Article:

Vom Kardex-Katalog zur Einführung der Datenverarbeitungsmaschine. Die archivarische Praxis der ersten 20 Jahre des Deutschen Rundfunkarchivs

This article investigates the archival practices established at the German Radio Archive Lautarchiv des Deutschen Rundfunks (LdDR, today Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv or DRA), founded in 1952. Focusing on the first two decades of this institution, it examines the work of archivists like Hans-Joachim Weinbrenner, Martin Kunath, and Fritz Wilhelm Pauli, all former employees of pre-1945 German radio, who helped the LdDR to rebuild the historical sound and radio collections, and develop a central catalogue for West-German radio production and music collections. The article charts the development of a modernised archival system at the LdDR, which moved from a Kardex system to a card catalog, along with the establishment of a catalogue based on decimalised classification (“Systematik Realkatalog Wort”, 1962). In its focus on objects of radio archive history, this analysis pays close attention to the material qualities of archival index cards, catalogues and classification systems, while situating these artefacts within the politics and practices of the post-1945 radio archive, and highlighting its organisational priorities, selection criteria and language use. It draws from a new body of media historical scholarship sensitive to the materiality of sound technologies, formats and carriers, yet shifts this attention to sound archival practices, technologies and systems, as explored here in the “analogue” period prior to the introduction of electronic data processing (EDP) systems during the 1970s and 1980s.