Opening the archive

Between 1953-1954, over 750 sound and other documents were recorded with over 200 people from across Namibia. This platform hopes to make this vast material more accessible to a broader Namibian public and families in particular.
“Namibia 1953-54” provides a list of names of those individuals whose voices, narratives, songs and poetry were recorded and whose images were taken. Each name is linked to an index card that lists the number of available images, audio recordings and written records for that person.
A few “profiles” were created, in consultation with the families, as examples to offer a glimpse of the richness of the audio-visual and textual material that users are invited to explore.
The so-called Dammann collection is housed at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien in Basel, Switzerland. Electronic copies of the sound recordings are also stored at the National Archives of Namibia in Windhoek.
You can email the archive in Basel to request images, sound recordings or other archival material about family members or for research purposes.

Profiles