Recordings of South Asian Languages and Music in the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt­ Universität zu Berlin

This is the cor­re­spond­ing Eng­lish ver­sion of the 2020 MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con entry “Südasi­atis­che Sprach- und Musikauf­nah­men im Lautarchiv der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin”. The text was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in “When the war began we heard of sev­er­al kings” South Asian Pris­on­ers in Worl War I Ger­many, edit­ed by Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau, and Ravi Ahu­ja. New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 187–206.

Table of Con­tents
Wil­helm Doe­gen and the His­to­ry of the Lautarchiv | The Phon­graph­ic Com­mis­sion  | Tech­ni­cal and Organ­i­sa­tion­al Real­i­sa­tion of the Gramo­phone Record­ings in the POW Camps  | South Asian Record­ings in the Lautarchiv  | Con­clu­sion  | End­notes | Bib­li­og­ra­phy

This chap­ter gives an overview of the sound record­ings of South Asian sol­diers and civil­ians from the First World War stored in the Lautarchiv of the Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin. Pris­on­ers of war became ‘objects’ of lin­guis­tic research when, in 1915, a com­mis­sion of researchers received the offi­cial sanc­tion to record the numer­ous lan­guages and dialects that were spo­ken by the cos­mopoli­tan assort­ment of ‘ene­my’ sol­diers and civil­ians in Germany’s prison camps. The record­ings of voic­es, lan­guages, dialects and music of interned sol­diers and civil­ians for research pur­pos­es account for a sig­nif­i­cant part of the col­lec­tion, but there were also oth­er areas of focus.

In terms of scope and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance there is no com­pa­ra­ble col­lec­tion in any Ger­man uni­ver­si­ty. This col­lec­tion is the ear­li­est and most com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem­at­ic sound archive cre­at­ed for doc­u­men­tary and sci­en­tif­ic pur­pos­es by record­ing onto shel­lac disc. It was estab­lished for sci­en­tists by sci­en­tists for the pur­pos­es of teach­ing and research. On the one hand, research into pho­net­ics, dialects, com­par­a­tive lin­guis­tics, and eth­nol­o­gy were to be fur­thered; on the oth­er, the record­ings were to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in for­eign lan­guage teach­ing. The archive, which was pre­served after the Sec­ond World War though with­out being man­aged or extend­ed, has been devel­oped and dig­i­talised since 1999. A data­base of the record­ings made by the archive on shel­lac disc between 1915–44 has been com­plet­ed and is avail­able online.^[i]

These sound record­ings can only be prop­er­ly appre­ci­at­ed in their respec­tive sci­en­tif­ic and his­tor­i­cal con­text, which, how­ev­er, has not been inves­ti­gat­ed and recon­struct­ed in suf­fi­cient depth as yet. The fol­low­ing does not pre­sume to offer a com­plete pic­ture, for this reason.

Wilhelm Doegen and the History of the Lautarchiv

The his­to­ry of the Lautarchiv is close­ly linked to its founder Wil­helm Doe­gen (17.3.1877–3.11.1967). Doe­gen was born in Berlin in the same year that Edi­son invent­ed the phono­graph. On fin­ish­ing high school, he under­went an appren­tice­ship in a bank and then stud­ied eco­nom­ics and busi­ness law. Doe­gen also went unof­fi­cial­ly to Eng­lish lec­tures giv­en by Alois Bran­dl (1855–1940) at the Friedrich-Wil­helm­s­U­ni­ver­sität (today Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin). It was Bran­dl who encour­aged Doe­gen to study Mod­ern Lan­guages. In 1899–1900 Doe­gen spent one term at Oxford where he stud­ied with Hen­ry Sweet (1845–1912). Sweet is regard­ed as one of the pio­neers of mod­ern pho­net­ics, and he played a deci­sive role in the devel­op­ment of pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tion with its numer­ous spe­cial characters.

Doe­gen lat­er described the meet­ing with Sweet and the latter’s sys­tem of pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tion as a deter­min­ing influ­ence on his own work. In 1904, Doe­gen qual­i­fied as a teacher of Eng­lish, French and Ger­man. His dis­ser­ta­tion was on the use of pho­net­ics in the teach­ing of Eng­lish to begin­ners (Die Ver­wen­dung der Phonetik im Englis­chen Anfang­sun­ter­richt). With great enthu­si­asm he pur­sued the use of pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tion in teach­ing mate­ri­als to be used in con­junc­tion with texts spo­ken onto records.

As a teacher at the Bor­sig High School from 1909, Doe­gen com­piled teach­ing mate­ri­als run­ning to sev­er­al vol­umes in co­ oper­a­tion with the Odeon Record­ing Com­pa­ny in Berlin. The shel­lac disc was to be used as a new medi­um of teach­ing. These mate­ri­als were called “Doegen’s teach­ing book­lets for the inde­pen­dent learn­ing of for­eign lan­guages with the help of pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tion and the speech machine” (Doe­gens Unter­richt­shefte für die selb­ständi­ge Erler­nung fremder Sprachen mit Hil­fe der Lautschrift und der Sprech­mas­chine). In addi­tion to this he pub­lished mate­r­i­al using native speak­ers to read from clas­si­cal Eng­lish and French literature.

Doe­gen con­tin­ued to work close­ly with the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Art, and Nation­al Edu­ca­tion and was sent by this depart­ment to the World Expo­si­tion in Brus­sels in 1910. There he received the sil­ver medal for intro­duc­ing the record to teach­ing and research. A mere two years lat­er, some 1,000 schools and uni­ver­si­ties could be seen using Doegen’s shel­lac discs for lan­guage teach­ing. Encour­aged by the suc­cess of his sound record­ings, Doe­gen devel­oped ideas for a voice muse­um (Stim­men­mu­se­um). In Feb­ru­ary 1914, he sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion to the Pruss­ian Min­istry of Sci­ence, Art, and Nation­al Edu­ca­tion to estab­lish a Roy­al Pruss­ian Pho­net­ic Insti­tute (Königlich Preußis­ches Phonetis­ches Institut).

In 1920, Doe­gen became the direc­tor of the Sound Depart­ment of the Pruss­ian State Library (Lautabteilung an der Preußis­chen Staats­bib­lio­thek). Irreg­u­lar­i­ties in book-keep­ing led to Doe­gen step­ping down in July 1930. In Octo­ber 1931 he was, how­ev­er, able to begin work again but the admin­is­tra­tion of the Lautabteilung became the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the uni­ver­si­ty. In the end the Nazi law of 1933 on the estab­lish­ment of a loy­al and ‘Aryan’ ‘Berufs­beam­ten­tum’ (The Law for the Restora­tion of the Pro­fes­sion­al Civ­il Ser­vice) led to Doegen’s dismissal.

The Phongraphic Commission

Accord­ing to Doegen’s “Sug­ges­tions for the estab­lish­ment of a Roy­al Pruss­ian Pho­net­ic Insti­tute” from 1914, the fol­low­ing were to be collected:

1. Lan­guages from around the world.
2. All Ger­man dialects.
3. Music and songs from around the world.
4. Voic­es of famous people.
5. Oth­er areas of inter­est.^[ii]

The appli­ca­tion led to the appoint­ment of the Roy­al Pruss­ian Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion on 27 Octo­ber 1915. Carl Stumpf, psy­chol­o­gist, acousti­cian, and founder of the Phono­gramm-Archiv was appoint­ed as chair­man of the Com­mis­sion.^[iii] Dur­ing the ear­ly phase of acoustic research Carl Stumpf was regard­ed as an indis­putable author­i­ty in the field and it is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that the min­istry entrust­ed him with the lead­er­ship of the new initiative.

