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This paper investigates the history of the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, a body that collected and archived linguistic, ethnographic, and anthropological data from prisoners-of-war (POWs) in Germany during World War I. Recent literature has analyzed the significance of this research for the rise of conservative physical anthropology. Taking a complementary approach, the essay charts new territory in seeking to understand how the prison-camp studies informed philology and linguistics specifically. I argue that recognizing philological commitments of the Phonographic Commission is essential to comprehending the project contextually. My approach reveals that linguists accommodated material and contemporary evidence to older text-based research models, sustaining dynamic theories of language. Through a case study based on the Iranian philologist F. C. Andreas (1846-1930), the paper ultimately argues that linguistics merits greater recognition in the historiography of the behavioral sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the "Zwangsarbeit als Kriegswaffe" conference that focused on forced labor during wars. It took place in Freudenstadt, Germany from September 22-24, 2011. Papers presented at the conference discussed topics such as how forced labor was used by the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period, how Germans used forced labor with Russian prisoners of war during World War I, and how the Soviet Union forced Romanians and Hungarians to perform forced labor.