A Case for Oral Literary History: Conversations with or about Morgenstern, Lehmann, Reinacher and Thomas Mann

Abstract

One of the most dramatic recent developments in historical research has been the systematization and refinement of its most timehonored method. The earliest histories, transcriptions of word-of-mouth tradition, have found their counterpart in a modern approach called, not entirely felicitously, oral history. Following the lead of Columbia University, various departments of history have established centers where qualified scholars, through a series of carefully planned, taperecorded interviews with prominent public figures, have elicited information on a vast variety of contemporary historical problems.1 This new adaptation of an old method, now in use for little more than ten years, has yielded a wealth of hitherto unavailable source material which has already become the basis for numerous scholarly works and which may furnish, in the future, when strictures against immediate publication have lapsed, the definitive resolution of current scholarly controversies-from the disagreements about Yalta to those about Cuba.