“Our Ears Lived Their Own Lives”

The Auditory Experience in Breslau Autobiographical Literature during the ‘Third Reich’

Avant, Vol. XI, No. 3, doi: 10.26913/avant.2020.03.32
published under license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Annelies Augustyns orcid-id
University of Antwerp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
annelies.augustyns@outlook.be

Received 28 November 2019; accepted 20 September 2020; published Online First 17 December 2020.

Download full text

Abstract: With Adolf Hitler coming to power in January 1933, the National Socialists staged their domi-nance in the city center of Breslau by using various visual and auditory elements – including swastikas, singing, marching, dispersing rumors – to spread their influence and keep the people under control. How were these changes in the city soundscape used for social exclusion and territory-marking? How were they experienced by the Jewish population and how can they be related to questions of identity and (non-)belonging? Addressing these questions with the corpus of autobiographical writings – both diaries and autobiographies – from Jewish victims from the city of Breslau will be the main aim of this article. This study of literary testimonies will focus on the constant and changing sounds of propaganda in Breslau, sound technologies such as radio and loudspeakers used for propaganda, and the relation between sound, identity, and trauma.

Keywords: city soundscape; Breslau; ‘Third Reich’; autobiographies; diaries; identity; trauma


References

Adorno, T. (2002). On the social situation of music. In R. Leppert (Ed.), Essays on music (pp. 391-436). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (revised edition). London: Verso.
Arkwright, K. J. (2011). Jenseits des Überlebens. Von Breslau nach Australien. (K. Friedla & U. Neumärker, Eds). Berlin: Stiftung Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas.
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bailey, P. (1998 [1966]). Breaking the sound barrier. In Popular culture and performance in the Victorian city (pp. 194-211). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bijsterveld, K. (2013). Introduction. In K. Bijsterveld (Ed.), Soundscapes of the urban past: Staged sound as mediated cultural heritage (pp. 11-28). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
https://doi.org/10.26530/OAPEN_627788
Birdsall, C. (2012). Nazi soundscapes: Sound, technology and urban space in Germany, 1933-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048516322
Birdsall, C. (2016). Sound memory: A critical concept for researching memories of conflict and war. In D. Drozdzewski, S. De Nardi & E. Waterton (Eds.), Memory, place and identity: Commemoration and remembrance of war and conflict (pp. 111-129). London, New York: Routledge.
Błaszczak, D. (2018). Waves of remembrance: Wrocław in radio sounds. Broadcasting from the past. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 221-237). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Buttimer, A. (1980). Home, reach, and the sense of place. In A. Buttimer & D. Seamon (Eds.). The human experience of space and place (pp. 166-187). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Chambers, I. (1985). Urban rhythms: The metropolitan experience. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan Education.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17818-6
Chambers, I. (2017). The aural walk. In C. Cox & D. Warner (Eds.), Audio culture: Readings in modern music (revised edition) (pp. 129-133). London, New York: Bloomsbury.
Cohn, W. (2006). Kein Recht, nirgends. Tagebuch vom Untergang des Breslauer Judentums, 1933-1941. (N. Conrads, Ed.). Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau.
https://doi.org/10.7788/boehlau.9783412337827
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. F. Rendall, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dębski, A. (2018). From “love in the bright moonlight” to “the corner of dreams”: A snapshot of the soundscape of Wrocław in 1945. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 163-180). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Dolan, J. (2003). The voice that cannot be heard: Radio/broadcasting and the “archive”. The Radio Journal, 1(1), 63-72.
https://doi.org/10.1386/rajo.1.1.63/0
Farina, A. (2014). Soundscape ecology: Principles, patterns, methods, and applications. Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer Dordrecht.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7374-5
Frith, S. (1996). Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gleiss, H. G. (1986). Breslauer Apokalypse 1945: Dokumentarchronik vom Todeskampf und Untergang einer deutschen Stadt und Festung am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges (10 Bände). Rosenheim: Natura et Patria.
Hargreaves, R. (2014). Hitler’s final fortress: Breslau 1945. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books.
Hilmes, M. (1990). Hollywood and broadcasting: From radio to cable. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Hunt, L. (1984). Politics, culture, and class in the French Revolution. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Ihde, D. (1976). Listening and voice: A phenomenology of sound. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Inglot, J. (2012). Wypędzony. Breslau – Wrocław 1945 [Exiled: Breslau – Wrocław 1945]. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Erica.
Jacobs, A. (2018). Barking and blaring: City sounds in wartime. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 11-30). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Jara, K. (2018). The soundscape of public space in Breslau during the period of National Socialism. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 143-162). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Jeggle, U. (1972). Fasnacht im Dritten Reich. In G. Albrecht & W. Kutter (Eds.), Masken und Narren: Traditionen der Fastnacht [Symposium 7-9. Dezember 1971] (pp. 40-51). Cologne: Kölnisches Stadtmuseum.
