Material objects can function as carriers of social knowledge, specific values, or memories of past violence. With their unique feature of being haptic, they convey direct experiences and impressions of permanence. The active use and the physical presence of material objects can perpetuate feelings of belonging and confirm identity concepts in times of political transition after conflictual or dictatorial pasts. Through interviews with former soldiers of the East German army Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), the paper shows the importance of objects like tanks, planes, and weapons in the community's memory practices on two temporal levels. Building on the analytical framework of SANE (sites, agents, narratives, and events), it argues that these material artifacts of the past play a vital role in the soldiers' community events, private museums, and narrations about their history. They function as carriers of meaning and memory for them. In the years of disorientation and insecurity after the army's dissolution in 1990, military technology took center stage in remembrance events at private museum sites. In this way, it served as an anchor of familiarity and identity. Moreover, the objects marked the difference between the old and the new army and state. In the present as second temporal level, the former soldiers actively refer to the military items when narrating and framing their past in the interview situation. This object-based framing offers the possibility to share experiences of a biographical rift and invite the others to establish and stabilize a sense of unity.
