The voice of the language teacher Bonifatius Folli (1877–1947) from Togo is featured in David Olusoga’s renowned documentary series “A House Through Time” (series 5, episode 1). Bonifatius Folli’s voice is preserved on shellac records in the collection of the Berlin Lautarchiv.

Produced by Twenty Twenty TV for BBC Two, the episode was aired on BBC Two in October 2024. With the kind permission of Twenty Twenty TV & BBC Two, this episode may be linked to the Lautarchiv website.

Written and presented by David Olusoga
Director: Edmund Moriarty
Executive Producer: Mary Crisp
Series Producer: Tim Dunn

Further presenters and experts: Sophie van der Tann, Bebero Lehmann, Astrid Ley, Rachel Pistol, Matthew Sweet

-> link to film

The Austrian Science Fund FWF is funding the research project “Sonic Imaginaries of Africa in German Cinema (1930-2000)” at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz from 23.09.2024-22.09.2028. Cooperation partners are the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

The project will make a contribution to the emergence and development of the sounds of cinematic Africa. Since the early days of cinematography, Africa has been an important production site for commercial films from the global North. Since music or sound as a sensual dimension of the everyday is an elementary component of discourses and ideas about the African continent, the project aims to analyze cinematic sound historically and structurally.

What is completely new in this project is the inclusion of anthropological material in the analysis of film music, which is based on empirical archive work.

From 13 January 2025 to May 2025, in the visitors’ room of the Lautarchiv, Dr. Maria Fuchs will be working for the first time on a previously unexplored collection of historical written documents that could be relevant to her project. The above document shows an excerpt from the article “Das ‘tönende Museum’, Westfälische Zeitung, Bielefeld, No. 88, April 15, 1932 - a first thematically relevant find that gives an idea of the archive’s potential for the use of sound film at this time.

-> further information

Paula Zwolenski was awarded the Humboldt Prize 2024 for her bachelor thesis “Sensitive sound recording from the archive. Communication attempts and self-positioning in the sound recording of the Indian prisoner of war Baldeo Singh”.

In her work, she examines how Baldeo Singh used the colonially influenced recording session of the Phonographic Commission to communicate and position himself as an individual speaker. Zwolenski analyses power asymmetries, deconstructs colonial practices and explores perspectives for the decolonization of historical collections.

The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin honors outstanding academic work by students and early career researchers with the award every year. The award ceremony took place on November 12 in the Lichthof Ost at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

-> Summary of the work

In 2024, three students successfully completed their Master’s degree with a thesis on a Lautarchiv-related topic.

At the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Cultural Analysis (Prof. Rolando Vázquez), Marie Baur completed her Master’s thesis on ‘Return(s) Listening to and beyond Voice Recordings of Martinican and Guadeloupean Prisoners of War in Germany during the First World War’.

At the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Dominik Biewer completed his Master’s degree with a thesis on ‘Die Stimme im Vollzug. (Re-)Figurierung einer “kriminellen Stimmaufnahme” im Archiv’ (Prof. Silvy Chakkalakal).

In the Language and Communication degree programme of the Technische Universität Berlin (Prof. Thiering), Luise Haubenreiser completed a linguistic thesis on ‘Das koloniale Archiv als Hort der Macht. Auf der Suche nach dekolonialen Resonanzen in der linguistischen Praxis’.

Congratulations!

All three works can be found in the Lautarchiv’s reference library and can be viewed and read on site by appointment.

There are more than 350 different archives in Germany alone, containing collections on architecture, photography, dance and more. That’s why the Institute of Modern Art Nuremberg and the Neues Museum Nürnberg are organizing a conference on the topic of “No future without memory. Strategies of preservation in cultural archives”. At this symposium, guests from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland will talk about the work and challenges of cultural archives.

Alina Januscheck and Christopher Li from the “Towards Sonic Resocialization” project will be holding a lecture on Friday. Focusing on the ethic(s) of the Lautarchiv, they will discuss the handling of collections from colonial contexts of injustice. Furthermore, the impact of these ethics on the Lautarchiv’s current and future culture of remembrance will be explored.

