Fighting Under the Same Banner: Memories from the Ottoman Theater of the Great War

International Conference, Istanbul, 6-8 September 2019. Programme and abstract brochure

On September 8 Naz Vardar presented a talk on the Lautarchiv:

Listening to the Sound of the Agents of History: The Uses of the Sound Archives of Humboldt University, Berlin

Abstract: This presentation is an introduction to and explo-ration of the sound archives of Humboldt Universi-ty in Berlin, especially the recordings of the Turkish speaking prisoners of World War I in Germany. Al-though written forms of personal narratives, like memoirs and diaries, have been used in Ottoman historiography, non-textual forms, such as oral tes-timonies on World War I, have virtually gone unno-ticed. The sound archive of Humboldt University provides a unique resource for the study of the Great War: the 1917 voice recordings of prisoners of war. Although the immediate purpose of these recordings was to document the linguistic and phonological differences in various languages, the recordings include songs, tales, lyrics, narratives, anecdotes and short stories. This presentation ex-plores how these sound recordings can be utilized as sources for history; how they can be approached as life narratives, and, more specifically, how these recordings can contribute to the existing scholar-ship on the Ottoman Empire and the experience of the World War I.