40/68 – Notes from the Ground: Reminiscences of a Reluctant 68er

Extract

The problem with our memories is that our imagination constantly interferes. Friedrich Dürrenmatt contended that whether something would have been possible is sometimes more important in memory than that which was real, so that past possibility becomes confused with past reality. Put another way, that which was possible gradually encroaches on that which was real, until years later memory accepts the synthesis as fact. Must, then, the designation “non-fiction” for any memoir not be a contradiction in terms? What I was in 1968 is not quite what I wish I had been, and the temptation is strong to impute motivations in retrospect that were not present at the time. The fact that it has been forty years since my experiences and that I have never written them down before, renders any attempt at chronological accuracy futile. Thus, I am grateful to the editors of the German Law Journal for heartily accepting this subjective, rather than an historically objective, report from the ground.