Carola Steiner
Giving clarity to life stories
It is only in the telling that events become history.
Hannah Arendt
Introduction
I am interested in how coherence emerges from fragmentary material.
How names, dates, documents and memories can become a story that is understandable and enduring.
I work at the intersection of genealogy, historical contextualization and design.
Not with the aim of completeness, but of orientation.
What matters to me
Many people collect material about their family over many years.
Family trees grow, folders fill up, files are created.
And yet there is often the feeling that everything exists side by side
without coming together as a story.
This is where my work begins.
I help to organize material, place it in its historical context,
and shape it into a form that is readable and comprehensible.
This is not about quick results,
but about careful contextualization and a clear structure.
How I work
I work carefully and responsibly with biographical material;
research, historical context and design belong together in my approach.
Form is not an end in itself, but a means of making content accessible.
Not every research project becomes a family chronicle.
But every one benefits from order and clarity.
What I am currently working on
At present, my work focuses mainly on:
family histories and family chronicles genealogical research and historical contextualization the question of how genealogical material can be shaped into coherent narratives Examples and related texts can be found in “Research and Stories”.
Texts and Research
On this website, I publish selected texts
in which I document research and place historical connections in context.
These include local histories as well as family history projects.
They show how I work and how individual traces can be shaped into an understandable story.
Note
I occasionally write a newsletter.
In it, I share thoughts, experiences and reflections
on working with family histories, research and structure.
The newsletter is published irregularly
and is aimed at people who wish to explore these topics in greater depth.