Interview
I [interviewer Peter Gordy] arranged the interview on my own initiative, as I have been pursuing graduate study under the supervision of Dr. Mosse. I selected Professor Mosse for the interview because he represented one of the families which epitomized the social and cultural role of the wealthy and assimilated segment of German Jewry on the eve of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. I also chose Dr. Mosse as an interviewee because of his training as a historian and his considerable verbal talents; these factors, I believed, would give the interview some perspective and would make it more pleasant to listen to.
The interview took place March 26, 1975, in a private reception room on the third floor of the State Historical Society Headquarters Building in Madison. The interview had been preceded by a fairly brief unrecorded conversation. Dr. Mosse is a busy man, and I was fortunate to obtain any time at all for an interview, so that the time space available for the interview was limited; Dr. Mosse was due to fly to a speaking engagement soon after our recording session. There were no other participants or observers during the session.
Dr. Mosse talked about his education, his family's business and cultural activities in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, the period of exile in France and England after the expropriation of the Mosse Verlag by the Nazis, student life at Cambridge, life in the United States during and after World War II, his academic career, and Monism.
How to Use This Finding Aid
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion, and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The contents list below indicates in order of discussion the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher may listen to the distinct topics without listening to all of the material on the tape. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic, “Bootham School in England, circa 1935”, should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 18:00 time marking (the voice says at this point, “eighteen minutes”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion of “Bootham School in England” continues until approximately 23:10, at which point discussion of the next topic listed in the abstract (“Awareness of the Fate of Jews in Nazi Germany While in England”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the indented section under “Bootham School in England” gives further details of what appears on the tape between 18:00 and 23:10.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tape and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to it. However, the abstract will easily help the researcher locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Supporting Documents
There are no supporting documents at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The researcher is referred, however, to the Mosse Family Collection of documents (in German) at the Leo Baeck Institute, 129 East 73rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10021, for materials documenting the history of the Mosse family, 1827-1970, and of the firm of Rudolph Mosse. The historical works of George L. Mosse may be found at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library in Madison.
