Heft 3-4/2016

Differenzierte Erfahrungen
Umfrage zur Umsetzung des Archivbeschlusses der ARD-Intendant/innen aus dem Jahr 2014
Distinct experiences
Survey on the implementation of the Archive Resolution of the ARD Directors from 2014 3

Thema: Hörfunk in den 20er und 30er Jahren / Theme: Radio in 1920s and 1930s

Helmut G. Asper
„Grace à Max Ophuls Hitler ne peut plus dormir“
Max Ophüls‘ Radiopropaganda gegen Hitler
„Grace à Max Ophuls Hitler ne peut plus dormir“
Max Ophüls‘ Radiopropaganda against Hitler 6

The German-Jewish theatre-and film-director Max Ophüls (1902 – 1957) fled in 1933 from Nazi-Germany to France and became naturalized in 1938. Although a pacifist, he served in the French army in World War II and wrote anti-Nazi-plays for the French propaganda radio. His satirical lyric “Sleep, Hitler, Sleep” was broadcast every night to Germany and was published in French and American magazines. His attacks against Hitler became famous, but then it became dangerous for Ophüls to stay in occupied France. In 1941 he emigrated to the USA, where he continued his fight against the Nazis. He produced 40 – 50 Anti-Nazi- broadcasts for Voice of America and wrote several treatments for anti-Nazi-pictures, which unfortunately were not produced in Hollywood. In 1949 he returned to France and engaged himself in pacifism and in the reconciliation between Germany and France. His famous radio-play “Novelle” is a strong appeal against war and arms, and a request for peace and reconciliation.

Andreas Morgenstern
„Hier ruft die Schwarze Front!“
Der Weg des Rundfunkpioniers Rudolf Formis
‘Hier ruft die Schwarze Front’ [‘This is the Black Front calling’]
The path of the radio pioneer Rudolf Formis 15

Rudolf Formis was one of the pioneers of Weimar-era broadcasting. As a technician, his Stuttgart receiving station made the Südfunk-AG the German leader in international reception in the 1920s. Er war einer der Pioniere des Rundfunks in der Weimarer Republik: Rudolf Formis. He thus became a star of early radio – behind the microphone.
After the National Socialist takeover of broadcasting, Formis was quickly sidelined. Politically difficult to assess and of Jewish ancestry, he was pushed out of the broadcaster. After his flight to Czechoslovakia he ran a resistance station he built himself. His broadcasts could be tuned in via shortwave in large portions of Germany. His programme, with the propagandistic title of “Landschaftssender Berlin” (Berlin’s rural broadcaster) represented a painful thorn in the National Socialists’ information monopoly. The Gestapo silenced the station violently in 1935. Rudolf Formis was a victim of the attack. This article traces both the Rudolf Formis’s technical achievements as well as the resistant activity of this originally unpolitical person.

Michael Annegarn-Gläß
Das Für und Wider neuer Bildungsmedien
Der Schulfunk in der Zwischenkriegszeit
For and against new educational media.
School broadcasting between the wars 24

The introduction of new educational media never proceeds unopposed. There has always been opposing and supporting factors. This article shows how much the debates of the interwar period that evolved around school broadcasting resemble today’s discussions concerning digital educational media. The media have changed but the arguments are often the same. In the course of this article the different positions in respect to the school broadcasting are shown. There are three categories of arguments which are explicated: technic, content, pedagogy. The impact on public discussions will be illustrated with specific examples from different contemporary reviews.

Christian Schneider
Radio als Erinnerungsort
„Der Ackermann“ im Hörfunk
Radio as place of memory
Johannes von Tepl’s ‘Der Ackermann’ in the Twentieth-Century radio drama 36

This article examines the adaptation of Johannes von Tepl’s late-medieval prose dialogue “Der Ackermann” (ca. 1401) for twentieth-century radio. Since November 1924, at least thirty-one productions of von Tepl’s piece have been aired on various German radio stations. Even after the aesthetic debates of the 1920s had moved towards true radiophonic word-art and away from the remediation of literary texts, radio versions of “Der Ackermann” maintained a presence in the programme because of the topic of von Tepl’s work. Addressing the very question of the meaning of life and death in the order of creation, the radio adaptations served to root the text in a culture of commemoration that was particularly vital in the 1920s and again in the immediate post-World War II years. In turn, that culture of commemoration contributed to the text’s own memorialization as an integral part of the pre-modern German literary canon.

Zeitzeugen

„Ich sah die Aufgabe darin, den Zuschauern ein Angebot zu machen“
Zeitzeugengespräch mit Dietrich Schwarzkopf (Auszüge)
‘I saw my task as presenting the viewers with an offer’
Interview with Dietrich Schwarzkopf (excerpts) 48

Studienkreis-Informationen

„QuellCodes“. Räume, Quellen und Formatierung aktueller Rundfunkgeschichtsforschung.
Jahrestagung des Studienkreises am 9. und 10. Juni 2016 in Potsdam-Babelsberg 55

Forum

Das Ende der digitalen Euphorie. Notizen vom Symposium „Vergangenheit braucht Zukunft!“
8. Juli 2016 in Berlin57

Ton und Film als Quelle zur neuesten Geschichte Bayerns. Die Überlieferung des Bayerischen Rundfunks bis in die 1980er Jahre.
Vorträge und Podiumsdiskussion in der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
14. April 2016 in München 58