In total, the com­mis­sion com­prised thir­ty aca­d­e­mics work­ing in the fields of philol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy and musi­col­o­gy and includ­ed such pres­ti­gious schol­ars as Otto Dem­p­wolff (Med­i­cine, African Indone­sian and South Seas’ lan­guages), Felix von Luschan (Anthro­pol­o­gy), Friedrich Carl Andreas (Iran­ian lan­guages), Alois Bran­dl (Eng­lish dialects), Adolf Dirr (Cau­casian lan­guages), Hel­muth von Glase­napp (Pun­jabi, Hin­di), August Heisen­berg (Greek), George Schüne­mann (Musi­col­o­gy), Hein­rich Lüders (Ben­gali, Paschto, Gurung).

One of the pur­pos­es of the com­mis­sion was to make audio record­ings in Ger­man pris­on­er of war camps. Between 29 Decem­ber 1915 and 19 Decem­ber 1918, the Roy­al Pruss­ian Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion record­ed 2672 audio-media (gramo­phone-discs and wax­ cylin­ders) of approx­i­mate­ly 250 lan­guages, dialects, and tra­di­tion­al music among the pris­on­ers of war of the Ger­man Empire. The mem­bers of the com­mis­sion select­ed 31 of the exist­ing 175 prison camps for the col­lec­tion of their sam­ples.^[iv] Some of these camps were vis­it­ed on more than one occa­sion and thus, all in all, the com­mis­sion under­took 49 field trips to prison camps. With the excep­tion of Aus­tria, this form of gath­er­ing ethno­graph­i­cal mate­r­i­al was unique dur­ing World War I. In Ger­many, the activ­i­ties of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion were kept secret dur­ing the course of the war.

Doe­gen him­self was respon­si­ble for the pure­ly tech­ni­cal pro­duc­tion of the gramo­phone record­ings only. Togeth­er with the sub­ject experts and a tech­ni­cian he made 1650 record­ings, of which two thirds were lan­guage record­ings and a third music record­ings. The last disc (PK 1650) was record­ed short­ly before Christ­mas 1918. 

The musi­col­o­gist Georg Schüne­mann made musi­cal record­ings exclu­sive­ly with the phono­graph. He worked most­ly on his own and did not make use of the stan­dard­ised data acqui­si­tion of the com­mis­sion, which is described in the fol­low­ing pas­sage. His col­lec­tion con­sists of 1022 wax cylin­ders which are today kept in the Phono­gramm-Archiv.^[v]

In the con­fu­sion of the Novem­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1918, Doe­gen obtained per­son­al con­trol of the gramo­phone record­ings through the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and estab­lished this col­lec­tion as the basis of the Sound Depart­ment of the Pruss­ian State Library (Lautabteilung an der Preußis­chen Staats­bib­lio­thek), found­ed on 1 April 1920.^[vi]

The Chair­man of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion, Carl Stumpf, was not informed of this devel­op­ment and react­ed angri­ly,^[vii] because as far as he was con­cerned the col­lec­tion was to be retained by the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion as a whole.

Instead, with the estab­lish­ment of the Lautabteilung (Sound Depart­ment) the col­lec­tion of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion was divid­ed accord­ing to the record­ing medi­um (shel­lac in the Lautabteilung, wax cylin­ders in the Phono­gramm-Archiv) and these have been kept at two dif­fer­ent loca­tions ever since.

In addi­tion to the gramo­phone record­ings of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion, the Lautabteilung also kept record­ings of famous indi­vid­u­als, a voice col­lec­tion, which was begun by Doe­gen in 1917. These record­ings were made with finan­cial sup­port giv­en by the chem­istry pro­fes­sor Dr Lud­wig Darm­staedter. Accord­ing to the con­tract of dona­tion, the pur­pose of this col­lec­tion was: “Stim­men von solchen Per­sön­lichkeit­en aufzube­wahren, an deren Erhal­tung für die Nach­welt ein his­torisches Inter­esse vor­liegt” (To retain the voic­es of impor­tant per­son­al­i­ties that are of his­tor­i­cal inter­est of future gen­er­a­tions).^[viii] “Per­son­al­i­ties”, here, relates in par­tic­u­lar to politi­cians, sci­en­tists and artists.

These record­ings were intend­ed to sup­ple­ment the Lud­wig Darm­staedter col­lec­tion of auto­graphs for the his­to­ry of sci­ence, which Darm­staedter had donat­ed to the Roy­al Library (Königliche Bib­lio­thek) ten years ear­li­er.^[ix] As hon­orary cura­tor of this col­lec­tion Doe­gen had to accept the deci­sions made by a cura­tor­ship on new record­ings. The records of this col­lec­tion of voic­es car­ry the sig­na­ture “Aut” (Autophon). The first offi­cial record­ing with the sig­na­ture “Aut 1” was the speech of the Ger­man Kaiser Wil­helm II with the title “Aufruf an mein Volk” (Appeal to my Peo­ple) record­ed on 10 Jan­u­ary 1918 in the Schloß Belle­vue. This speech was orig­i­nal­ly held in August 1914. A typ­i­cal sign of the “Aut” sig­na­to­ry series is that every record­ing is made up of pas­sages tak­en from famous speech­es or lec­tures already giv­en. The time lapse between a speech being held and it being record­ed ranged from only a few days to four years. A fur­ther char­ac­ter­is­tic of this “Aut” sig­na­to­ry is that the speak­er signed the wax matrix after the suc­cess­ful recording.

Spe­cial sta­tus was giv­en to the record “Aut 0” used only with­in the col­lec­tion. This par­tic­u­lar record­ing which con­tains the voic­es of both Doe­gen and Darm­staedter appears in none of the doc­u­ments in the archive and was only dis­cov­ered among the 7500 records dur­ing a review of the con­tents of the col­lec­tion. In this record­ing Doe­gen and Darm­staedter set out their rea­sons for build­ing the col­lec­tion and also dis­cuss the finan­cial sup­port giv­en. The “Aut” sig­na­to­ry was dis­con­tin­ued in 1924 because Darm­staedter with­drew his finan­cial support.

When Doe­gen became direc­tor of the Lautabteilung in 1920 he remained account­able to the Sound Com­mis­sion (Lautkomis­sion) which, just like the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion, decid­ed on what record­ings were to be made, and it was made up, in part, of the same group of peo­ple. As direc­tor of the col­lec­tion Doe­gen was respon­si­ble for the tech­ni­cal real­i­sa­tion, con­ser­va­tion, and eval­u­a­tion of the col­lec­tion, as well as mak­ing it avail­able to the public.

