LAUSR

After explaining the basic tenets of the Potsdam theory of functional-communicative linguistics, firmly rooted in the German Democratic Republic (1949–90), this article discusses the ‘forgetting processes’ that consigned this theory to oblivion. Profiting from the uniformity of the system of general education in the GDR, the Potsdam school had a considerable influence on textbook production. The paradigm associated with it, however, was never really accepted by the universities nor by Academia at large, which thus led to its isolation from national and international academic discourse. Additionally, a paradigm that is imposed tends to be forgotten easily when its imposer disappears. After German reunification, therefore, the Potsdam school’s sudden loss of institutional basis marked the definite demise of the paradigm. To better understand this instance of scholarly forgetting, the article will survey a wide range of ideological, political, institutional and personal factors that contributed considerably to the Vergessenspotential of the Potsdam school’s functional-communicative approach. Apart from considering such external factors, it will also argue that reasons for its falling into oblivion can be found in the erroneous premises of the theory itself. The article will conclude by demonstrating how even the negative results of the Potsdam paradigm have meanwhile been forgotten to such a degree that it has even become possible, in present-day scholarship, to repeat its errors. As such, this article also presents a case study of how the forgetting of unsuccessful paradigms can in some cases actually hamper scholarly progress.