In my experience the interpreters usually learn the wrong information from their training and from established habits at the historic sites. There is very strong attitude that things are just common knowledge, when in fact they are 100% fiction, but no one questions the information or does periodic refreshing of the training materials. 

Even when people know it is fiction, they say "oh, but the guests love that story!"  

Or they have passed down the history of their site for 50 years without anyone making any attempt to confirm the research. For example, I worked in a house that said the builder of the house was a Revolutionary War hero. Problem with the story, is the family Bible that was was IN the house said he was born in 1769. Once I saw that and started digging I found that about 98% of what I had been told was completely false and the true stories were far more interesting than the fake ones. 


 



On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 8:25 AM, adelheid straten <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Am 18.04.2014 01:02, schrieb Elizabeth Walton:
I have heard interpreters saying so many outright historical lies it makes me cringe.

yes,yes,yes. The question is: Who controls the interpreters? Do the controlling bodies (if they exist at all!) have the scientific background to judge what is a lie and what is proper? Or do they steal away with such nonsense "There is no thruth at a all" - "So many people, so many thruths" - "We are not obliged to truth, we are obliged to business"? Do they know at all the difference between history and story, between museum and amusement center? The difference between the "Weimar city museum" and "The story of Weimar"?

Visiting a famous German Barock castle in Northern Germany, we were compelled to take a guided tour. The tour was full with lies, I just remember the following: "When the count and his guests were having dinner, they throw the bones of the pultry behind them on the floor. Afterwards they were dancing over the bones..." [Imagine the cracking sounds and the slippery parquet floor...]
Maybe the trusted guide with a degree in cultural management had read too many Dracula stories or seen too many Russian vodka videos. When I asked her for a proof of that "fact" she replied "Didn't you know that "they all" were accustomed to that?"

I am just wondering what tour guides in 200 years will tell the listeners about todays tour guides... (Maybe "Most of them were students, ill-paid, with no interest in history and no proven scientific background. Their main purpose was to entertain the paying visitors with anecdotes, sex and crime, and sometimes with ghost stories, when they had a good day.")

Christian


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