ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Germans of the 'borderlands' understand the inextricable links and how they perceive their 'togetherness' in year ten after unification. Today, many people commute to Bavaria or larger towns elsewhere for work. Upper Franconia, which is the former border region on the Bavarian side, had never developed the same economic strength as other parts of Bavaria. The narrative model of identity also highlights the historicity of self-narratives, their inevitable embeddedness in time and space, and the episodic and evaluative categories they are endowed with. All individuals were placed themselves in narratives of work. These referenced culturally constructed stories about proletarianism and class, the merits of hard work, work as a source of personal achievement, and the value of work skills. Such 'ontological narratives' are interlinked with large-scale 'webs of interlocution' or 'public narratives' in Germany in which meanings of work are defined.
