Heft 03/04 – 2014, 40. Jahrgang

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Ansgar Diller / Edgar Lersch
Editorial: 40 Jahre „Rundfunk und Geschichte“
Von Vereinsmitteilungen zur wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift
Streiflichter zu ihrer Geschichte 3

Interview
Audiovisuelles Erbe Europas online zugänglich
Interview mit Eggo Müller, Projektkoordinator
von EUscreenXL an der Universität Utrecht 9

Thema: Deutsch-deutsch und international – Rundfunk im Kalten Krieg

„…was machen unsere West-Kollegen?“
Heinz Adameck (†) im Gespräch 15

Christoph Classen
„Um die Empfangsmöglichkeiten … des Senders RIAS völlig auszuschalten…“
Störsender in der DDR 1952 bis 1988
To eliminate all chances to receive broadcasts from RIAS…“
Jamming in the GDR
25


It is widely known that the GDR government tried to keep away their citizens from the consumption of western media. One of several measures to do so was the development of a secret net of jamming stations which should prevent the reception of the US-American run radio station RIAS in the GDR. However, little is known about the triggers, motives as well as the practical implementation of these technical measures. The article outlines the background of jamming in the GDR and analyses the problems and conflicting goals on a technical, political and economical sphere. These difficulties as well as changing political and technical frameworks were responsible for the stagnating extension of the jamming network at the beginning of the 1960s and finally they caused the end of jamming in 1978.

Anke Hagedorn
Deutsch-deutsche Konkurrenz?
Die Deutsche Welle und der DDR-Auslandssender Radio Berlin International
Deutsche Welle and Radio Berlin International: The relationship between East and West Germany’s international broadcasters during the Cold War
41


Deutsche Welle (DW) is Germany’s international broadcaster. It has been broadcasting regularly since 1953, only a few years after the German Federal Republic was founded. In 1959, Radio Berlin International (RBI) started as the international broadcaster of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Most of its output were news reports and information about the GDR. To its listeners, it offered a propagandistic view on life in a socialist country. RBI ceased operations on October 2nd, 1990, right before German reunification. Very few of RBI’s staff were able to join Deutsche Welle which inherited some of RBI’s broadcasting apparatus as well as its frequencies.
Anke Hagedorn asks about the relationship between the two German international broadcasters during the period of the Cold War. Was RBI founded first and foremost to counter DW? Was the increasing number of foreign language programs at DW a reaction to the expansion of RBI’s program? Short Wave Radio was a battleground in the Cold War era and RBI and DW were both part of this fight. Whereas RBI clearly understood itself as part of the propaganda machine of the GDR government, Deutsche Welle always pointed out its aim to provide independent and objective information, like the BBC. But to stay neutral in a Cold War context was nearly impossible, especially with Germany being a divided country. Therefore, DW also transmitted a certain political message through its broadcasts. But unlike RBI, it never reacted directly to the programs of its counterpart.
The last “battle” between RBI and DW was fought in the context of the German reunification process, and it was clearly won by DW: Whereas the RBI staff was hoping for a „unification“, DW’s director Dieter Weirich clearly aimed at a „takeover“. He was more interested in inheriting the technical structures of RBI than he cared about the staff:, At the end, only twelve out of the more than 300 remaining RBI-staff members could join DW.

Laurens Form
Aus dem „Wunderland des Sports“
DDR-Sportberichterstattung im ZDF von 1963 bis 1992 49


Over decades the GDR-Athletes, better known as the „Diplomats in Tracksuits” dominated the Sport Events like Olympic Games or World Championships. The GDR was considered the “Wonderland of Sports”. Exactly 519 Olympic Medals between 1968 and 1988 demonstrated this. The small Country with just 17 Million People was in Sports a “Global Player”, challenging constantly the USA and the Soviet Union. But how it looked behind the Wall, what did the West known from the Sports System in the German Democratic Republic?
Sport in the GDR was definitely a matter of the State and its dominating Politicians, Sport there was a conspirational Area. Not least because of the outstanding and massive Success the GDR Sports was in the Focus of the Federal Republic of Germany and it’s different Media. This Paper attempts to show and analyse the media and journalistic coverage in the Second German Television (ZDF) of the GDR Sports System from 1963 until 1992, the Year the first reunited German Olympic Team started at the Winter Games in Albertville.

Alina Laura Tiews
Egon Günther als Grenzgänger
Deutsch-deutsche medienhistorische Verflechtungen am Beispiel des Falls Feuchtwanger 62


In 1978, the renowned GDR-film director Egon Günther received an unexpected offer: The West German broadcasting station (WDR) wanted him to direct their movie „Exil“ based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger. Günther was intrigued. He wanted to accept. But both the departments responsible for movie production in the GDR, the „Hauptverwaltung Film“ and the „DEFA Studio für Spielfilme“, were rather appalled by this idea and so the Feuchtwanger case became a highly political affair. Only after long and difficult negotiations was Günther allowed to start his „Exil“-project at the WDR. In the end, this led to years of exile for himself. Günther stayed and worked in the Federal Republic until the reunification in 1990.
The records held in the Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde tell a thrilling story of media historical entanglement. The article reconstructs these according to the historian Christoph Klessmann. Additional documents were picked from a new important volume on Egon Günther edited by Ingrid Poss and Dorett Molitor. Based on this rich source material the article presents not only Egon Günther himself as a media historical actor crossing borders, moreover his case also forced GDR film politicians to deal with West German broadcasting culture in great detail. The Feuchtwanger case gives proof of an entangled media history of the two German states.

