Heft 01/02 – 2014, 40. Jahrgang

‚Verwobene‘ Mediengeschichten
Interview mit Hans-Ulrich Wagner über ein neues Forschungsprojekt
’Entangled‘ Media Histories
Hans-Ulrich Wagner on a new research project 3

Edgar Lersch „Journal 1870/71“
Selbstreflexives Fernsehen avant la lettre?
„Journal 1870/71“
Self-reflexive TV avant la lettre? 7

On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Franco-Prussian War and the proclamation fo the Wilhelmine Empire the ARD’s Channel 1 broadcast the television series “Journal 1870/71” frm July of 1970 to May of 1971. The series, produced by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk (SDR) is remarkable for its format, which departed significantly from the mainstream of the historical programming at the time. With the idea of portraying the events of 1870-71 in the light of their mediated communication, dramatizing the events as if television had existed during the time in question and employing well-known faces from TV, the SDR took a chance on an innovative and viewer-friendly intervention in historical television. The contemporary reception, to the extent these are captured in press critiques, understood this mostly as an apparent ‘gag’, of which they either did or did not approve.

Tilo Prase (†) / Judith Kretzschmar
„PRISMA-Reportagen“ im Fernsehen der DDR
Die publizistische Brechung sozialistischer Gesellschaft
”PRISMA-Reportagen“ on GDR television
Journalistic refractions of socialist society 25

The text offers a detailed examination of one fo the most important domestic reportage series on GDR television in the 1970 and 1980s, the “Prisma”-reports. They combined both critical reflections and research, on topics such as lacking work ethic, bad leadership or problems in the education system, as well as films full of self-praise and apologetics. Social accomplishments and housing construction programmes were celebrated; a cycle on famous buildings of the GDR contributed very remarkably to this self-portrayal. More than eighty journalistic “Prisma” pieces were produced between 1970 and 1984. Besides actual reportage, they were above all genres such as investigations,individual portraits and documentary reports. These broadcasts are not only an important documents of contemporary history, they also shed light on the self-image of how the GDR society functioned.

Arkadi Miller
Audioquellen in der Geschichtswissenschaft
Der Fall des sowjetischen Radiosprechers Jurij Lewitan
Audio sources in historiography
The case of the Soviet radio announcer Yuri Levitan 38

Sound documents are an important source for historical research. In spite of the increasing attention paid to the dimension of sound over the course of the acoustic turn in historiography of recent years, historians still face many open questions with regard to audio sources. With this in mind, the present essay explores how sound documents can be used in research using the example fo the Soviet radio announcer Yuri Levitan and the announcements he read. Considering their mediality offers new insights for historiographical analysis. Sound recordings allow for a discussion of the style of speaking and the medial construction of a radio speaker and allow not only for statemtns about the content of informationconveyed, but also about the way in which it is conveyed. At the same time, the article also discusses the limits and pitfalls of audio documents, using the example of Levitan’s archived radio appearances.

Birgit Bernard „… damit er Ordnung schafft“
Ein Aperçu zur Personalpolitik des NS-Rundfunks
„…so he will create order“
An aperçu on the personnel policies of National Socialist broadcasting 53

This article on the activities of Wilhelm Hartseil (* 1892), the former regional radio officer [Gaufunkwart] of Pomerania and temporary producer for the Reichssender Hamburg, concerns his work as special commissioner to the Reichssender Cologne in connection to a corruption case. The Reichs-Rundfunkgesellschaft ordered Hartseil to Cologne in 1934 to clean up the organization from this affair in 1934. This micro-study on Hartseil’s activity sheds light on the personnel policies of the NS broadcasters and the concurrent de-professionalizationdue to lack of expertise and corruption, but also actors’ room to manoeuvre and the persistence of institutional cultures. The article shows that personnel policies and the interplay of actors in the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, the Reichs-Rundfunkgesellschft and the Reichssender Cologne were more multi-layered and dynamic that has been assumed up to now, and demonstrates how individual biographical study can focus, expand and partially revise our understanding of the NS broadcasting organization.

Michael Tracey / Christian Herzog
Thatcher, Thatcherism and British Broadcasting Policy 63

Margaret Thatcher personified a commitment to free market economics while also embodying a conservatism with its faith in authority, allegiance and tradition. The issue at stake in this article is how the Thatcherite philosophy wished to, and in fact did, affect the development of public service broadcasting (PSB). In the first instance we lay out the respective policy narrative of Thatcher governments, treating developments from the establishing of Channel 4 and the Hunt Report to, quintessentially, the Peacock Report, the Broadcasting Act 1990 and beyond. The following section presents a series of incidents, exemplifying the political tension between Thatcher, her governments and British broadcasters. Subsequently, the article provides for an interpretation of how PSB was, and is, the scene of the colossal ideological struggle over what should constitute the values and logics of late modernity, invoking an effort to get “the public” and “public institutions” to re-imagine themselves as consumers not citizens, as purveyors of marketable goods rather than public goods.