The record­ings of the Lautabteilung were giv­en the sig­na­ture LA. The range of themes cov­ered in the col­lec­tion was great­ly extend­ed. Apart from “Lan­guages and Music from around the World” (Sprache und Musik sämtlich­er Völk­er) the doc­u­men­ta­tion of Ger­man dialects became a mat­ter of inter­est. Record­ings of the 40 Wenker Sen­tences (40 Wenker­sche Sätze) for the Ger­man lan­guage atlas were made with the help of Fer­di­nand Wrede from Mar­burg. Along with the var­i­ous record­ing expe­di­tions under­tak­en with­in Ger­many there were also expe­di­tions to Switzer­land, to Ire­land and to Latvia. The area of record­ing, “Famous Peo­ple”, of the “Aut” sig­na­ture was car­ried on in the LA sig­na­ture after Darm­staedter end­ed his involve­ment but this time it was devel­oped under the title “Peo­ple of Pub­lic Inter­est”. The voic­es of peo­ple includ­ed in the col­lec­tion ranged from those involved in tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions to pio­neers of aviation.

In 1925 ani­mal nois­es were record­ed in co-oper­a­tion with the Kro­ne cir­cus. As well as the record­ings of wild ani­mals such as ele­phants, sea lions and tigers, the North Amer­i­can Indi­ans who were made to put on a show by the Kro­ne cir­cus in the same year were brought in front of the record­ing trum­pet. By record­ing the chiefs of the Iowa and Cheyenne sound doc­u­ments of the Sioux and Algo­nquin lan­guages were added to the collection.

When the African­ist and pho­neti­cian Diedrich West­er­mann took over the run­ning of the Lautabteilung after Doegen’s dis­missal in 1933, it became a teach­ing and research insti­tu­tion for pho­net­ics and was inte­grat­ed into the uni­ver­si­ty^[x] as the Insti­tute for Sound Research (Insti­tut für Laut­forschung). In 1935, it was divid­ed into depart­ments for lin­guis­tics, music, and a pho­net­ic lab­o­ra­to­ry. An aca­d­e­m­ic spe­cial­ist was respon­si­ble for each depart­ment.^[xi] The archive remained in this form until 1944.

Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War sound record­ings were made of pris­on­ers of war both in Ger­many and in camps in France between 1939 and 1941. In France there was par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on record­ings of African lan­guages. This work is not com­pa­ra­ble with that of Carl Stumpf dur­ing the First World War either in terms of the extent or its content.

After 1945 the Insti­tute for Sound Research was sub­ject to much restruc­tur­ing until it lost its inde­pen­dence in the Sec­ond High­er Edu­ca­tion Reform of 1969, and was inte­grat­ed into the sec­tion Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Ped­a­gogy and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies (Reha­bil­i­ta­tion­späd­a­gogik und Kom­mu­nika­tion­swis­senschaft) as the Depart­ment for Pho­net­ics and Sci­ence of Lan­guage (Abteilung Phonetik/ Sprech­wis­senschaft). Here, the Lautarchiv held a mar­gin­al posi­tion at best while the col­lec­tion of mate­r­i­al had come to a stand­still con­sid­er­ably ear­li­er. In 1981 it was to be dis­posed of alto­geth­er. But the eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Jür­gen Elsner recog­nised the great val­ue of the (for the most part neglect­ed) col­lec­tion and took steps to ensure that the col­lec­tion was secured in lock­ing rooms in the Depart­ment of Musi­col­o­gy (Musik­wis­senschaftlich­es Sem­i­nar). A first com­pre­hen­sive report on the col­lec­tion was pub­lished in 1996 by Dieter Mehn­ert who looked after the col­lec­tion in the 1990s.^[xii] Today this col­lec­tion is known as the Lautarchiv and is still locat­ed at the Depart­ment of Musi­col­o­gy and Media Stud­ies at the Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität in Berlin.

Technical and Organisational Realisation of the Gramophone Recordings in the POW Camps

The gramo­phone record­ings under the super­vi­sion of Wil­helm Doe­gen were realised in the fol­low­ing man­ner: First the mem­bers of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion took account of the lan­guages spo­ken by the pris­on­ers in each camp since the lists they obtained from the camp com­man­ders before­hand were not always accu­rate. The Com­mis­sion and/or the lan­guage expert then decid­ed who was to be record­ed. Before each record­ing a so-called per­son­al ques­tion­naire (Per­son­al­bo­gen) had to be completed.

Apart from doc­u­ment­ing the record­ing, the ques­tion­naire gave detailed infor­ma­tion about the prove­nance of the speak­er as well as his lin­guis­tic her­itage and con­tained ques­tions regard­ing the social back­ground of the speak­er. Fur­ther­more, no record­ing could be made before the text was writ­ten down in the hand­writ­ing style or type­face nor­mal­ly used for the speaker’s lan­guage. Since speak­ers and singers did not always stick to the agreed text, new tran­scrip­tions had at times to be made once the shel­lac discs had been pro­duced. Tran­scrip­tions of music were only made after press­ing the records.

The themes of the record­ings are:

1. Word groups of rel­a­tive­ly unknown lan­guages and con­tain­ing words which are eas­i­ly con­fused were record­ed for use in dictionaries.
2. Fairy tales, sto­ries and anecdotes.
3. Pris­on­ers of war, in par­tic­u­lar from Great Britain and France, but also from oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, read the Para­ble of the Prodi­gal Son (Luke XV, 11 ff.) in their own dialects. In this way dialects of all Eng­lish coun­ties were doc­u­ment­ed and could be com­pared with each other.
4. The major­i­ty of the music record­ings are vocal, only a few record­ings are pure­ly instru­men­tal. About two thirds of the record­ings are spo­ken and about one third is music.

The activ­i­ties of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion did not only extend to acoustic record­ings. Apart from sim­ply tran­scrib­ing the record­ed texts, so-called palatograms were made by the den­tist Alfred Doe­gen, a broth­er of Wil­helm Doe­gen, in order to detail the exact tongue posi­tion, made more com­pli­cat­ed by vari­a­tion in accent. X­ray pho­tographs of the lar­ynx were made to enable sci­en­tif­ic research into spe­cif­ic speech sounds.

The eth­nol­o­gist and cura­tor of the Berlin Eth­no­log­i­cal Muse­um, Felix von Luschan, under­took anthro­po­log­i­cal stud­ies and made mea­sure­ments of the pris­on­ers.^[xiii] A pho­tog­ra­ph­er took pic­tures of near­ly every speak­er and singer. About 50 of these pho­tos sur­vived in the archive. Not all of them can be assigned defin­i­tive­ly to a record­ing. The pho­tos show a per­son from the front and in pro­file in keep­ing with the con­tem­po­rary eth­no­log­i­cal practice.

There is a con­sid­er­able num­ber of African and Asian lan­guage and music record­ings as well as sam­ples of speech tak­en from East and West Euro­pean lan­guages. These are among the ear­li­est sound record­ings of this type. Because of their ortho­graph­ic and pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tions, accom­pa­nied by Ger­man trans­la­tions, these record­ings were, by con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous stan­dards, excel­lent­ly doc­u­ment­ed and are there­fore invalu­able for cur­rent research projects. So, for exam­ple, accom­pa­ny­ing one disc which runs for three and a half min­utes there are 35 pages of writ­ten documentation.

South Asian Recordings in the Lautarchiv

Sound record­ings from the fol­low­ing present-day states can be found in the archive: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pak­istan. With­out excep­tion all record­ings were made using pris­on­ers of war from the First World War as speak­ers and singers from the for­mer ter­ri­to­ries of British India and Nepal. Most of these pris­on­ers were held in the ‘Half­moon Camp’ in Wüns­dorf near Berlin.