Studienkreis-Informationen

Call for Papers Jahrestagung 2015 in Wien 71

Uwe Breitenborn
HEIMATGEFÜHLE. Lokale Medien in einer globalen Welt
Jahrestagung 2014 in Halle 72

Heiner Schmitt
Erinnerungen an Friedrich Peter Kahlenberg 74

Forum

Alina Laura Tiews
„Im öffentlichen Interesse – Bedeutung und
Zukunft des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks“
Symposium der Historischen Kommission der ARD 76

Golo Föllmer, Tobias Grasse und Tom Leonhardt
Digital, multimedial, auditiv? Hauptsache Content!
40. International Feature Conference, Leipzig 11. bis 15. Mai 2014 77

Katja Berg
Public Visual History. Wie Filme Geschichte schreiben.
Tagung des ZZF Potsdam und der HU Berlin, 29. bis 30. April 2014 in Potsdam 79

Deutsche Rundfunkgeschichte im Technomuseum Mannheim 80

Wegweiser zu Quellen und Dokumenten der Rundfunkgeschichte in Norddeutschland 81

Dissertationsvorhaben

Andre Dechert
„Debating Dad on TV. Familienwerte, Vaterschaft
und die US-amerikanische Sitcom, 1981-1992“ 82


This PhD project aims at identifying the negotiations of fatherhood ideals and family values in American society in the 1980s and early 1990s by analyzing TV-sitcoms („Love, Sidney“, „The Cosby Show“, and „Murphy Brown“) and their subsequent public debates. According to the general assumptions of the German ‘Historische Wertewandelsforschung’ these public debates are considered indicators for processes of value changes. Thus, my project argues for a re-reading of the 1980s and early 1990s since they were long considered a rather conservative era, especially in the realm of the family and family values.
By analyzing these debates about fatherhood and family representations in US-Sitcoms, my project also contributes to the field of Visual History. In this field, the analysis of moving images’ reception has been rather neglected since Mass Media and Communication Studies established some criteria for the analysis of reception processes that a historian’s corpus of sources cannot live up to. Following the work of historian Christina von Hodenberg, I argue that – nonetheless – we should try to analyze historical receptions of the media. As my project shows, such an analysis offers major conclusions about the negotiation of values and ideals.

Katrin Jordan
Tschernobyl und die Medien
Die „Tschernobyl“-Debatte in der bundesdeutschen
und französischen Medienöffentlichkeit 1986-1991 84


This historical doctorate thesis is a comparative study of the public debates on ‘Chernobyl’ in West Germany and France, undertaken by analysing media coverage in 1986-1991. The project focusses on the mass media, which it conceives as the central forum for the relevant societal discourse. At the same time, it treats the media itself as an actor and tries, therefore, to determine its role in the genesis and dynamic of the public debate as well as its influence on the problematisation and decision-making processes during the controversy. The study does not only explore how television and printed press reported on ‘Chernobyl’ and which aspects and interpretations of this “invisible” event were disseminated. Rather, it also analyses the protagonists of the debate appearing in the media, that is, scientific and economic experts, political figures and last but not least the journalists themselves. By its comparative nature the study intends to show how differing structural and personal relations between politics, science and the media in both countries significantly determined the form and content of the public debate over ‘Chernobyl’. In this way, it draws wider conclusions about the political culture of both societies.

Christina Isabel Brüning
Historisches Lernen mit videographierten
Zeitzeug/inneninterviews in der heterogenen Gesellschaft 86


How can we teach the Holocaust in the land of the perpetrators but at the same time in heterogeneous classes where cultural, emotional and also temporal distances to the topic are widespread? The presented project researches the potential of digital testimonies from Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Archive (VHA) for Holocaust education in today’s schools. Based on my research conducted in history classes in Germany, I discuss the question whether the use of digital testimonies works for all students of coming generations where no survivors are left to testify.

Petra Schirrmann
Das deutsche Hörspiel in Finnland 88


The radio play is a relatively young genre that made its first breakthrough in Germany in the 1920s. Finland followed suit a little later. The German radio play production had a remarkable influence on Finland’s ”Radio Theatre” . Still, it has so far not been systematically researched.The thesis will therefore fill a significant gap in research on Finnish-German cultural relations by firstly documenting the radio plays translated from German into Finnish and broadcast in Finland. Secondly, the influence of the German (Austria, Swiss, GDR included) radio play on Finnish radio-production
 is assessed by plotting the peaks of the Finnish interest in the German radio play. Finally, the reception of the German radio play in Finland is studied by exploring Finnish programme policies concerning the German radio play.
The thesis will make extensive use of the archives of the Finnish public broadcasting corporation YLE and draw upon listener statistics and press reviews in order to gain quantitative and qualitative insight into the reception of German radio plays in Finland.

Rezensionen

Friedrich Balke, Bernhard Siegert & Joseph Vogl (Hrsg.)
Mediengeschichte nach Kittler
(Denise Sommer) 90

Gerhard Paul
BilderMACHT. Studien zur Visual History des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts
(Christoph Hilgert) 91

Renée Winter
Geschichtspolitiken und Fernsehen. Repräsentationen des
Nationalsozialismus im frühen österreichischen TV (1955-1970)
(Katrin Hammerstein) 92

Gerhard Paul, Ralph Schock (Hrsg.)
Sound des Jahrhunderts. Geräusche, Töne, Stimmen 1889 bis heute
(Sebastian Stoppe) 93

Axel Volmar, Jens Schröter (Hrsg.)
Auditive Medienkulturen. Techniken des Hörens und Praktiken der Klanggestaltung
(Carlos A. Haas) 95

Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Heftes U4