Fastnachtspiele als Medien des kollektiven Gedächtnisses

Abstract

Based on the postulates of cultural science memory research, this paper will examine a literary genre of the late mediaeval carnival play as a medium of collective memory. Carnival plays developed in direct reference to the fasting and carnival customs and enjoyed a great popularity in many German towns in the Middle Ages as long as the fasting rules appeared to be quite strict and the carnival customs were performing the valve function for the medieval people. After the fasting rules had been relaxed, carnival plays had no purpose anymore and gradually fell into oblivion. Since those plays addressed everyday topics and customs (communicative memory), as well as the distant past (cultural memory), this genre emerges as a relevant subject of cultural science memory research. The analysis has shown that those plays did not last for a very long time as the media of communicative memory, while they were preserved in the traces in German cultural history for a longer period of time as the media of cultural memory (in the form of “ars memoria”, intertextuality, literary history and staging).