With eleven trips, Wüns­dorf was the most fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed camp, also known as ‘Half­moon Camp’ (Halb­mond­lager) due to the large num­ber of Mus­lim pris­on­ers interned here.^[xiv] Sit­u­at­ed mere­ly 40 kilo­me­tres south of Berlin, Wüns­dorf was espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing for the researchers due to its rich diver­si­ty of cul­tures, many of which were asso­ci­at­ed with the colo­nial pow­ers of Eng­land and France. About 65 idioms were clas­si­fied by the mem­bers of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion. South Asian Lan­guages spo­ken and record­ed by the interned sol­diers were:^[xv] Hindi/Hindustani/Urdu, Pun­jabi, Bengali/Sylheti, Garhwali, Old-Hin­di, Baluchi, Pash­to, Khasi, Lim­bu, Nepali, Mag­a­ri, Gurung, Rai.Other lan­guages includ­ed Eng­lish (Nepal, Great Britain), Viet­namese (Viet­nam), Baule (Ivory Coast), Dahome­en, Bari­ba (Benin), Bobo, (Burk­i­na Faso), Mosi, Samogo (Buk­i­na Faso, Mali),Wolof, Pulaar (Sene­gal), Ful (Mali, Sudan, Sene­gal, Guinea), Kasonke (Mali), Zarma (Mali, Nige­ria), Kwa (Togo), Kru (Liberia), Malin­ka, Toma (Guinea), Soso (Sier­ra Leone, Guinea), Ban­tu, Swahili, Mwali, Ngazid­ja, Ndzwani (Comoros), Soma­li (Soma­lia), Bam­bara (Sudan, Mali, Sene­gal), Man­dara, Kanuri (Sudan), Haus­sa (Sudan, Mali), Yoru­ba (Nige­ria), Anyin (Ghana), Ara­bic, (Alge­ria, Tunisia, Moroc­co, Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion), Berber (Alge­ria, Moroc­co), Kabyle (Alge­rien), Bet­sileo, Bet­simis­ara­ka, Bezanozano, Meri­na, Sakalave, Syanaka,Taisaka, Tanosy (Mada­gas­car), Mal­tese (Mal­ta), Tatar, Avar, Bashkir, Udmurt (Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion), Kirghiz (Kyr­gyzs­tan), New Cale­don­ian (New Caledonia).

Adja­cent to the Half­moon Camp in Wüns­dorf was the Wein­berg Camp in Zossen. Here, Mus­lim sol­diers from Rus­sia (Tatars) were interned. In the ini­tial phase of the record­ing work only sev­en discs were made of Tatar songs. Oth­er­wise, all the record­ings of Russ­ian Mus­lims held in the Wein­berg camp were made in the Half­moon Camp. Both camps were set up to encour­age the inmates to defect to the Ger­man side using care­ful­ly tar­get­ed pro­pa­gan­da.^[xvi] We can assume that there was con­stant exchange of pris­on­ers between the two camps for the record­ing. For instance, the Mohammedan Call to Prayer (Gebet­sruf der Mohammedan­er) record­ed in Ara­bic in the Wüns­dorf camp was that of a Tatar from Tobol­sk who was held pris­on­er in the Wein­berg camp.^[xvii] In the Half­moon Camp there was also a mosque with a minaret from which the muezzin could have called peo­ple to prayer.

About half of the mem­bers of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion vis­it­ed the Half­moon Camp to make sound record­ings. They filled 482 discs with 765 indi­vid­ual record­ings, which accounts for approx­i­mate­ly 30 per cent of all record­ings in the archive made under the aus­pices of Doe­gen. Also rel­e­vant to the South Asian record­ings is the work direct­ed by com­mis­sion mem­bers Hein­rich Lüders, Friedrich Carl Andreas, Hel­muth von Glase­napp, Alois Bran­dl and Josef Horovitz. This part of the col­lec­tion com­pris­es 282 titles on 193 shel­lac discs. These record­ings will be exam­ined in more detail in the fol­low­ing para­graph. For the most part ortho­graph­ic tran­scrip­tions are avail­able in Devana­gari for all titles.

Most record­ings were made by the Indi­an and Ori­en­tal schol­ar Hein­rich Lüders (1869–1943)^[xvi­ii] with 150 indi­vid­ual record­ings on 98 discs. Most of these (70 titles) are in Nepalese. lt is note­wor­thy that along with many Nepalese sto­ries, Lüders also record­ed songs. In the oth­er lan­guages, which he recorded—Gurung (23),^[xix] Khasi (17), Ben­gali (13)—it is most­ly sto­ries which are doc­u­ment­ed, but there also neu­tral exem­plars such as the alpha­bet and lan­guage sam­ples. In the Gurung sam­ples Lüders did not keep to the sequence of tran­scrib­ing the texts and record­ing them for he wrote in a note attached to the trans­la­tion of discs PK 636 and 637:

These exam­ples have been record­ed in a Hin­di dialect, but it is not clear in which. Giv­en the inac­cu­rate orthog­ra­phy and the pho­net­ic tran­scrip­tion which puts down in writ­ing what is heard, it was no more pos­si­ble for two edu­cat­ed Indi­ans, whom I con­sult­ed, than it was for me to arrive at a com­plete trans­la­tion.^[xx]

With the excep­tion of mil­i­tary com­mands (record­ed by Bran­dl), the only record­ing of a South Asian POW in Eng­lish camp can be found among the lan­guage record­ings made by Lüders.^[xxi] Disc num­ber PK 271 is a voice record­ing of Gan­ga Ram, a Pris­on­er of War from Nepal. What is unusu­al about this disc is that he does not speak in his moth­er tongue, Khasi, but relates the sto­ry of the Prodi­gal Son which has noth­ing to do with his own reli­gious back­ground as a Hindu.

Hel­muth von Glase­napp (1891–1963),^[xxii] a schol­ar of reli­gion and Indi­an stud­ies who worked for the pro­pa­gan­da wing of the over­seas agency Infor­ma­tion Bureau for the Ori­ent (Nachricht­en­stelle für den Ori­ent), made 56 discs with 86 titles. He focussed on the lan­guages Pun­jabi (34), Hin­di (49), Old Hin­di (2) and Garhwali (1) and his work is dom­i­nat­ed by songs more than sto­ries or poems. The Ori­en­tal­ist Josef Horovitz (1874–1931)^[xxi­ii] was respon­si­ble for 22 discs com­pris­ing 26 record­ings. His record­ings of Hin­dus­tani (21) and Belutschi (5) con­sist main­ly of stories—especially fairy tales and anec­dotes. Nine of 16 record­ings made by the Ori­en­tal­ist and Iran schol­ar Friedrich Carl Andreas (1846–1930)^[xxiv] are record­ings of Pash­to songs on shel­lac discs. Com­ic songs make up a sig­nif­i­cant part of his list of record­ings. Alois Bran­dl,^[xxv] philol­o­gist and Pro­fes­sor for Eng­lish at Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty made only four record­ings of Indi­an pris­on­ers of war on four discs. His oth­er 260 titles made for the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion are of acoustic sig­nals with a bugle and Eng­lish mil­i­tary com­mands. At this point it is also nec­es­sary to men­tion the record­ings of Georg Schüne­mann. On his list of record­ings from the pris­on­er of war camps the fol­low­ing can be found: 16 Ghurkha, four Sikh, sev­en Thalor and one Hin­dus­tani.^[xxvi]

