Digitisation / Cataloguing of non-textual objects: Valorisation and digitisation of the recordings of the Prussian Phonographic Commission 1915-1918

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The „Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission” was launched in 1915 to document the language and music of foreign soldiers in German prison camps. The commission started its work in the end of 1915. Specialists for different languages, ethnology and music were involved, and Carl Stumpf, professor of psychology and founder of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archive, became the commission’s director. Among the holdings of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archive in the Ethnological Museum Berlin, the 1022 recordings on wax cylinders of prisonars in German camps represent the largest historical collection. The sound files contain exclusively recorded music that is supplemented with appropriate documentation (recording logs, song texts in original language and translation, drawings, photographs and correspondence). The recordings portray a variety of ethnic groups, preferably from European countries and their former overseas territories. The project’s goal is to valorise and digitize the recordings, as well as all associated written documents, of the Phonographic Commission, and to bring together the digitized recordings on wax cylinders with the corresponding discs that are part of the holdings of the Lautarchiv of Humboldt-University in Berlin. All recordings will be made available to the public in a joint internet portal.