Well, after the fieldwork in Lübeck I used the time to start analysing and interpreting the interviews which were, in general, quite interesting and telling about the relationship the inhabitants of Herrnburg have towards Lübeck. Now it is time for me to start the second part of my fieldwork: On Monday I will leave Oldenburg to go to a place called Tüddern, which is part of the westernmost German borough Selfkant. It lies immediately next to the German-Dutch border, only a few kilometres away from the Dutch city of Sittard-Geleen.
Bigger View
Bigger View
Again I am aiming at conducting around ten interview with inhabitants there. We’ll see, how it works out…
It has been a strange time in Lübeck: Being quite isolated and working on my research project by walking through a small village consisting of a big modern housing estate and a traditional one-street village, separated by a railway line. People there have been very open and once I got to talk to them, they told me quite interesting storys about the history of Herrnburg and their current lives there.
Now I am back in my office trying to review what I learned and work off all the stuff that accumulated here while I was away. I’ll soon be posting some more information about Herrnburg and my Fieldwork here, so stay tuned.
Since Monday, I am in Lübeck. It is an old town, former member of the Hansa and famous for its Holstentor and marzipan. But for me it is basically a big town, positioned at a former national border, with a small neighbouring village on the other side of the border. So my analysis focuses on the small but quite beautiful village of Herrnburg.
The task of the first few days was getting access to people living in Herrnburg and convincing them to support my study by giving me the opportunity to talk to them about their everyday life. I had already made an appointment with the headmaster of the local school who promised me his support. I met him yesterday and we talked about half an hour about living in Lüdersdorf (of which Herrnburg is a part) and school reform in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Finally, he agreed to hand out letters to those pupils of his school who live in Herrnburg so their parents would know about my project. Thus, I printed those letters yesterday afternoon and brought them to the school this morning.
Now I am sitting in my room – well, while posting this, actually in an internet cafe – and am anxiously waiting for my telephone to ring. The children should have gotten home by now and, if everything went according to plan, have given the letters to their parents. All I can do now is wait and grow nervous more and more.
This week sees an astonishing amout of concentrated work. This is due to the fact that my first fieldwork is coming closer and I will be leaving Oldenburg on Monday to visit the cities of Lübeck and Lüdersdorf where I will be performing my first set of interviews in the next weeks. Thus, I am working on my interviewing guidelines, my acquisition strategy and preparing information material. Finally, I will hold a presentation about my project at our internal colloquium this afternoon and preparing it takes some time as well.
I am doing my first fieldwork in Lübeck/Lüdersdorf for several reasons:
- It is the only small city/big city pairing along the former border between FRG and GDR.
- It can be used as a standardizing case with a fully disappeared border against which to compare the other, truly international, cases.
- I can use it as a first field test for my interviewing method, being able to return to Oldenburg for revisions quickly, if necessary.
- One case had to be the first…
Well, actually I got started already more than a year go with working on my dissertation project which I am now going to present to you on this website and weblog. I will talk about disappearing national borders and how they remain relevant for the everyday lives of people living close to them. I don’t know, how often I will post but we’ll see soon enough.
So much for now. Just have a look around and see some more information about the project and me. For comments, questions and remarks, don’t hesitate to contact me by leaving a comment oder writing an e-mail to nils.mueller (at) uni-oldenburg (dot) de.
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