The con­tent of even the strangest of these record­ings is not­ed in neu­tral terms by the com­mis­sion. One of the four Pun­jabi sto­ries record­ed by Glase­napp is direct­ly relat­ed to a wish on the part of the pris­on­ers relat­ing to the camp and the reli­gious atti­tude of the Sikhs. Tue disc num­bered PK 676 was made by Sun­dar Singh on 5 Jan­u­ary 1917 under the gen­er­al title “Sto­ry” (Erzäh­lung). In order to crit­i­cise the atti­tude of the camp author­i­ties to the reli­gious sen­si­tiv­i­ties of the Sikhs, he prais­es the liv­ing con­di­tions in the camp in an exag­ger­at­ed way:

Om, by the grace of the true guru (or: the Granth). The guru has looked upon us with great benev­o­lence for he has revealed him­self in this strange land and in this cap­tiv­i­ty and in this very prison. We are so hap­py that we feel blessed. To us, there can be no bliss greater than this, it is greater even than the bliss of peace. Due to this the reli­gious assem­blage has suc­ceed­ed. We regard the Granth Sahib as the like­ness of the tenth Guru and high­ly ven­er­ate it. If any­body should not ven­er­ate it or should not be will­ing to ven­er­ate it then each and every Singh would be pre­pared to sac­ri­fice his life at this place or he would not suf­fer to have it [the Granth] dis­hon­oured. So far our Guru Saheb [i.e. the Granth] has not received a blan­ket. If we had been in India and our Guru Sahib had gone with­out a blan­ket, we would not have tak­en any food. We have tried a lot but our Guru Sahib has not received a blan­ket yet. If we were not to take any food in this place we would per­ish very quick­ly because we have no strength left in our bod­ies for you know that these (peo­ple) do not receive food like they do in India. There­fore, we can­not give up tak­ing food. That the Eng­lish have sent us our Guru Granth Sahib—of what avail is that? Think about this your­self and swift­ly fur­nish us with a reply.

When we see the denizens of Ger­many we feel very hap­py, but we believe that the Ger­mans do not think of us as we do of them. If the Ger­mans thought of us like this, they would hon­our the house [i.e. the tem­ple] of our guru [i.e. the Granth].

PS: Refers to the desire of the pris­on­ers to obtain a blan­ket for their holy book, the ‘Granth’.^[xxvii]

Crit­i­cism on the sit­u­a­tion in the camp was not always passed so open­ly. The dif­fi­cult life of the pris­on­er also finds expres­sion in the form of fables, fairy tales or anec­dotes. The fol­low­ing exam­ple, also record­ed by Glase­napp can be inter­pret­ed in this way:

A peas­ant was friends with a tiger. The friend­ship between them was very great. One day the tiger came to the house of the peas­ant. The wife of the peas­ant said: ‘You have made friends with jack­als, wolves and tigers, don’t you have any shame? Since the tiger has been com­ing to our house, there is a stench in the house.’ When the tiger heard this, he was enraged and left the house. The peas­ant left with him. The tiger said to the peas­ant: ‘You are only my friend if you strike at my head with an axe.’ On hear­ing this, the peas­ant com­plied with his wish and struck with the axe, then the tiger aban­doned him. When, after one year, the tiger met the peas­ant again, the tiger said: ‘Now look at the wound of the axe with which you have struck at my head.’ When the peas­ant looked for the wound, no wound was there. The tiger said: ‘The wound caused by the axe has van­ished, but what your wife has said that is a wound I will car­ry for the rest of my life. Now the friend­ship between us is at an end.’ Take a good look, my friend, this address even an ani­mal has not for­got­ten, how could a man for­get the like?^[xxvi­ii]

Regard­less of whether the record­ing is of a tra­di­tion­al sto­ry or one which has its ori­gin in the camp, the real issue is that the con­text always remains that of a pris­on­er of war camp. If we accept this as a basis for our inter­pre­ta­tion, Ish­mer Singh, here­in the role of the tiger, can be seen to give expres­sion to wounds he received in the war and as a pris­on­er which are not vis­i­ble on the surface.

The palatogram and X‑ray images men­tioned ear­li­er were not the only pieces of research in the area of phys­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy. The pris­on­ers of the Half­moon Camp were often the sub­jects of anthro­po­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tions. On the invi­ta­tion of Felix von Luschan (Roy­al Eth­no­log­i­cal Muse­um in Berlin and Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy at Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty) the Aus­tri­an Rudolf Pöch and his assis­tant Josef Weninger car­ried out exam­i­na­tions of West African pris­on­ers which were only pub­lished in 1927 in Vien­na.^[xxix] Pöch also car­ried out much wider research on Aus­tri­an and Hun­gar­i­an pris­on­ers of war which should be con­sid­ered in con­junc­tion with the data from the Half­moon Camp. Egon von Eick­st­edt, a pupil of Luschan, made head mea­sure­ments of Sikhs and tried to estab­lish a topol­o­gy, but his exper­i­ment failed.^[xxx]

lt is note­wor­thy that the doc­u­men­ta­tion pro­vid­ed by the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion in no way attempt­ed to con­vey any­thing of the indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of each per­son. The per­son­al record cards tell us noth­ing about the fam­i­ly back­ground of the pris­on­er, nor the cir­cum­stances in which he came to be involved in the war. The per­son­al­i­ty of each pris­on­er was only used to place them in a socio cul­tur­al matrix. The pur­pose of the per­son­al details was to allow the pris­on­er to be grouped accord­ing to eth­nic­i­ty and lan­guage. Any infor­ma­tion beyond this was of no inter­est to the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion. It was not seen as an omis­sion that the record­ings were made with­out a cul­tur­al con­text. This weak­ness in the strat­e­gy used for col­lect­ing data can be linked to the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion at that time. By way of their doc­u­ment­ing of lan­guages and styles of music, the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion sought to meet the demands made on them by a colo­nial pow­er. In this way the glob­al cul­tur­al inter­ests of Ger­many and their claims as a colo­nial pow­er could be rein­forced. Doe­gen was not only pur­su­ing a per­son­al inter­est in cre­at­ing a sound record­ing archive; he was also keep­ing an eye on oth­er more com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. For exam­ple, the record­ings were to be used for train­ing colo­nial offi­cials in the lan­guages of the colonies envi­sioned as of strate­gic impor­tance after a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the First World War from the point of view of the Ger­man Empire.

As a gen­er­al rule, the note­books accom­pa­ny­ing the shel­lac discs of the sound record­ing archive in which the pho­net­ic and ortho­graph­ic tran­scrip­tion of the con­tents of each disc held in print­ed form give no details about the per­son­al life of the pris­on­er because of the nature of the per­son­al infor­ma­tion giv­en. These books do not give the read­er any sense that the record­ings were made in pris­on­er of war camps.^[xxxi] Nor is there a note­book accom­pa­ny­ing the South Asian record­ings for only a small num­ber of these discs must have been sold. The researchers did not use the South Asian mate­r­i­al for their publications.