When: 20–22 June 2024

Costs? 50 €, students free of charge

-> Further informarion

The Long Night of Sciences will take place again on 22 June 2024. The Collegium Hungaricum is celebrating its 100th anniversary by presenting the contents of archives in this context.

In addition to guided tours of the institution and an interactive sound installation, lectures will be offered. The Lautarchiv presents a sound recording from its collection by Robert Gragger, who founded the Collegium Hungaricum around 1924.

Time: 5 pm – midnight

Please note the event will be held in German.

-> Info & Tickets

The Lautarchiv launched an Instagram channel on 26.04.2024! We will regularly inform you about the archive’s contents, the project “Towards Sonic Resocialisation” and current events around the Lautarchiv.

-> Follow us on Instagram

Anette Hoffmann’s new monograph has been published by Duke University Press.

“Knowing by Ear” listens to recordings of African prisoners of war from the First World War as historical sources and thus focuses on individual speakers from Senegal, Somalia, Togo and the Congo. Hoffmann interprets the historical voice recordings as responses to individual experiences and in relation to colonial history. In conjunction with written sources, photographs and works of art, the speakers can also be understood as acoustic echoes of colonial knowledge production.

-> Link to the book

The German Lost Art Foundation is funding the research project “Towards Sonic Resocialization” at the Berlin Lautarchiv from 1.3.2024 to 28.2.2026. For the first time, the focus of the research is not on objects but on sound recordings. The Lautarchiv is examining its collection of recordings of prisoners of war from the First World War who were recruited for the armies of European powers in the colonies. These include 456 sound recordings of African prisoners in German camps.

The digitized recordings and the associated historical written documentation are to be shared with the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire in Dakar, Senegal, as well as with other African archives in the future. In the course of this, the existing metadata of the sound archive will also be subject to a critical decolonizing onomastication. This requires questioning and revising the categories and terminologies that emerged in the course of colonisation.

Proactive exchange and cooperation with the respective source communities are particularly important to the project right from the start. Individuals from the countries of origin are employed to translate the recorded texts and documentation. Provenance research is also carried out on the places of origin of the colonial soldiers and genealogical research is conducted to determine possible descendants.

The project aims to create a model for the future handling of colonial heritage in sound archives. In the future, this will be done not only with recordings of speakers from the African continent but also with all colonial recordings in the Lautarchiv.

-> read more…

Due to illness, this event has been canceled and will be rescheduled at a later date!

To mark UNESCO World Mother Language Day on February 21, art and cultural historian Uta Kornmeier will be talking to Mandana Seyfeddinipur (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities), Albrecht Wiedmann (Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv des Ethnologischen Museums) and Christopher Li (Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) about linguistic field research and language archives, about the documents that are created in the process and what can be researched with them.

-> read more…

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to submit paper proposals for our conference “Music, Archives and Politics in East and West Berlin since 1963: Cosmopolitan, International, Global,” which will take place in Berlin 3-5 July 2024. The call for papers closes on March 4, 2024. To submit an abstract, please email us your proposal of up to 250 words at eastwest2024@web.de.

We are also offering a workshop program on July 4 in relation to the conference. The Ph.D. and master students can register for a specific workshop until March 18, 2024 at eastwest2024@web.de. All conference participants are welcome to join any one of the workshops.

The conference will take place at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin; workshops will visit other institutions in Berlin and Potsdam. In addition to the workshop track, the conference will also include a concert and several public interviews with eyewitnesses (Zeitzeugen). The conference sessions and workshops will take place either in German or in English.

On behalf of the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Lautarchiv would like to thank the donors Renate Doegen and Vanessa Büttner, née Doegen.

The aim of the donors is to make the objects from the estate available for research and teaching at the Humboldt University in Berlin and to place them in the conservational care and maintenance of the Lautarchiv.

