| Abstract | Ernest Renan once asserted that individuals constitute a nation if they remember-and forget-the same events of the past, as well as envision a common future. Yet, as others have noted, memories of historical events not only unify; they can also divide. Under what conditions do historical events tend to promote either unity or fragmentation? When will the one outweigh the other, and how can this relation be recognized empirically? In this paper, I use narrative data on life histories in eastern Germany to illustrate the distinction between two constellations of social memory: collective and fragmented. Whereas social memory may be considered collective when individual memories of key events are perceived as variations on a common national theme, I argue that memory and identity in eastern Germany after reunification have remained fragmented among incommensurable interpretations of citizenship, past and present, to national identity.
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