These exam­ples should demon­strate the type of absence of infor­ma­tion in the archive. On the oth­er hand, there is no oth­er his­tor­i­cal sound archive of that sta­tus. And even if the infor­ma­tion is not com­plete at least the Lautarchiv pro­vides a base that allows us to con­tin­ue search­ing for descen­dants and fur­ther infor­ma­tion. There­fore research in this archive can help in shift­ing the focus away from see­ing the war through the lens of inter­ac­tions among states and towards indi­vid­ual trajectories.

In 1925 Alois Bran­dl writes about the qual­i­ty of the record­ings of British dialects made by him in the pris­on­er of war camps:

Review­ing the mate­r­i­al I col­lect­ed in 15 camps, from a sum­ma­ry study of some 1000 speak­ers of dialects and from a close sound­ing out of 75, under­neath all the var­ie­ga­tion there is a uni­fy­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic: it is not tak­en from books or news­pa­pers but from real life.[…] Here resounds a choir of par­tic­i­pants in the war, whose voic­es oth­er­wise would have fad­ed away; a hun­dred years from now they shall still speak as that por­tion of England’s soul which, in crit­i­cal times, had to act and endure but did not have a say in pub­lic. Good lads, how unflag­ging­ly have you repeat­ed your cou­ple of lines until they were incor­po­rat­ed into the muse­um of lin­guis­tics! […] One day the bet­ter Eng­land[…] will awak­en once more and hon­our this cul­tur­al work amidst the inces­sant clam­our of weapons in world his­to­ry; until then let it stand in the shad­ow as mere ‘dialec­tol­ogy’, as bizarre philol­o­gism, as Ger­man rever­ie.^[xxxii]

Of all the schol­ars named above who made record­ings of sol­diers from south­ern Asia in the Half­moon Camp, Alois Bran­dl, along with Hein­rich Lüders,^[xxxi­ii] is the only per­son to make ref­er­ence to the research and record­ings in the pris­on­er of war camps in his arti­cle in Doegen’s book “Amongst For­eign Peo­ples” (Unter frem­den Völk­ern) pub­lished in 1925. The three essays writ­ten by Hel­muth von Glase­napp, which are pub­lished in this book, refer nei­ther to the cir­cum­stances of the record­ings nor to his own record­ings.^[xxxiv] Josef Horovitz refers to his work in the camps only in the last para­graph of his arti­cle enti­tled “On Indi­an Mus­lims”.^[xxxv] The essay by Friedrich Carl Andreas makes no men­tion of his vis­its to the prison camps.^[xxxvi]

Conclusion

An unusu­al source is avail­able to those who wish to inves­ti­gate the sit­u­a­tion of South Asians who were detained in Ger­man intern­ment camps dur­ing the First World War. An acoustic doc­u­ment, the shel­lac disc, offers infor­ma­tion of a very par­tic­u­lar type. Despite the crack­ling these record­ings give a sense of imme­di­a­cy cre­at­ed not least by the record­ing tech­niques used from the begin­ning of sound record­ing. In this way sound doc­u­ments of many peo­ples have been pre­served and are today stored in the Lautarchiv of the Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin. The sound doc­u­ments are part of a world her­itage and offer lin­guists, his­to­ri­ans as well as schol­ars of cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary stud­ies from all parts of the globe an invalu­able cor­pus of research material.

It is now more than 90 years since the begin­ning of the First World War. This dis­tance should allow for this col­lect­ed mate­r­i­al, which is not only a mul­ti­lin­gual repos­i­to­ry of record­ed lan­guage sam­ples but an impor­tant part of world cul­tur­al her­itage, to be eval­u­at­ed and analysed more com­pre­hen­sive­ly and from var­i­ous aca­d­e­m­ic angles. This research should be car­ried out by aca­d­e­mics from the respec­tive lin­guis­tic regions for they are best placed to unrav­el the var­i­ous pho­net­ic, seman­tic, and prag­mat­ic lev­els of the acoustic mate­r­i­al and set them in their appro­pri­ate cul­tur­al and his­toric context.

In recent years the doc­u­ments of the sound record­ing archive have been the basis of exhi­bi­tions and doc­u­men­tary films. In terms of the South Asian record­ings Philip Scheffner’s film and exhi­bi­tion project “The Half­moon Files” is worth men­tion­ing. The basis of his research is the voice record­ings of British-Indi­an sol­diers kept in the archive.^[xxxvii]

The re-record­ing of the main part of the shel­lac disc col­lec­tion from the years 1915–44 was con­clud­ed with the cre­ation of the data base in 2005. The dig­i­tal files of the 3825 discs are now avail­able in WAV for­mat and as MP3 files. As there was often more than one record­ing on each side of a disc, a total of 6806 files were cre­at­ed. Because of the lev­el to which indi­vid­ual record­ings have been devel­oped the sound record­ing archive has set inter­na­tion­al stan­dards for sim­i­lar sound collections.

Endnotes

^[i] http://www.sammlungen.hu-berlin.de, Rev. 2011-02-14. At the moment the web­page can be accessed in Ger­man only. Since the data­base com­pris­es a vari­ety of oth­er col­lec­tions researchers are advised, in order to exclu­sive­ly search the sound archive, to choose under the option “The­saurus” “Sprachen” (lan­guages) or “Sprach­fam­i­lien” (fam­i­lies of lan­guages). Due to copy­right issues the online ver­sion of the data­base does not include the option of lis­ten­ing to the actu­al sound files. Titles and var­i­ous infor­ma­tion about each record­ing is avail­able however.

^[ii] Doegen,Wilhelm (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 9. The mod­ern col­lec­tion cor­re­sponds to Doegen’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion, yet the start­ing dates of the dif­fer­ent branch­es vary: from 1915 Lan­guages, Music and Songs of the Peo­ples of the World (Sprachen, Musik und Gesang der Völk­er der Erde), from 1917 Vocal Potraits of lmpor­tant Pub­lic Fig­ures (Stimm­por­traits bekan­nter Per­sön­lichkeit­en) and from 1922 Ger­man dialects (deutsche Mundarten) as well as “Mis­cel­la­neous” includ­ing ani­mal voices.

^[iii] Carl Stumpf found­ed the Phono­gramm-Archiv at the Friedrich Wil­helm Uni­ver­si­ty in 1905 with audio record­ings that he had been pro­duc­ing since 1900 on Edi­son wax cylin­ders. The Phono­gramm-Archiv now is part of the Eth­no­log­i­cal Muse­um in Berlin. Simon, Arthur (ed.) Das Berlin­er Phono­gramm-Archiv 1900–2000—Sammlungen der tra­di­tionellen Musik der Welt, Berlin: Ver­lag für Wis­senschaft und Bil­dung, 2000, S. 25–46.

^[iv] All the fig­ures quot­ed are based on the doc­u­men­ta­tion of 1650 shel­lac record­ings of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion, today held by the Lautarchiv of the Humboldt­ Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin.