Jeschioro, H. (1993). Geboren in Breslau, missbraucht von Nazis, vertrieben von Kommunisten, verraten von Bonn. Stuttgart: Selbstverlag Herbert Jeschioro Stgt.
Krause, B. (2016). Voices of the wild: Animal songs, human din, and the call to save natural soundscapes. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
Lange, D. (2018). The muteness of war-time trauma: A nonverbal perspective on the relationship between trauma and soundscape. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 245-263). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Lasker-Wallfisch, A. (1997). Ihr sollt die Wahrheit erben. Breslau – Auschwitz – Bergen-Belsen. Bonn: Weidle Verlag.
Le Bon, G. (2002). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. Mineola, New York: Dover.
Lessing, T. (1909). Über Psychologie des Lärms. Zeitschrift für Psychotherapie und medizinische Psychologie, 1, 77-87.
Lucas, C. (1988). The crowd and politics between Ancien Régime and revolution in France. The Journal of Modern History, 60(3), 421-57.
https://doi.org/10.1086/600402
Marston, S. (2002/3). Making difference: Conflict over Irish identity in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade. Political Geography, 373-392.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00051-8
Missfelder, J.-F. (2012). Period Ear. Perspektiven einer Klanggeschichte. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38, 21-47.
https://doi.org/10.13109/gege.2012.38.1.21
Morley, D. (2000). Home territories: Media, mobility and identity. London, New York: Routledge.
Moslund, S. P. (2011). The presencing of place in literature: Toward an embodied topopoetic mode of reading. In R. T. Tally (Ed.). Geocritical explorations: Space, place, and mapping in literary and cultural studies (pp. 29-43). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337930_3
Naliwajek-Mazurek, K. (2018). The sounds of Warsaw in 1945: Witness accounts. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 55-80). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Paul, G. (1992). Aufstand der Bilder: Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933. Bonn: Dietz.
Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels nahm Musteranlage des Reichslautsprechersäulennetzes in seine Obhut (1938). Schlesien – Volk und Raum. Vierteljahresschrift, July, 145.
Rybchynska, Z. (2018). The voices of a liberated/occupied city: The Lviv soundscape of 1944-1946 in Ryszard Gansiniec’s journal. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 131-142). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Schafer, R. M. (1994 [1977]). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Rochester: Destiny.
Schmidt, U. C. (2018). Roaring war and silent peace? Initial reflections on the soundscape in the Ruhr between area bombing and reconstruction. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 31-54). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Sennett, R. (1978). The fall of public man: On the social psychology of capitalism. New York: Vintage.
Simmel, G. (1997). The metropolis and mental life. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory (pp. 69-79). London, New York: Routledge.
Smith, M. M. (Ed.). (2004). Hearing history: A reader. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
https://doi.org/10.1097/01.HJ.0000292453.76632.5e
Smith, M.M., Snay, M., & Smith, B.R. (2004). Coda: Talking sound history. In M. M. Smith (Ed.), Hearing history: A reader (365-405). Athens: University of Georgia Press.
https://doi.org/10.2481/dsj.3.182
Staśko-Mazur, K. (2018). The voice of Polish Radio in the soundscape of Warsaw in 1945. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 93-129). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Süß, W., & Thießen, M. (2017). Nationalsozialistische Städte als Handlungsräume: Einführung. In W. Süß, & M. Thießen (Eds.), Städte im Nationalsozialismus. Urbane Räume und soziale Ordnungen (pp. 9-20). Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag.
Tańczuk, R. (2018). The 1945 soundscape of Wrocław in the accounts of its post-war inhabitants. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 181-201). Berlin: Peter Lang.
https://doi.org/10.3726/b13870
Tańczuk, R., & Wieczorek, S. (Eds.). (2018). Sounds of war and peace. Soundscapes of European cities in 1945. Berlin: Peter Lang.
https://doi.org/10.3726/b13870
Tausk, W. (1975). Breslauer Tagebuch 1933-1940 (R. Kincel, Ed.). Berlin: Rütten & Loening.
Waage, U. (2004). Bleib übrig: Aus den Tagebuchaufzeichnungen in der Festung Breslau und der Nachkriegszeit von Januar 1945 bis April 1947 (Zeitzeugenbericht). Halle: Cornelius.
Wagner, H.-U., Das jüdische Breslau und der Rundfunk in Breslau (1933-1949) (under embargo).
Wieczorek, S. (2018). Calls for help and the sounds of pot-banging in the soundscape of ruined Wrocław in 1945. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 203-220). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Wildt, M. (2007). Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung: Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz, 1919 bis 1939. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.
Wolff, K. (2012). Ich blieb zurück: Erinnerungen an Breslau und Israel (I. Loose, Ed.). Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag.
Zimpel, J. (2018). In search of lost sounds: Miron Białoszewski’s “Stare życie” and post-war silence. In R. Tańczuk & S. Wieczorek (Eds.), Sounds of war and peace: Soundscapes of European cities in 1945 (pp. 81-92). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Zuydervelt, R. (2009). Take a closer listen. Rotterdam.

 


“Avant” journal – the task financed under the contract 711/P-DUN/2019 from the funds of the Minister of Science and Higher Education for the dissemination of science.
Czasopismo „Avant” – zadanie finansowane w ramach umowy 711/P-DUN/2019 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę.

Możliwość komentowania została wyłączona.