Studienkreis-Informationen

Jahrestagung des Studienkreises Rundfunk und Geschichte e.V. 2014 HEIMATGEFÜHLE. Lokale Medien in einer globalen Welt 77

Forum

Margarete Keilacker
Archive der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen für die Wissenschaft einheitlich zugänglich 78

Corinne Schweizer
Twitter-Feeds und Haushaltsabgabe: Der öffentliche Rundfunk im Um- und Aufbruch
Jahrestagung der SGKM 11. bis 12. April 2014 in Zürich 79

Björn Bergold und Andreas C. Matt „Besucher, Zuschauer, Surfer, Gamer“
Workshop zum Auftakt des Forschungsverbundes GAMe: Geschichtsaneignungen in der Mediengesellschaft 9. bis 11. April 2014 in Magdeburg 80

Leserbrief von Gidi Verheijen zum Beitrag von Ansgar Diller „Beschlagnahme von Rundfunkgeräten in den Niederlanden 1943“ in RuG 1-2/2013 82

Dissertationsvorhaben

Anne Burkhard
Zur Reflexion der Gewalt in Kolumbien: der innerkolumbianische Konflikt im Film.
Reflecting violence in Colombia: the intra-Colombian conflict on film. 84

Colombian cinema has, since its beginnings, dealt with events in national history remarkably often. Since the beginning of the ‘violencia’, the politically-motivated armed conflict of the 1940s and 1950s, this tendency has increased: the largely political violence that has raged in many parts of the country with varying intensity and changing ensemble of actors for over seventy years has been the central subject of most Colombian films between 1959 and 2013. This dissertation research explores how these films portray the continuing conflict in different conditions of national and cultural politics, and how these filmic reflections position themselves within the interdisciplinary discourse on the violence in Colombia.

Gloria Khamkar
The Asian Radio Broadcasting: an alternative media platform for Britain’s Asian Community 86

Britain is considered to be one of the European countries with the highest levels of sensitivity to multiculturalism and integration. The BBC has been publicly committed to serve its ethnic minority audiences through its radio and television output but that was not sufficient for the newly-arrived migrant communities. Thus, it became a necessity for these ethnic audience communities to start their own media platform. My research project explores the connection between this British multiculturalism and the radio broadcasting focusing on the Asian communities. I am examining the development of the Asian radio broadcasting in Britain since the 1960s, supporting the aspirations of the Asian migrant communities. I am exploring the need of the Asian radio broadcasting, by doing case studies of the Asian radio stations. I believe that this research will bring forth the importance and relevance of the Asian radio broadcasting catering to these migrant communities in Britain.

Kathryn McDonald
A cultural history of the radio interview 88

This PhD project documents the historic evolution of the UK radio interview, with an intention to capture key moments and shifts heard across different networks, time-frames and genres. Through the use of case study analysis, the project seeks to understand how the interview has changed and developed from the 1940’s to the current day, with an intention to consider its use as a speech device, as a social relationship and as a communicative genre. Academics have had limited access to these unseen private spaces of broadcasting, so the aim is to harmonise practice and theoretical approaches, in an effort to recognise the conditions and the culture of interview production, rather than relying on the analysis of single texts.

Bettina Wodianka
Hör–Spiel­–Raum
Intermedial Spaces in Contemporary Radio Plays 90

In defiance of the latest radio reforms and reduction of information, there is still a niche for the radiophone art which has developed through searching for an appropriate way to present content in a purely acoustic medium: the radio play and the feature. Over the last decades, there have been a noticeable number of experimental forms in the fields of intermediality, out of purely acoustically transmitted spheres of broadcasting through cooperations in audiovisual connections. This means that these auditory works cross the border to performance and visual art suggesting performative practices and formats. Those productions oftentimes include the transposition of other media (like literature, theater or film) in order to augment the auditory presentation with visual effects, which then appear as non-native aesthetics currents within the radio medium. This breach, which can be seen as a complex transformation process, is influenced by the aesthetic reception of the auditory art and medium as well as the media culture, and the interplay of visibility and invisibility is one of its essential elements.

Rezensionen

Markus Behmer/Birgit Bernard/Bettina Hasselbring (Hrsg.)
Das Gedächtnis des Rundfunks. Die Archive der öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender und ihre Bedeutung für die Forschung (Clemens Zimmermann) 92

Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv (DRA) (Hrsg.) Friedrich Wolf – Ein Rundfunkpionier: „S.O.S. … rao rao … Foyn – ‚Krassin‘ rettet ‚Italia‘“ und andere ausgewählte Tondokumente (Friedrich P. Kahlenberg) 93

Klaus Stanjek (Hrsg.) Die Babelsberger Schule des Dokumentarfilms (Judith Kretzschmar) 94

Klaus-Dieter Felsmann (Hrsg.) Klang der Zeiten. Musik im DEFA-Spielfilm – Eine Annäherung. (Sebastian Stoppe) 95

Sigrun Lehnert
Wochenschau und Tagesschau in den 1950er Jahren. (Claudia Dittmar) 97

Hilgert, Nora
Unterhaltung, aber sicher! Populäre Repräsentation von Recht und Ordnung in den Fernsehkrimis „Stahlnetz“ und „Blaulicht“, 1958/59-1968 (Christoph Lorke) 98

Gerd Ruge
Unterwegs. Politische Erinnerungen. (Margarete Keilacker) 99

Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Heftes U4