^[v] Simon, Ibid., S. 237. The shel­lac discs of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion car­ry the sig­na­ture “PK”, where­as that the Edi­son wax cylin­ders have the sig­na­ture “Phon. Komm.” The shel­lac disc, which in com­par­i­son to wax cylin­ders (or phono­graph cylin­ders) is marked by a bet­ter play­back qual­i­ty, repro­ducibil­i­ty, and dura­bil­i­ty, was to be used as a new medi­um of teach­ing. The con­tent of the wax cylin­ders is not part of this article.

^[vi] This was based on Doegen’s “mem­o­ran­dum on the estab­lish­ment of a sound depart­ment in the Pruss­ian state library” (Denkschrift über die Errich­tung ein­er Lautabteilung in der Preußis­chen Staatsbibliothek).

^[vii] Geheimes Staatsarchiv—Preußischer Kul­turbe­sitz [GStAPK), num­ber 250,Vol. I, doc­u­ments 78 and 79. Fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the Phono­graph­ic Com­mis­sion on 3.2.1919, Carl Stumpf wrote to the Min­istry for Edu­ca­tion on 12.04.1920 as fol­lows: “Sie [die Kom­mis­sion] kann daher ein starkes Befrem­den darüber nicht ver­hehlen, dass im Staat­shaushalt­s­plan von 1920 zu diesem Zwecke die Errich­tung ein­er Laut­samm­lung als beson­der­er Abteilung der Staats­bib­lio­thek vorge­se­hen ist, ohne dass die Mei­n­ung der Phono­grapis­chen Kom­mis­sion irgend­wie gehört wor­den wäre.”

(“We [the Com­mis­sion] can­not with­hold our reser­va­tions about the nation­al bud­get plan of 1920 envis­ag­ing the estab­lish­ment of a sound col­lec­tion as a spe­cial depart­ment of the state library, with­out in any way hear­ing the opin­ion of the Phono­graph­ic Commission.”)

^[viii] GStAPK, num­ber 250, Vol. I, doc­u­ments 3 and 4. Con­tract dat­ed 17.03.1917.

^[ix] Ibid.

^[x] The Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin has been renamed sev­er­al times. To avoid con­fu­sion here are the names in chrono­log­i­cal order:

1810–1827 Berlin­er Uni­ver­sität, 1828–1945 Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität, 1945–1947 Uni­ver­sität Berlin, 1948-today Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin.

^[xi] D. West­er­mann took over the run­ning of the depart­ment of lin­guis­tics, F. Bose that of music and F. Weth­lo the pho­net­ic laboratory.

^[xii] Mehn­ert, Dieter, „His­torische Schallaufnahmen—Das Lautarchiv an der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin“, Stu­di­en­texte zur Sprachkom­mu­nika­tion 13 (1996): S. 28–45.

^[xiii] Lange, Brit­ta, “South Asian Sol­diers and Ger­man Aca­d­e­mics: Anthro­po­log­i­cal, Lin­guis­tic and Musi­co­log­i­cal Field Stud­ies in Prison Camps”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), ‘When The War Began We Heard of Sev­er­al Kings’ South Asian Pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many, New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 149–185.

^[xiv] In a mosque spe­cial­ly built for the pris­on­ers they could con­gre­gate for prayers. The call of the muezzin has been pre­served on the shel­lac discs. Apart from the shel­lac discs sev­er­al pho­tographs depict­ing the camp life have been pre­served (Cf. Kahleyss, Mar­got, Mus­lime in Brandenburg—Kriegsgefangene im 1. Weltkrieg: Ansicht­en und Absicht­en, Berlin: Staatliche Museen Preußis­ch­er Kul­turbe­sitz, 2000), see also Kahleyss, Mar­got, “Indi­an Pris­on­ers of War in World War I: Pho­tographs as Source Mate­r­i­al”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), Ibid., pp. 187–206. Even a short film doc­u­men­ta­tion from the camp exists (kept in the Bun­des­fil­marchiv). Mad­hus­ree Dut­ta and Philip Scheffn­er used this mate­r­i­al as well as record­ings from the Lautarchiv in their doc­u­men­tary “From Here to Here” deal­ing with Indo-Ger­man rela­tions (lndia, 2005, 58 min.). The film scene from the camp can also be found in Scheffner’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary: “The Half­moon Files”.

^[xv] Inside the brack­ets are the names of present states.

^[xvi] Liebau, Heike, “The Ger­man For­eign Office, Indi­an Emi­grants and Pro­pa­gan­da Efforts Among the ‘Sepoys’”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), Ibid., pp. 96–129 and Liebau, Heike, 2011, “Hin­dostan: A Camp News­pa­per for South-Asian Pris­on­ers of World War One in Ger­many”. In: Ibid., pp. 231–249.

^[xvii] The disc’s sig­na­ture is LA, PK 626.

^[xvi­ii] Hein­rich Lüders was an Ori­en­tal­ist and Indol­o­gist. From 1909 he was the chair of lan­guages and lit­er­a­ture of Ancient lndia at the Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität as well as being, also from 1909, mem­ber of the Pruss­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. 1931–1932 he act­ed as prin­ci­pal of the Friedrich-Wil­helms-Uni­ver­sität in Berlin. For fur­ther details on Lüders, cf. Lange, Ibid.

^[xix] The num­bers in the brack­ets gives the amount of indi­vid­ual titles in the respec­tive language.

^[xx] Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin, Lautarchiv, fold­er No. 9. “Die Stücke sind in einem Hin­di-Dialekt abge­faßt, doch ließ sich nicht fest­stellen in welchem. Bei der fehler­haften Orthogra­phie und der nach dem Gehörten wiedergegebe­nen phonetis­chen Umschrift war es zwei von mir herange­zo­ge­nen gebilde­ten Indern eben­so wenig als mir selb­st möglich, eine voll­ständi­ge Über­set­zung herzustellen.”

^[xxi] Oth­er lan­guages doc­u­ment­ed by Lüders: Lim­bu (6), Hin­di (5), Pash­tu (4), Hin­dus­tani (3), Mag­ar (3), Urdu (2), Rai (1), Gurmuk[h]i (1), Mag­a­ri (1).

^[xxii] Glase­napp was Pro­fes­sor of lndol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty Königs­berg (East Prus­sia, 1928–44), Pro­fes­sor of Com­par­a­tive Reli­gious Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty Tübin­gen (1946–59). Dur­ing the First World War Glase­napp was a mem­ber of the NfO.

^[xxi­ii] Horovitz was from 1902 lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin, between 1907–14 lec­tur­er in Ara­bic at the Muhammedan Anglo-Ori­en­tal Col­lege in Ali­gargh, lndia. From 1915 to 1931 he held the chair in Semit­ic lan­guages at the Ori­en­tal Sem­i­nar of the Uni­ver­si­ty Frank­furt am Main.

^[xxiv] Andreas was from 1883 to 1903 Lec­tur­er of Per­sian and Turk­ish at the Ori­en­tal Sem­i­nar of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin. Since 1903 he held the chair in West Asian Lan­guages at the Uni­ver­si­ty Göttingen.

^[xxv] Sub­se­quent to hold­ing chairs at Prague, Göt­tin­gen and Stras­bourg, Bran­dl, in 1895, became pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish Philol­o­gy in Berlin.

^[xxvi] List “Samm­lung aus den Kriegs­ge­fan­genen-Lagern” (Col­lec­tions from the prison camps) in: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preussischer Kul­turbe­sitz, Eth­nol­o­gis­ches Muse­um. No inven­to­ry number.

