Landesarchiv!
Cappuccino?
Cafeteria and 'auto cappuccino' machine that unlike wretched auto cappuccino at Bundesarchiv, does make delicious soda-sweet “cappuccino”.
Located in a former Nazi army base?
Located in a former Nazi munitions factory!
Yelling staff members?
No, everyone is lovely. Sometimes they even load the microfilm for you.
Fun stuff to read?
How can you ask that--this archive, after all, is home to court file A Rep. 358 Acc: 2666, "Anton Sander: Dancer and Transvestite."
Most fun stuff read so far?
The fun stuff is few and far between here--random court cases--but court cases are so interesting. I guess the Sander file is my favorite, but honorable mention has to go to the case I read yesterday of a guy who chanted a little rhyme while he flashed pornographic pictures at people on the street. He seemed nice.
Special powers?
When I was starting my diss research in the fall, I thought I'd do most of my work at the Landesarchiv. I ended up finding very little there and spending most of my time at other archives. Not that that's its fault.
Main special power is the incomprehensible catalogue. (pictured) Other powers include e-mails from helpful archivist recommending files, however e-mails have the wrong file signatures, and when I mail her back saying, 'I'd like to order these files,' she can't order them for me because I have the signatures wrong. (Signature confusion in this case is due to the switch to microfilm. By the way, I agree with CBAM that microfiche is far superior to microfilm. This may be the topic of a future lavish post.)
It's my only archive not within biking distance, and it takes a long time to get there on the subway. Uh, but that is not really a special power. Uhm, 26 cent printing from the microfilm machines?
4 comments:
Are court cases as interesting to read as, say, Nazi secret police files on lesbians? I imagine that the court cases have less bulk to them, which means that there is less chance for a movie. But then again, there is an inherent drama in court room cases not always to be found in Nazi secret police files. After you the denouement of arrest, you pretty much know where the story is going, eh?
Microfiche is SO MUCH BETTER than microfilm. It prints way faster, is actually simple to load, and you know how much more is coming. Whereas with microfilm you never know when the reel is over. Then that dissertation your ordered from the British Library that took two months to get here which you think is only 300 pages, turns out to be a whopping 500 pages, not inclusive of bibliography. And it was poorly edited as well. For shame, Cambridge University, for shame.
I was just doing some glamorous research of my own. I think the Library of Virginia totally beats out all of those German archives. Look for a post that references some good old fashioned capitalist competition. It will be an epic archive battle between the knowledge repositories of the capital city of the CSA and the capital city of the Nazis. Uh oh...it is goin' down!
Sounds like a front-runner to me! Though I think, in the long-run it's distance from Laurie HQ and it's lack of stories about singing lesbian nuns will hurt it.
Microfiche, eh? Sounds French...
Yeah CBAM, the court cases are generally far less detailed than the Gestapo files, at least the ones I've read. And so far, no epic train journeys.
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