List of German-speaking poets' voices preserved on sound carriers before 1950
Guiding principle
In the mid-1920s, Rainer Maria Rilke was astonished that the sound recording, which is much vaunted in connection with musical reproduction, was "still little concerned with the spoken word" and Kurt Tucholsky once called "the voice of the dead" the most interesting thing in terms of sound recordings. Despite their obvious fascination with the “ voice machine ” - as far as we know - no voice recordings have been preserved from either of them, although Rilke is said to have been a frequent and excellent interpreter of his works and Tucholsky could even be heard on the radio.
Earliest documents
The value of the author's voice for sound recording was only slowly and gradually recognized. The first commitment in this regard in the German-speaking area was probably the phonogram archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, which was exclusively dedicated to the archiving of Austrian authors' voices. This is where the oldest known surviving recordings of German-language author's voices come from, one of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's performance of the little song she wrote in 1901 and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's , which was recited on April 22, 1907 when his Some of the poems composed before the turn of the century were admittedly included. Even Arthur Schnitzler's voice is in the Phonogram Archive ago in a similar early recording.
From 1929 to around 1930, the Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft published a record each with readings by Rudolf G. Binding , Theodor Däubler , Eberhard König , Joseph Georg Oberkofler , Hans José Rehfisch , Wilhelm von Scholz , Ina Seidel , in its series “Dichterstimmen der Gegenwart” . Ernst Thrasolt and Carl Zuckmayer .
The Telefunken plate followed in 1934 and 1935 with the series «The Poet Speaks». Recitations by Ludwig Friedrich Barthel , Rudolf G. Binding , Fritz Diettrich , Adolf von Hatzfeld , Heinrich Lersch and Josef Magnus Wehner were published here.
Since these series appeared to have received little interest from buyers, they were discontinued relatively quickly.
Restriction to the period before 1950
Limiting the list to recordings from a limited early period up to 1950 makes sense in the fact that from the 1950s onwards, sound recordings were increasingly used for literary recordings and broadcasts, and thus the absence of an author's voice as sound recording is increasingly becoming a rarity, especially since Hardly any records were lost due to the quiet second half of the 20th century in terms of war and major catastrophes in the German-speaking area. Authors' voices from the first half of the 20th century are far more rare. Authors from whom a large number of recordings have been preserved, as in the case of Thomas Mann , are rare.
list
In addition to its intrinsic value as a source of information, the list is able to point out which Wikipedia articles may still have facts about preserved records of poets' voices to be incorporated.
The list is still incomplete and needs to be supplemented. If known, the year of the earliest recording is shown after the name of the author.
Before 1910
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1901
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal 1907
- Arthur Schnitzler 1907
- Leo Tolstoy 1909
1920 to 1929
- Joachim Ringelnatz 1922
- Bertolt Brecht 1928
- Theodor Däubler 1928
- Ludwig Fulda 1929
- Rudolf G. Binding 1929
- Erich Kästner 1929
- Alfred Kerr 1929
- Thomas Mann 1929
- Carl Zuckmayer 1929
1930 to 1939
- Gottfried Benn 1930
- Johannes R. Becher 1930
- Gerhart Hauptmann 1930
- Max Reinhardt 1930
- Alexander Roda Roda 1930
- Alfred Döblin 1931
- Egon Erwin Kisch 1931
- Arnold Schoenberg in 1931
- Franz Werfel 1931
- Ernst Barlach 1932
- Kurt Schwitters 1932
- Jakob Wassermann 1933
- Stefan Zweig 1933
- Heinrich Lersch 1934
- Karl Kraus 1934
- Friedrich Glauser 1937
- Max Halbe 1938
- Curt Goetz 1938
- Hanns Johst 1938
1940 to 1949
- Ricarda Huch 1947
- Hermann Kasack 1948
- Elisabeth Langgässer 1948
- Heinz Erhardt 1949
- Hermann Hesse 1949
- Ernst Kreuder 1949
- Theodor Plivier 1949
Year of recording unknown
- Ernst Toller † May 22, 1939
- Josef Weinträger † April 8, 1945
- Karl Valentin † February 9, 1948
- Friedrich Kayssler ; † 1945
Probably recorded before 1950
- Clara Westhoff † March 9, 1954 (reads poems by her husband Rainer Maria Rilke )