^[xxvii] “Om, durch die Gnade des wahren Guru. Der Guru (oder: der Granth) hat mit großer Güte auf uns geblickt, denn er hat sich uns im frem­den Lande und in dieser Gefan­gen­schaft und uns diesem Gefäng­nis gezeigt. Wir sind so glück­lich, daß wir selig sind. Es kann kein größeres Glück für uns geben, als dieses; es ist größer als selb­st das Glück des Friedens. Die religiöse Ver­samm­lung ist dadurch glück­lich. Wir betra­cht­en den Granth Sahib als das Eben­bild des 10. Gurus und verehren ihn sehr. Wenn irgen­dein­er ihn nicht ehrt, oder ihn nicht ehren will, so wird jed­er Singh bere­it sein entwed­er an diesem Ort sein Leben zu geben, oder wird es nicht dulden ihn [den Granth] entehrt zu lassen. Bis jet­zt hat unser Guru Saheb [d.h. der Granth] keine Decke erhal­ten. Wären wir in Indi­en und hätte unser Guru Sahib keine Decke, so wür­den wir keine Speise zu uns genom­men haben. Wir haben viel ver­sucht, aber unser Guru Sahib hat bis jet­zt noch keine Decke erhal­ten. Wenn wir an diesem Ort keine Speise essen wür­den, so wür­den wir sehr schnell ster­ben, weil in unseren 

Kör­pern keine Kraft ist, denn Sie wis­sen, dass diese (Leute) kein Essen wie in Indi­en erhal­ten. Deshalb kön­nen wir das Essen nicht aufgeben. Daß die Englän­der uns unseren Guru Granth Sahib gesandt haben, was hat das für einen Zweck? Denken Sie sel­ber über diese Sache nach und geben Sie uns schnell Antwort. Wenn wir die Bewohn­er Deutsch­lands sehen, sind wir sehr glück­lich, aber wir glauben, dass die Deutschen von uns nicht so denken, wie wir von ihnen. Wenn die Deutschen so dächt­en, so wür­den sie das Haus [d.h. den Tem­pel] unseres Gurus [d.h. des Granth] ehren. P.S. Bezieht sich auf den Wun­sch der Gefan­genen, für ihr heiliges Buch, den ‘Granth’ eine Decke zu erhal­ten.” Cf. Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin, LA, fold­er No. 9. All the notes in brack­ets are in accor­dance with the original.

^[xxvi­ii] Record­ing of Ish­er Singh on the 11 Decem­ber 1916. The trans­la­tion of PK615 exists in the form of a type­script. Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin, LA fold­er No 9.

^[xxix] Lange, Brit­ta, “Aca­d­e­m­ic Research on (Coloured) Pris­on­ers of War in Ger­many, 1915–1918”. In: Dominiek Den­dooven and Piet Chie­lens (eds), World War 1. Five Con­ti­nents in Flan­ders, Tielt: Lanoo, 2008, pp. 153–159.

^[xxx] Eick­st­edt, Egon von, „Rassenele­mente der Sikhs“, Zeitschrift für Eth­nolo­gie 52 (1920–21): S. 317–394.

^[xxxi] Laut­bib­lio­thek-Phonetis­che Plat­ten und Umschriften (pub­lished by Lautabteilung der Preussichen Staats­bib­lio­thek), 1926–1930.

^[xxxii] Bran­dl, Alois, „Der Anglist bei den Englän­dern“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Ibid., S. 362–376, see S. 375f.

^[xxxi­ii] Lüders, Hein­rich, „Die Gurkhas“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Ibid., S. 126–139.

^[xxxiv] Glase­napp, Hel­muth von, „Der Hin­duis­mus“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Ibid., S. 116–125; Idem, „Die Rad­seh­puten“. In: Ibid., S. 140–150; Idem, „Die Sikhs“. In: Ibid., S. 151–160.

^[xxxv] Horovitz, Josef, „Die indis­chen Mohammedan­er“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Ibid., S. 161–166.

^[xxxvi] Andreas, Friedrich Karl, „Iranier“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Ibid., S. 376–383.

^[xxxvii] The film had its world pre­miere at the 57th Berli­nale film fes­ti­val dur­ing The Inter­na­tion­al Forum of New Cin­e­ma on 16 Feb­ru­ary 2007. Sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al awards fol­lowed. http://www.halfmoonfiles.de, accessed on 25.05.2023.

Bibliography

Andreas, Friedrich Karl, „Iranier“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 376–383.

Bran­dl, Alois, „Der Anglist bei den Englän­dern“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 362–376.

Doe­gen, Wil­helm (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925.

Eick­st­edt, Egon von, „Rassenele­mente der Sikhs“, Zeitschrift für Eth­nolo­gie 52 (1920–21): S. 317–394.

Glase­napp, Hel­muth von, „Der Hin­duis­mus“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 116–125.

——–, „Die Rad­seh­puten“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 140–150.

——–, „Die Sikhs“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 151–160.

Horovitz, Josef, „Die indis­chen Mohammedan­er“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 161–166.

Kahleyss, Mar­got, Mus­lime in Brandenburg—Kriegsgefangene im 1. Weltkrieg: Ansicht­en und Absicht­en, Berlin: Staatliche Museen Preußis­ch­er Kul­turbe­sitz, 2000.

——–, “Indi­an Pris­on­ers of War in World War I: Pho­tographs as Source Mate­r­i­al”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), ‘When The War Began We Heard of Sev­er­al Kings’ South Asian Pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many, New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 187–206.

Lange, Brit­ta, “Aca­d­e­m­ic Research on (Coloured) Pris­on­ers of War in Ger­many, 1915–1918”. In: Dominiek Den­dooven and Piet Chie­lens (eds), World War 1. Five Con­ti­nents in Flan­ders, Tielt: Lanoo, 2008, pp. 153–159.

——–, “South Asian Sol­diers and Ger­man Aca­d­e­mics: Anthro­po­log­i­cal, Lin­guis­tic and Musi­co­log­i­cal Field Stud­ies in Prison Camps”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), ‘When The War Began We Heard of Sev­er­al Kings’ South Asian Pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many, New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 149–185.

Liebau, Heike, “The Ger­man For­eign Office, Indi­an Emi­grants and Pro­pa­gan­da Efforts Among the ‘Sepoys’”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), ‘When The War Began We Heard of Sev­er­al Kings’ South Asian Pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many, New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 96–129.

——–, “Hin­dostan: A Camp News­pa­per for South-Asian Pris­on­ers of World War One in Ger­many”. In: Franziska Roy, Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahu­ja (eds), ‘When The War Began We Heard of Sev­er­al Kings’ South Asian Pris­on­ers in World War I Ger­many, New Del­hi: Social Sci­ence Press, 2011, pp. 231–249.

Lüders, Hein­rich, „Die Gurkhas“. In: Wil­helm Doe­gen (Hg.), Unter frem­den Völk­ern. Eine neue Völk­erkunde, Berlin: Otto Stoll­berg, 1925, S. 126–139.

Mehn­ert, Dieter, „His­torische Schallaufnahmen—Das Lautarchiv an der Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin“, Stu­di­en­texte zur Sprachkom­mu­nika­tion 13 (1996): S. 28–45.

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