Germany 24

Listen to Germany 24, a 77-year-old woman from Bremen, Germany, and the United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 77

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/11/1938

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bremen, Germany

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian/German

OCCUPATION: retired bookkeeper

EDUCATION: high school and three years of business college

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject had been living in New York, in the United States, for several years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her first language is German.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Siena Ledger (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 28/03/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Anyway, I was 10 months old when World War II started. Hitler had then been in office already, what? I think he came into power like 1933. And, uh, I was born November 10, 1938. And the war started in September of 1939. And, of course, as you already know then Germany — for some odd reason — declared war on Poland first, which is the same thing as the Kaiser did in 1914, when the crown prince of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, which was Yugoslavia. What Poland had to do an- do with that I — it never, I mean I have never figured that out, and I think that German historians have never figured out.

Then anyway, um, the war started and, um, my parents and I lived in my aunt’s and uncle’s house on the third floor. And, uh, my sister then was born 1942. In June 24, 1942. That night — I was three-and-a-half years old — we had an air raid, and we were in the basement of that building, which is near the airport in my hometown, which is a industrial center in Bremen, on the coast of Germany, on the big river called the Weser. And, uh, that night we were bombed out. So the third story was completely destroyed, the second story had a lot of damage, and downstairs was fine. I to this day have not forgotten that my mother wore a babushka that was black and white checkerboard or gray and white checkerboard, and I thought she looked horrid. So that next morning, my, my aunt [unintelligible] who was my mother’s sister — four years older than my mother — took me and my cousin Juergen, who was eleven years older than I, to Berlin where Tante Paula, you know, Aunt Paula lived. And she was my mother’s oldest sister; she was actually the second oldest in the family of fourteen children. But, um, she was the oldest sister. And we stayed there for four months because we didn’t have any place to live.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Siena Ledger (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 28/03/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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