Abstrakt
The paper is based on the analysis of life stories of the oldest generation of the Czech Germans still living in Bohemia. The piece of work aims to show how the people who stayed in Bohemia after the postwar resettlement of the Germans reflect the past.
The author proceeds from the constructivistic approach to the collective memory and patterns developing the views of Halbwachs and M.C. Lavabre.
She analyses the use of narrative means employed in the form and subject matter and examines how the narrators shape the past, how they classify it into stages and how they assess it from the present day position and perspective. The final part of the paper brings a more detailed analysis of the collective picture of the First Republic and how it is used by the speakers for depicting, judging and criticism of today''s situation (i.e. the situation of the Czech Germans in the Czech Republic after 1989).
