“Voices of the People”: Linguistic Research among Germany's Prisoners of War during World War I (2013)
This paper investigates the history of the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, a body that collected and archived linguistic, ethnographic, and anthropological data from prisoners-of-war (POWs) in Germany during World War I. Recent literature has analyzed the significance of this research for the rise of conservative physical anthropology. Taking a complementary approach, the essay charts new territory in seeking to understand how the prison-camp studies informed philology and linguistics specifically. I argue that recognizing philological commitments of the Phonographic Commission is essential to comprehending the project contextually. My approach reveals that linguists accommodated material and contemporary evidence to older text-based research models, sustaining dynamic theories of language. Through a case study based on the Iranian philologist F. C. Andreas (1846--1930), the paper ultimately argues that linguistics merits greater recognition in the historiography of the behavioral sciences.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Kaplan, Judith;
(2013)
“Voices of the People”: Linguistic Research Among Germany's Prisoners of War During World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB001213792/)
Chapter
Evans, Andrew D.;
(2003)
Anthropology at War: Racial Studies of POWs during World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB000501093/)
Thesis
Kaplan, Judith R. H.;
(2012)
Language Science and Orientalism in Imperial Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001560884/)
Book
Yanikda, Yücel;
(2013)
Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001452047/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Wessely, Simon;
(2010)
British Prisoners-of-War: From Resilience to Psychological Vulnerability: Reality or Perception
(/isis/citation/CBB001030545/)
Article
Claudio Pogliano;
(2021)
A Tricky Start: The First Decade of Ethnographic Cinema
(/isis/citation/CBB402373882/)
Thesis
Couttenier, Maarten;
(2004)
Fysieke antropologie, koloniale etnografie en het museum van Tervuren. Eengeschiedenis van de Belgische antropologie (1882--1925)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562128/)
Article
Weindling, Paul;
(2006)
“Belsenitis”: Liberating Belsen, Its Hospitals, UNRRA, and Selection for Re-emigration, 1945--1948
(/isis/citation/CBB000740722/)
Article
Alexander, Jennifer K.;
(2006)
An Efficiency of Scarcity: Using Food to Increase the Productivity of Soviet Prisoners of War in the Mines of the Third Reich
(/isis/citation/CBB000700581/)
Article
Filip Herza;
(2020)
Sombre faces: Race and nation-building in the institutionalization of Czech physical anthropology (1890s–1920s)
(/isis/citation/CBB658558405/)
Article
Morris-Reich, Amos;
(2013)
Anthropology, Standardization and Measurement: Rudolf Martin and Anthropometric Photography
(/isis/citation/CBB001213509/)
Article
Buschmann, Rainer F.;
(2007)
Oceanic Carvings and Germanic Cravings: German Ethnographic Frontiers and Imperial Visions in the Pacific, 1870--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001030679/)
Thesis
Hansen, Jason;
(2010)
Where Lies Germany: Science and the Visualization of the German Nation, 1848--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001567223/)
Chapter
Imeri, Sabine;
(2010)
Zwischen Selbstverständnis und Legitimationsstrategie. Überlegungen zu Verwendungskonzepten volkskundlichen Wissens bis 1933
(/isis/citation/CBB001023282/)
Article
Brown, S.;
(2009)
Hitler's Bible: An Analysis of the Relationship between American and German Eugenics in Pre-War Nazi Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB000932492/)
Article
Kröner, Hans-Peter;
(1999)
Von der Vaterschaftsbestimmung zum Rassegutachten: Der erbbiologische Ahnlichkeitsvergleich als “österreichisch-deutsches Projekt” 1926-1945
(/isis/citation/CBB000111948/)
Book
Preuss, Dirk;
Hossfeld, Uwe;
Breidbach, Olaf;
(2006)
Anthropologie nach Haeckel
(/isis/citation/CBB000774412/)
Thesis
Pourciau, Sarah M.;
(2007)
Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822--1941
(/isis/citation/CBB001560819/)
Chapter
Burchardt, Lothar;
(2005)
The School of Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin---Forging the Cadres of German Imperialism?
(/isis/citation/CBB000774971/)
Book
Mees, Bernard;
(2008)
The Science of the Swastika
(/isis/citation/CBB001035880/)
Be the first to comment!