered. You are given a red shirt, an obsolete rifle, a bayonet. You are taught to sing a hymn full of antique rhetoric recalling a magnificent past, foreseeing a triumphant future. You learn to march at night in any weather and over the most rugged terrain, to sleep on the bare ground, to forgo regular meals, to charge under fire at disciplined men in uniform. You learn to kill with your bayonet. You see your friends killed. You grow familiar with the shrieks of the wounded, the stench of corpses. If you turn tail in battle, you will be shot. Those are his orders. If you loot, you will be shot. You write enthusiastic letters home. You have discovered patriotism and comradeship. You have been welcomed by cheering crowds, kissed by admiring young women. Italy will be restored to greatness. From Sicily to the Alps, your country will be free. Then, with no warning, it’s over. A politician has not kept faith. An armistice has been signed. Your leader is furious. You hardly understand. Rome is still a dream. Your group disbanded, you receive nothing: no money, no respect, no help in finding work. But, years later, when he calls again, you go. You will follow him to your death.

The Insurgent: Garibaldi and his Enemies

Garibaldi and his Enemies Response Sheet

Britannia Redux: The Economist's Special Report

The birthplace of globalisation in the 19th century is coping well with the latest round, writes Merril Stevenson. But can it keep it up?

To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine:
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.

Rule Britannia, Britain‘s unofficial national anthem dating from 1740, celebrated not only Britain‘s military might but its commercial prowess as well. A century later Britain had fully risen to the advance praise. This was the high-water mark of its influence in the world, which coincided with the last great wave of globalisation. The first country to industrialise, Britain was soon turning out more than half the world’s coal, pig-iron and cotton textiles. In 1880 its exports of manufactured goods accounted for 40% of the global total, and by 1890 it owned more shipping tonnage than the rest of the world put together.

Less than a century on from those glory days Britain had become the “sick man of Europe”, infamous for wild swings in inflation and growth and for confrontational trade unions. Shorn of its empire and a late and reluctant arrival in the European Community, Britain was grappling with the prospect of irreversible decline.

Now its fortunes are looking up again. Steady economic expansion for the past 14 years has pushed its GDP per head above that of France and Germany. Its jobless figures are the second-lowest in the European Union. Inflation has been modest, and sterling, the Achilles heel of governments from Clement Attlee’s to John Major’s, is if anything too strong for Britain‘s good.

Read the rest of the report here

On the House of Lords

The cure of admiring the Lords is to go and look at it. (Walter Bagehot)

The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days (Clement Atlee)

A Brief History of the Lords

On the Wakeham Report

On the White Paper

Implications on Democracy

Response Sheet for Lords Readings (using the four readings above)

——More on the Lords…

Blair’s Vacillating Stance(s)

ummm…the other House of Lords (I can’t say which is more nauseating)

If that is not disturbing enough, you can watch the real House of Lords here

Large vs. Small Parcels of Western Land

Wikipedia on The Preemption Act of 1841, the  Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, and the Homestead Act (1862)

A summary of the Preemption Act 

The fight for the Preemption Act 

Good summary of the Homestead Act from NARA  

Primary Source Document: The Homestead Act

Free homes for free men. Speech of Hon. G. A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, in the House of Representatives, February 29, 1860

Horace Greeley and the Western Land Debate: “Go West, young man, go forth into the Country.”


Political Culture

Consider the following news headlines from across the globe:

  • The Russian president proclaims that he will appoint hundreds of political officials who until then had been elected by the people, and no one in the country seems to object.
  • The Chinese government sends troops to arrest farmers who refuse to give up their land to state-sponsored developers as China continues to bolster its market economy.
  • The citizens of Mexico vote the one-party system out of its 75-year rule by selecting a president from a party on the right in 2000, but now seem to be leaning toward a leftist president candidate for 2006.
  • Almost every week, the British prime minister faces the opposition party leader toe to toe in a “question hour” that encourages even members of his own party to hurl insults at him.

How do we make sense of the actions that we read about in the news? Start by reading this

Gender & Comparative Politics

We know that although women don’t come from Venus, and men aren’t from Mars, men and women do experience and participate in politics in very different ways. If we could line up all the leaders of the nations around the world, we would see few women. If we could put all the world’s legislators in the same auditorium, we would see more women, but it certainly would not be half (or rather 52%) of the legislative population. And if we counted up all the references to women, girls and females in comparative politics textbooks, we wouldn’t need many fingers to do the counting either.

So why study how gender operates in politics? One reason is that more women are to be found at various levels of governance, and more and more women are participating in politics through voting and political action at local and regional levels. We might also want to know whether an increase in women’s participation has any effect on policies. Or we might want to discover the relation between political and social change and greater gender equality in a society.

Print, read, respond, bring to class

Comparative Essay on Democratization and Revolutions

The field of comparative politics starts with the assumption that knowledge in the social sciences must proceed by way of the search for comparisons, or what has been called “suggestive contrasts.” Scholars of comparative politics compare in order to discover similarities and explain differences. As infrequent and highly complex events, revolutions have attracted a great deal of attention from comparativists.

In this article we will address the following topics:

  • The Concept of Revolution
  • Why Revolutions Happen?
  • Can Revolutions be Predicted?
  • What Do Revolutions Accomplish?
  • What Are some of the Failures of Revolutions?
  • Comparing Characteristics and Outcomes of Some Revolutions
  • Questions