Serie 2: Stimmporträts

The series of the Complete Edition of the Historical Recordings 1899-1950 begun in 1999 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the existence of the Phonogram Archive, the oldest sound archive in the world, is continued in series 2, voice portraits. Of the 4,000 historical recordings in total, 179 belong to the group of voice portraits, recorded documents of the voices of famous personalities from politics, science and art. They represent a special group within the archive's recordings, which focuses on ethno-linguistic and ethno-musicological research documents, and have always been of interest to a broad circle extending beyond that of the specialists. The recordings include the voice of Kaiser Franz Joseph, Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, Arthur Schnitzler, Joseph Weinheber and Albert Einstein. The recording activity is concentrated on the first decade of the 20th century, a time from which only few similar documents have survived from other origins. The series 2 comprises four audio CDs, with chapters entitled Members of the ruling family, politicians and civil servants; Scientists; Musicians; Writers; Graphic Artists and Actors. The original minutes, the written accompaniments to the recordings, are supplied as digital pictorial documents on a CD-ROM. The edition is supplemented by a commentary volume in the form of a 246 page CD booklet, with text transcripts of the individual recordings and an accompanying commentary, as well as a brief biography of each individual personality. This should enable this source edition to be used far beyond the limits of the specialist world, in schools and other educational institutions.