Archival Work in Berlin - Again
I've finally got the contours of this book under control (more or less) and with the secondary material also more or less digested, it was time to hit the archives in Berlin again this week for at least the next 3 weeks. The three archives I need are the Bundesarchiv, the Political Archive of the Foreign Office and the Prussian Privy State Archive.
Trying to impact the family as little as possible, I didn't go up to Berlin on Sunday, but left Münster in the dark and drizzle at 6am on Monday morning. It was on the train trip, between naps, as I read Rolf-Harald Wippich's book on Japan and German politics in the far east that I made my decision about what the last chapter to research would be - China in 1897/8, not turn of the century Japan. The seizure of Kiautschou is just too important not to cover. Unlike the Krüger telegramme or the Hun speech, something really important happend here, and unlike the Herero Uprising or other serious colonial events, the Kaiser was intimately involved. To overlook this case study would be a huge disservice to the history I'm trying to write. So somewhere between Hannover and Wolfsburg I decided to tackle that one instead.
When I arrived in Berlin, I rushed around between the Prussian Archive, to order files for later, and the Foreign Office. I thought the Prussian Archive files might take a week to arrive, but it turns out they're all on-site, so they arrived a bit quicker. More on that later. I was also lugging around my oversized suitcase which I couldn't drop off until the end of the day. So I spent the day lugging 15kg of personal effects from one end of Berlin to the other.
The accommodation was a bit tricky too - a flat in Lichterfelde (Marthastraße to be exact) that was attached to someone's weirdly castle-style house. They weren't home, it was raining and I thought I had the wrong place because... it's a pseudo-castle. In the end a neighbour rang the owners for me, they gave me the door code (keyless entry like my old place in North Gosford, back in the day) and I could finally get in there. I also did some shopping in my own spartan way. Mushroom & tomato pasta for dinner and cheese sandwiches for lunch for the foreseeable future! I of course brought my own weetabix and Yorkie tea for breakfast, so that was already sorted. Nothing like living to pattern. This can of course be taken too far - I've only been there 3 days and I already have a favourite locker at the archive. Woe betide anyone who takes it before I get there ;-)
Anyway, speaking of archives....
The first of these, the Bundesarchiv has done me an enormous favour by digitising a sizeable section of the files from the German Colonial Office. I was asked by a colleague the other night if it wasn't frustrating, given all the time and expense I've spent in the past to work there, but nothing could be further from my mind. I still have to come here, as a lot of other files (for example any on Zanzibar or any other English colonies) haven't been digitised - only ones on the German colonies. But secondly, I'm also really excited about what it means for Australasian researchers who can't just take a three day trip to the archives every six weeks or so. The quality of our postgraduate and even honours work can only improve as a result of this. It's amazing and I hope they keep going with it.
The Foreign Office archive is where I've concentrated my efforts this week and I've hit a lot of paydirt. There's still the odd hour of flicking through 120 year old correspondence that is interesting but not important for what I'm doing (knowing the difference is a key archival skill). But generally I've had some great finds that will really help me flesh out the nature of the relationship between Germany and indigenous monarchs around the world. I've had the great fortune to work mostly with hardcopy files, which have allowed me to find some outstanding things (a beautiful hand written letter to the Kaiser from the Sultan of Zanzibar in Arabic). Today I worked on microfiche, which will send me blind. But the material was so rich, I didn't care. I spent the day today reading the telegrammes of Wilhelm II as he worked himself up into a frenzy about the Chinese in November 1897. There's no reading against the grain necessary for this material in terms of imperial attitudes. It's all there right on the surface. What takes more reading is watching this monarchical rage be managed as best it can be by Hohenlohe and others.
The Prussian Archive was an interesting example of how you can get it all wrong unless you're actually there and have the index books handy. I tried to order some files in advance from Münster, but it didn't work, as I had the file numbers wrong. They were only slightly wrong and it only took me about 5 minutes in the archive to sort it out. But I had to be there to work it out, to see why and how I had it wrong. So now the files have been ordered and they're waiting for me - for when I can drag myself away from the Foreign Office!
It's been a good week so far, and I'm hoping that the rest of the time will be equally profitable. To be honest, I love working in the archive more than most parts of the job. And I always feel that my writing up of the sources is only a pale reflection of the vivid description that the sources give. I'm certainly not naive enough to say that the archives offer the 'authentic story'. It's not hard to see how these letters are written from within a clear institutional logic that in some ways pre-scribes the possible. And one thing that working on both sides of the frontier shows me is that these are radically partisan accounts. But these partisan, institutionally situated traces of the past certainly offer a clearly traceable line (or perhaps better feedback loop) between the unfolding of these scripts and material eventualities, which are in turn reported back according to the genre rules of these pre-scripts, and so on and so on (to quote Zizek). And that's certainly sufficient for me to generate the verisimilitude I am pursuing.
