Many years ago, I visited the enormous castle called the Haut-Koenigsbourg, near the town of Orschwiller in the Lower Rhine department of Alsace. Dating from the Middle Ages, it was half-destroyed by Swedish forces in 1633 during the Thirty Years’ War, and thereafter abandoned. But in the first decade of the twentieth century, the German imperial government rebuilt it, and Kaiser Wilhelm himself reopened it to great pomp in 1908.
So very glad to see this. The responsibility of historians to try their best to tell the truth is going to be tried and tried in the fire in every age, but particularly in this age of electronic—no longer mechanical—reproduction. I can remember when high-school classes all over the U.S. (mine not included) were rushing to reproduce on the brand-new internet the great speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. But my own History classes could not find a single one of their reproductions that had not been politically correctly (or incorrectly) monkeyed with. We will go back to the Middle Ages, when the few who were literate toiled to make copies letter by letter of surviving books, and only one MS survived of Archimedes, barely visible under the Christian text overwritten on the valuable parchment.
This is my third effort to comment. It’s not easy at all in the system. Another very good post. This could be the basis of a longer and deeper essay. I thought the move from the castle to Charles de Gaulle worked very well.Of course the Soviets already knew how to Dr. photographs and other documents to change history. But I think your post is not about the effort to falsify history; it’s about the increasing success that those tried to recreate history and good faith are having. And what the implications of this are. That is very good.
Once again enjoyed reading and this is thoughtful. For me the thought it provokes is one I make frequently. The study of history is NOT about recreating the past with verisimilitude. It's about the way we try to interpret the always incomplete traces that we do have. It's about the mode of inquiring and the organization of available information into a meaningful and comprehensible interpretation of the experience of others.
In that sense the entire idea of recreating the speech seems to me kitschy although the story of the text and of how its meaning can be understood and how that meaning changes is history.
Thanks, Greg. I agree, absolutely. I would just say that there are many ways of engaging with history. What the Le Monde people were doing was not trying to study it or understand it, so much as to bring it alive for non-specialists, which is an honorable and interesting thing to do.
Feb 12, 2023·edited Feb 12, 2023Liked by David A. Bell
Honorable and interesting. Yes! We elementary- and high-school History teachers do it every day for a lot of "non-specialists," and do it all over again differently every year. Wish the Governor of Florida (a Yale grad, after all) understood what we do, and that he and other governors and legislatures thought it was worth paying for us to do it our way.
This post now looks more prophetic than it did in February because the Governor of Florida (a Yale AND Harvard Law grad) has demonstrated in Florida House Bill 999 that he will go all the way to make what we high-school-History teachers do subject to legal penalties if we have the temerity, the union backing, and the economic security to try to do them. Of course, those are the things we do not have. Might professional backing help? Your ball AHA and OAH.
So very glad to see this. The responsibility of historians to try their best to tell the truth is going to be tried and tried in the fire in every age, but particularly in this age of electronic—no longer mechanical—reproduction. I can remember when high-school classes all over the U.S. (mine not included) were rushing to reproduce on the brand-new internet the great speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. But my own History classes could not find a single one of their reproductions that had not been politically correctly (or incorrectly) monkeyed with. We will go back to the Middle Ages, when the few who were literate toiled to make copies letter by letter of surviving books, and only one MS survived of Archimedes, barely visible under the Christian text overwritten on the valuable parchment.
This is my third effort to comment. It’s not easy at all in the system. Another very good post. This could be the basis of a longer and deeper essay. I thought the move from the castle to Charles de Gaulle worked very well.Of course the Soviets already knew how to Dr. photographs and other documents to change history. But I think your post is not about the effort to falsify history; it’s about the increasing success that those tried to recreate history and good faith are having. And what the implications of this are. That is very good.
Thanks, Dan! The comment worked.
Once again enjoyed reading and this is thoughtful. For me the thought it provokes is one I make frequently. The study of history is NOT about recreating the past with verisimilitude. It's about the way we try to interpret the always incomplete traces that we do have. It's about the mode of inquiring and the organization of available information into a meaningful and comprehensible interpretation of the experience of others.
In that sense the entire idea of recreating the speech seems to me kitschy although the story of the text and of how its meaning can be understood and how that meaning changes is history.
Thanks, Greg. I agree, absolutely. I would just say that there are many ways of engaging with history. What the Le Monde people were doing was not trying to study it or understand it, so much as to bring it alive for non-specialists, which is an honorable and interesting thing to do.
Honorable and interesting. Yes! We elementary- and high-school History teachers do it every day for a lot of "non-specialists," and do it all over again differently every year. Wish the Governor of Florida (a Yale grad, after all) understood what we do, and that he and other governors and legislatures thought it was worth paying for us to do it our way.
This post now looks more prophetic than it did in February because the Governor of Florida (a Yale AND Harvard Law grad) has demonstrated in Florida House Bill 999 that he will go all the way to make what we high-school-History teachers do subject to legal penalties if we have the temerity, the union backing, and the economic security to try to do them. Of course, those are the things we do not have. Might professional backing help? Your ball AHA and OAH.