Primary Source Research – Interview with J. Martin Klotsche

Guest post by Daniel Bauman

Most of my research conducted for this course centered around Johannes Martin Klotsche. I selected Klotsche as a subject for my tabling exercise at the Public Museum, wrote about Klotsche for my graduate research paper, and chose him as a character for the class re-enactment. Joe Klotsche left behind many writings, delivered many published speeches, books and peer reviewed articles based on his thoughts or research. I had intended to, and hoped to, spend time looking directly in the archives, discovering useful and interesting letters and records but confronted a wealth of Klotsche’s own words, whether as primary or secondary sources, available online or in the library stacks. What at first felt like an unfair advantage in terms of accessible sources sometimes seemed daunting, forcing me to decide which pieces to look through and place my focus. Between the various projects done around Klotsche, I found and incorporated more sources, and still didn’t get to everything.

The most helpful source throughout my work was Frank Cassell’s ‘Interview with J. Martin Klotsche’, conducted in 1981 as part of the UW-Milwaukee Oral History Project. I found that hearing Joe Klotsche speak gave me a good deal of confidence in trying to imagine Joe Klotsche the person, while conducting my research. His words seemed more organic and less planned than those in his published memoirs, articles and carefully crafted speeches. Furthermore, there seemed to be a good deal of comfort between the interviewer and interviewee, such that Klotsche was not guarded in this exchange. Occasionally the two would share some laughter and briefly touch on anecdotes otherwise omitted. In the course of writing my paper, I actually found myself needing to pull back from citing this particular interview, and incorporate more thought-out reflections from Klotsche in other sources, for certain events. Hearing the recording of Klotsche, frozen in time, represented an auditory alternative to discovering a physical source in the archives. 

References

Klotsche, J Martin. “Oral History Interview with J. Martin Klotsche”. Interview by Frank Cassell. UW-Milwaukee Oral History Project Records, 1981-1990. April 21, 1981. https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/uwmoh/id/56/rec/1.