The objects include shellac records, books, documents, pictures and three historical gramophones. The gramophones from the Doegen family are relevant to media history, because the Lautarchiv has not yet had any historical gramophones in its inventory.

Coming from the descendants of the founder of the Lautarchiv Wilhelm Doegen (1877–1967) – the donation also has a special symbolic value. We are particularly pleased about the pleasant exchange of knowledge and contact with the Doegen family.

Anette Hoffmann’s book „Kolonialgeschichte hören“, originally published in German language by mandelbaum verlag (2020), is also available in English: „Listening to Colonial History“, published by Basler Afrika Bibliographien (2023).

Hoffmann’s work provides a detailed analysis of the significance of historical sound recordings for challenging the colonial archive. Whilst her analysis is presented from a historical archive studies perspective, her ideas deserve to be taken up by anthropologists who are engaged in historical ethnography and may even inspire any decolonial-minded researcher in anthropology, and beyond.

-> Read more…

In 2023, three students successfully completed their master’s or bachelor’s degree with a thesis on a Lautarchiv-related topic.

At Aarhus University, Nikoline Jørgensen has completed a master’s thesis in the Department of Comparative Literature (Prof. Marianne Ping Huang) on ​​the topic ‘A decolonial universal museum? A reading of metamuseal stories of decoloniality at Berlin’s Humboldt Forum’. Nikoline completed a three-month internship at the Lautarchiv the previous year.

Paula Zwolenski successfully completed her bachelor’s degree in Cultural Theory and History at Humboldt University of Berlin (Prof. Christian Kassung) with a thesis on the topic of ‘Sensitive sound recordings from the archive. Attempts at communication and self-location in the audio recordings of the Indian prisoner of war Baldeo Singh’.

Sophie Ehmke successfully completed her bachelor’s degree in Transcultural Musicology at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Prof. Sebastian Klotz) with a thesis on the topic ‘The postcolonial handling of the prisoner of war recordings from the First World War in the Berlin Lautarchiv’.

Congratulations!

All three works may be read on site in the archive’s reference library upon request/appointment. Nikoline Jørgensen’s work is currently only available in Danish (Et decolonialt universelt museum? - En læsning af metamuseale fortællinger om decolonialitet på Berlins Humboldt Forum).

Particularly significant is the fact that these three records were previously considered lost in Berlin; no digital copies existed until now. In Oslo, digital copies were made and also transferred to the Lautarchiv. The shellac records had been lent to the Norwegian Iranologist Georg Morgenstierne (1892-1978) by the founder of the Lautarchiv Wilhelm Doegen (1877-1967) or by the Göttingen Iranologist Friedrich Carl Andreas (1846-1930). Through Morgenstierne’s estate, they made their way into the Norwegian Nasjionalbiblioteket.

On the records, the voices of Ábdil Kadír Khan, Beidullah Khan and Shahdad Khan (Afghan and Baluchi) can be heard.

The shellac records were brought to Berlin with official permission from the Norwegian Ministry and a written statement from the Nasjionalbibliotekek.

In particular, the Lautarchiv would like to thank Johanne Ostad, Bente Granrud and Włodek Witek from the Oslo Nasjionalbiblioteket.

Sebastian Klotz, Scientific Coordinator of the Berlin Lautarchiv, has given a lecture on “Document or Transformative Resource? Phonographic Recordings in UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World Register’” as part of the RUPERTO CAROLA LECTURE SERIES with the theme “IMMATERIAL HERITAGE: A FUTURE RESOURCE?” at the University of Heidelberg in June 2023.

The entire lecture is available as a video,
-> see…

The exhibition “Voices” is dedicated to the connection between war and scientific research by example of the prisoners of war Sunab Gut, Abdul Aziz Khan, Harzet Shah, Beidullah Khan, Shahdad Khan and the Professor of West Asian languages Friedrich Carl Andreas in Göttingen.

The exhibition focuses on the documents and language recordings of the prisoners and the attempt to make the individual person behind them visible.

Two historical shellac records and a matrix from the Berlin Lautarchiv are on display in the exhibition.

