Episode 3: On Location in Berlin

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On today’s show, we embark on the first of what I hope will be many virtual excursions together. This time we visit Berlin, Germany. This beautiful city is famous for its political and cultural past, but also has a fascinating history in science and medicine.

There is so much to examine, but this episode will focus on Charité — an institution founded as a plague hospital that ended up treating soldiers, training medical students, hosting the founding work of modern pathology, and most recently housing a history of medicine museum — and the Berlin Phonogram Archive, a founding institution for ethnomusicology and a key voice in early twentieth century evolutionary arguments about race.

 

Host essays: “I Feel Your Pain” and “Evolution in Four-Part Harmony”

• for further reading/viewing/listening:
  • Eric Ames, “The Sound of Evolution,” Modernism/Modernity 10 (2003): 297-325.
  • Lazare Benaroyo, “Rudolf Virchow and the Scientific Approach to Medicine,” Endeavour 22, no. 3 (1998): 114-116.
  • Der Himmel über Berlin, aka Wings of Desire, dir. Wim Wenders (1987)
  • Arthur E. Imhof, “The Hospital in the 18th Century: For Whom?” Journal of Social History 10 (1977): 448-470.
  • Music! The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, 1900-2000 (Wergo, 2000).
  • Konrad Obermann, “Materialised Medical History,” The Lancet 359 (2002): 361-362.
  • Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998).
  • Londa Schiebinger, “Maria Winkelmann at the Berlin Academy: A Turning Point for Women in Science,” Isis 78 (1987): 174-200.

 

Audio credits:

All music on this program courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network except where noted.

• Sunburn in Cyprus, History (intro & outro)
• Telemann Trio Berlin, Concerto in D-Dur - Allegro (Vivaldi), Triosonate in D-Dur - Largo (Bach) (courtesy of Magnatune; during historical intro and first essay)
• Happy Gemini 3, Pondering the 10^th Planet (transitions)
• RZ-1, Cuckoo-Berliner Remix (courtesy of CC Mixter; following first essay)
• Music! The Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, 1900-2000 (Wergo, 2000; during second essay)
  • “Kham hom,” performed by a theater ensemble from Bangkok in Berlin, 1900
  • Eagle song of the Hopi Indians of Arizona, performed in Berlin, 1906
  • Xylophone piece of the Bondei, played on the “vilangwi” xylophone, Tanga, Tanganyika, 1903
  • Sorbian spinning room song, sung by Christine Marrak, Burg, Germany, 1907
  • “Tangiboa,” a death lament sung by Dawidi Anam, German New Guinea, 1928
• Electrix, Berlin am Meer (following second essay)
• Sound effects courtesy of the FreeSound Project:
  • Berlin Markt
  • Door opening and closing
  • Staedel Museum

Other links:

• Berliner Medizinhistoriches Museum (Berlin Medical History Museum)
• Mütter Museum, Philadelphia (pathology collection in the U.S.)
  
• Bill Squires’ Biology 131 course web site at Texas Lutheran, which includes video projects by his students with their views on the colonization of Mars.