Trying to impact the family as little as possible, I didn't go up to Berlin on Sunday, but left Münster in the dark and drizzle at 6am on Monday morning. It was on the train trip, between naps, as I read Rolf-Harald Wippich's book on Japan and German politics in the far east that I made my decision about what the last chapter to research would be - China in 1897/8, not turn of the century Japan. The seizure of Kiautschou is just too important not to cover. Unlike the Krüger telegramme or the Hun speech, something really important happend here, and unlike the Herero Uprising or other serious colonial events, the Kaiser was intimately involved. To overlook this case study would be a huge disservice to the history I'm trying to write. So somewhere between Hannover and Wolfsburg I decided to tackle that one instead.
When I arrived in Berlin, I rushed around between the Prussian Archive, to order files for later, and the Foreign Office. I thought the Prussian Archive files might take a week to arrive, but it turns out they're all on-site, so they arrived a bit quicker. More on that later. I was also lugging around my oversized suitcase which I couldn't drop off until the end of the day. So I spent the day lugging 15kg of personal effects from one end of Berlin to the other.
The accommodation was a bit tricky too - a flat in Lichterfelde (Marthastraße to be exact) that was attached to someone's weirdly castle-style house. They weren't home, it was raining and I thought I had the wrong place because... it's a pseudo-castle. In the end a neighbour rang the owners for me, they gave me the door code (keyless entry like my old place in North Gosford, back in the day) and I could finally get in there. I also did some shopping in my own spartan way. Mushroom & tomato pasta for dinner and cheese sandwiches for lunch for the foreseeable future! I of course brought my own weetabix and Yorkie tea for breakfast, so that was already sorted. Nothing like living to pattern. This can of course be taken too far - I've only been there 3 days and I already have a favourite locker at the archive. Woe betide anyone who takes it before I get there ;-)
Anyway, speaking of archives....
The first of these, the Bundesarchiv has done me an enormous favour by digitising a sizeable section of the files from the German Colonial Office. I was asked by a colleague the other night if it wasn't frustrating, given all the time and expense I've spent in the past to work there, but nothing could be further from my mind. I still have to come here, as a lot of other files (for example any on Zanzibar or any other English colonies) haven't been digitised - only ones on the German colonies. But secondly, I'm also really excited about what it means for Australasian researchers who can't just take a three day trip to the archives every six weeks or so. The quality of our postgraduate and even honours work can only improve as a result of this. It's amazing and I hope they keep going with it.
The Foreign Office archive is where I've concentrated my efforts this week and I've hit a lot of paydirt. There's still the odd hour of flicking through 120 year old correspondence that is interesting but not important for what I'm doing (knowing the difference is a key archival skill). But generally I've had some great finds that will really help me flesh out the nature of the relationship between Germany and indigenous monarchs around the world. I've had the great fortune to work mostly with hardcopy files, which have allowed me to find some outstanding things (a beautiful hand written letter to the Kaiser from the Sultan of Zanzibar in Arabic). Today I worked on microfiche, which will send me blind. But the material was so rich, I didn't care. I spent the day today reading the telegrammes of Wilhelm II as he worked himself up into a frenzy about the Chinese in November 1897. There's no reading against the grain necessary for this material in terms of imperial attitudes. It's all there right on the surface. What takes more reading is watching this monarchical rage be managed as best it can be by Hohenlohe and others.
The Prussian Archive was an interesting example of how you can get it all wrong unless you're actually there and have the index books handy. I tried to order some files in advance from Münster, but it didn't work, as I had the file numbers wrong. They were only slightly wrong and it only took me about 5 minutes in the archive to sort it out. But I had to be there to work it out, to see why and how I had it wrong. So now the files have been ordered and they're waiting for me - for when I can drag myself away from the Foreign Office!
It's been a good week so far, and I'm hoping that the rest of the time will be equally profitable. To be honest, I love working in the archive more than most parts of the job. And I always feel that my writing up of the sources is only a pale reflection of the vivid description that the sources give. I'm certainly not naive enough to say that the archives offer the 'authentic story'. It's not hard to see how these letters are written from within a clear institutional logic that in some ways pre-scribes the possible. And one thing that working on both sides of the frontier shows me is that these are radically partisan accounts. But these partisan, institutionally situated traces of the past certainly offer a clearly traceable line (or perhaps better feedback loop) between the unfolding of these scripts and material eventualities, which are in turn reported back according to the genre rules of these pre-scripts, and so on and so on (to quote Zizek). And that's certainly sufficient for me to generate the verisimilitude I am pursuing.
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