We kicked off our ToK History Day by discussing the question: What do historians do? „Finding sources and analysing them “, „assessing causes and effects of past events “or more generally „obtaining historical knowledge and preserving it “, were some of our answers. Finding a clear definition was hard. Even historians themselves do not agree on a common definition. Based on this discussion a further question arose: What is historical knowledge? „Finding, describing, understanding, analysing and interpreting past events derived from sources “or rather „comparing a variety of sources, contrasting them and weighting different views “. We concluded that again there is not one way to define it, but that we can say for sure that an „absolute truth “, which we may have in science or maths, is not possible in history, because sources are always delivered with a certain bias.
Next, we had a look at a study case, the Swiss „Bundesbrief “. First, we looked at the original Bundesbrief and discussed its content. Then we had a look at the steps Salbonier, a historian, undertook to assess the Bundesbrief. Some examples of his evaluation are that he took the historical context as well as the origin of the document into consideration. Furthermore, he interprets the content and comments on the purpose. Overall, he offers an educated interpretation of the Swiss „Bundesbrief “.

In the afternoon we did one thing that spanned a good two hours. We were put into individual groups and given a task that went along the lines of this: “Friends of yours are visiting Zürich, you are tasked to construct a tour of the city; including cultural, historic and famous landmarks/places.” In essence we had to create a tour which would give the visitor a good overview of what we found important or what we wanted to present, which encapsulated Zürich in our eyes, as a native of Zürich, in the allotted time frame (2 hours). As the starting point the main station (Zürich HB) was given. We sett off, the tour my group drew up, mainly focused on historical and famous landmarks along the Limmat to the Lake of Zürich and back again. We included places such as St. Peter’s Church, famous for having the biggest clock face in Europe. Or the Fraumünster Church (Frauenmünster), often visited due to the Chagall windows confined between its walls and the outside. Once every group had presented their tour, one thing became obvious, every single group focused on the old historical center around the Limmat, with some deviations, for example the ETH. This was the goal our teacher had in mind, it showed that our preconceived notion of what Zürich was mainly focused on the historic part/ the part that everybody knew. No one really decided to venture past those things, to maybe explore the more modern parts such as the Langstrasse or the other side of the lake or even past the city itself. Admittedly we were only given two hours which restricted us somewhat. But in the end the conclusion we gathered was very much in line with the themes and ideas of TOK we have come to know and understand.

Sophia Eich, Jared Rüegg, 5i