Scientific Collections

Lautarchiv

Sample Objects from the Stock

To illustrate what kinds of sound documents are available in the Sound Archives we have taken example from each of the three main categories and documented it in detail. The categories German dialects, recordings by the Phonographic Commission in WWI prisoner of war camps, and the voices of famous people. These examples are intended to show what (scientific) use can be made of the stock and what has in part already been accomplished:

“Famous People”
Rabindranath Tagore

The recording of the Bengali poet, writer and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore (or Thakur), 1861-1941, is not only marked Aut 48, showing it to belong to the collection of famous people’s voices, but is also the only shellac record in the collection to be labeled LP 1.

“Dialects”
Emma Spreng (Bernese Oberland)

Emma Spreng, a teacher from Berne, Switzerland, was on September 22, 1925, one of the few women to make a dialect recording, which is now labeled LA 546.

“Phonographic Commission”
Sadak Berresid

Sadak Berresid from Monastir in Tunisia, a “farm laborer and popular poet” by profession, was 37 when in 1916 he made several recordings in Wünsdorf prisoner of war camp near Zossen (the “Halfmoon Camp”).