Bilderströme
dfi-Symposium über neue Formen der Geschichtsdarstellung
29. September bis 1. Oktober in Köln59

A hundred Years of Film Theory. Münsterberg and Beyond: Concepts, Applications, Perspectives
Tagung vom 29.06. bis 02.07.2016 in Leipzig 60

Internet-Dokument: Todesurteile für das Hören ausländischer Rundfunksender 61

Dissertationsvorhaben / Dissertation projects

Michael Nugent
Video Cassette Revolution: How Home Video Swept the World
(Macquarie University Sydney, Australien) 62

The aim of this thesis is to serve as a comparative transnational history of the videocassette recorder, focusing on Australia, Canada, Germany, and Russia. These countries have been picked because of their varied sociopolitical realities over the decades since the introduction of the VCR, contrasting the liberal capitalistic western nations with the socialistic eastern nations. What this thesis will do is examine how people conceived of, used, and discussed VCR technology in their native contexts and languages, then compare and contrast these at times differing ideas. This research will be done through a heavy use of primary sources, such as newspapers, trade/industry journals, and entertainment magazines. In the former Soviet bloc, the thesis will also use state edicts and (where possible) declassified archive materials which discuss “official” patterns of thought on video technology. Through critically reading these publications from the late seventies to the mid-nineties, it will be possible to examine how the conceptualisations of home video changed within changing sociocultural contexts.

Götz Lachwitz
Verhandeln statt Zeigen. Prozesse der Erinnerung in Dokumentarfilmen über Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus
(Universität Hamburg)
Negotiate instead of showing. Processes of remembering in documentary films about National Socialist crimes. 64

Dominant practices of memory that can be observed in documentary films are the montage of archival footage, the interview with witnesses or experts and the staging of events with actors in the form of re-enactments. In my PhD-thesis I follow the assumption that these filmic practices of memory are comparable to procedures in a courtroom being used to reconstruct the circumstances of a crime. During a trial, performative and communicative interactions, like the questioning of the defendants, witnesses and external experts, or the renewed performance of certain actions, can get an important function. Additionally, not only written documents are read and evaluated; visual documents like films and photographs can be assessed in the courtroom as instruments of evidence too. By comparing different documentaries of the post-war period that represent different Nazi and War crime trials with newer documentaries that only implicitly reflect specific courtroom procedures, this project aims to describe how Nazi crimes are remembered in documentary films.

Ina Ėmužienė
The Evolution of audio and audio-visual media in the Lithuanian-American community 1944-1990
(Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Litauen) 66

The 20th century was the century of technological breakthroughs. The Lithuanian-American community aimed to use of all technological achievements to develop social and community life. From 1944 to 1990 more than 50 Lithuanian radio and 2 TV stations operated in the United States. In different periods, the average duration of the weekly programme varied from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The purpose of the research is to analyse the operating principles, the organizational scale and the possible impact of audio and audio-visual broadcasting on consciousness, politics, culture and public discourse of the Lithuanian-American community from 1944 to 1990. To achieve this aim, I follow four key questions: What were the principles, policies and organizational pracitces of Lithuanian radio and television communication in the US? In what ways did these communication forms effect the community’s processes of identity-building culturally, socially and politically? How did the content of radio and television programs possibly reveal acute problems of Lithuanian diaspora communities and what solutions to these problems did they offer? What policies did the US-government follow for the production of media representing ethnic minorities?

Fanny Gutsche
Im Dialog mit der Stimme der Schweiz. Die Konstruktion einer transnationalen „Swissness“ in Interaktionen zwischen dem Schweizer Auslandsradio und seiner Hörerschaft 1935-1961
(Universität Basel)
In dialogue with the Voice of Switzerland. The construction of a transnational ‘Swissness’ in interactions between the Swiss international radio and its listeners 1935-1961 68

In my dissertation project in the field of Cultural Studies I follow the imaginations and images of „Switzerland“ and „Swiss“ national identity that occur in the interactions between producers and recipients of the Swiss Shortwave Service from the 1930s to 1960s. The interactions took place in the form of exchanged letters but also in the radio producer’s engagement with its audience through their own audience research. Core question of the qualitative study is how – in the case of the Swiss Shortwave Service in the mid-20th century – the construction of national identities and the perception and usage of international radio was intertwined. The empirical basis of the study contains listener’s mail, audience research documents, press articles, and further historical documents, which can be found in the archives of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation in Berne.

Rezensionen / Book reviews

Anke Hagedorn
Die Deutsche Welle und die Politik. Deutscher Auslandsrundfunk 1953-2013.
(Carola Richter) 70

Jan N. Lorenzen
Zeitgeschichte im Fernsehen. Theorie und Praxis historischer Dokumentationen.
(Christian Hißnauer) 71

Franziska Kuschel
Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser. Die DDR und die Westmedien.
(Christoph Lorke) 72

Thomas Birkner (Hrsg.)
Medienkanzler. Politische Kommunikation in der Kanzlerdemokratie.
(Wolfgang R. Langenbucher) 74

John David Seidler
Die Verschwörung der Massenmedien. Eine Kulturgeschichte vom Buchhändler-Komplott bis
zur Lügenpresse.
(Maria Löblich) 75

Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Heftes U4