Phonographische Zeitschrift (1900-1938)
Along with its two successor publications, Phonographische und Radio-Zeitschrift and Phonographische, Radio- und Musikinstrumenten-Zeitschrift (PRZ), Phonographische Zeitschrift (PZ) was published from 1900 to 1938, running to over 34,000 pages in that period. As 'the journal serving the entire music and voice-equipment industry' (its subheading until 1933), the publication is a unique source of information, in text and images, on phonography in the first third of the 20th century. The PZ is a mine of data on the history of phonographic technology, repertoires and the industry as a whole and is an important tool in research relating to the history of music, media, culture, business and copyright. As most German archives of companies in the audio media industry during and after the two world wars have ceased to exist due to numerous dismissals, there is no other source that can duplicate the information contained in the PZ. As an industry journal the PZ also carries the new-release lists of the record companies. These are an important source of information in the dating of historic audio material and are often more detailed than the various label catalogues. Due to the low-quality paper used during wartime and periods of inflation and crisis, many copies of the PZ are now in such a fragile state that they are off-limits for normal use. In Germany there are only two copies that come close to being complete. They are located in the State Library of Berlin and in the library of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. We thank the State Library of Berlin for providing us with their copy of PZ for digitization. All volumes have been digitized except the missing volumes from the years 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1932. For copyright reasons we can only grant public access to issues printed during the first 21 years.