-> Read more…

At this year’s European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Cologne, Anette Hoffmann (University of Cologne) and Christopher Li (Lautarchiv, Humboldt University of Berlin) will present a paper on “Who inherits the recorded voice?” as part of the panel “Beyond colonial plunder and postcolonial restitution: a legal pluralist approach”.

-> Read more…

Alina Januscheck, currently working as assistant curator at the Humboldt Labor, completed her master thesis on the Lautarchiv, supervised by Prof. Dr. Silvy Chakkalakal at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie HU-Berlin.

A hardcopy of this master thesis may be viewed and read on site in the visitor room of the archive upon request.

Irene Hilden’s PhD thesis on the Berlin Sound Archive (Lautarchiv) is now available, published by Leuven University Press.

The book focuses on sound recordings produced under colonial conditions. It examines sound objects and listening practices, revealing the “absent presences” of colonial subjects who are given little or no place in established national narratives and collective memories.

Irene Hilden is postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Ebook also available in Open Access.
https://lup.be/products/181122

This year’s IASA Annual Conference will be organized by the IASA Group Germany/Switzerland e.V. in cooperation with the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Berlin Phonogram Archive, Department of Ethnomusicology of the Ethnological Museum. It will be held at the Humboldt Forum on November 10-11, 2023.

Thematic focus of the IASA Annual Meeting 2023:
100 years of radio and 70 years of television in Germany.

Call for papers until June 30, 2023 by email to sekretariat@iasa-online.de

-> Read more…

The relocation of the Lautarchiv to the Humboldt Forum was completed on July 26, 2022.
The sound archive had been located Am Kupfergraben 5 since 1975.
In preparation for the move, a comprehensive inventory of the Lautarchiv has been carried out over a period of one year since January 2021.

The new premises in the Humboldt Forum offer very good conservational and climatic conditions for the collection of shellac records.
Recordings from the core holdings can be made digitally accessible once a user agreement has been concluded. By appointment (e-mail or telephone), digital copies can also be listened to on site in a room for visitors.

On August 23, 2022 at 1 p.m., Arte will broadcast a documentary on the Lautarchiv as part of the series “Stadt Land Kunst” (directed by Heinz Cadera and produced in September 2021).
With commentaries by Britta Lange and Christopher Li

See also:
https://vimeo.com/user44741706

In addition to its core holdings of audio recordings of prisoners of war from the First World War and the collection of German dialects from the 1920s and 1930s, the Lautarchiv (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) also preserves other interesting sub-collections that have so far remained rather in the background and initially seem to have no obvious connection to the collection. Take, for example, three Indian drums.

No historical written documentation exists for these instruments. There is no entry in any inventory book that would indicate how, why and from where they came into the collection of the Lautarchiv. In terms of organology, the three drums do not form a coherent ensemble. One of these drums—an Indian tablā (dāyāṃ)—will be the focus of attention here.

-> Read more…

Viktoria Tkaczyk is professor in the musicology and media studies department at Humboldt University Berlin, specializing in media and knowledge techniques.

“Thinking with Sound” traces the formation of auditory knowledge in the sciences and humanities in the decades around 1900.

When the outside world is silent, all sorts of sounds often come to mind: inner voices, snippets of past conversations, imaginary debates, beloved and unloved melodies. What should we make of such sonic companions? “Thinking with Sound” investigates a period when these and other newly perceived aural phenomena prompted a far-reaching debate.

-> Read more…

Britta Lange’s book Gefangene Stimmen is now also available in English as an e-book titled Captured Voices, translated by Rubaica Jaliwala as part of a grant by the Deutscher Übersetzungsfonds.

Since the German version of the book (2020) could not have a book premiere due to Corona, a book launch will take place for both publications on October 7, 2022 Am Kupfergraben 5 10117 Berlin (room 501) at 6 p.m., to which all interested parties are warmly welcome.

Visit:
https://www.kulturverlag-kadmos.de/programm/details/captured_voices