TV station Paul Nipkow
The television station "Paul Nipkow" (also: Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk ) in Berlin-Witzleben was the world's first regular television station . The transmitter existed from 1934 to 1944 and was named after Paul Nipkow , the inventor of the Nipkow disk . From 1935 on, the station produced and broadcast a regular television program .
history
In 1929, the radio station Witzleben began to transmit the first television images to the Post's television laboratory in Berlin for test purposes.
The first television broadcast in Germany was presented to the public on April 18, 1934 in the Berlin Kroll Opera House. The start of a regular program service followed on March 22, 1935. Reich broadcasting manager Eugen Hadamovsky opened the station with the words: “... at this hour the radio is called to fulfill the greatest and most sacred mission: now the image of the Führer inextricably in all to plant German hearts… ”The station was given the name“ TV station Paul Nipkow ”during a ceremony for Paul Nipkow's 75th birthday on May 29, 1935. It achieved the highest level of publicity in August 1936 when during the Summer Olympics with a Large numbers of television cameras were reported almost live from the Berlin sporting events. The image was transferred using the interleave method. Around 160,000 spectators followed the Olympic Games on their screens. During the Olympic Games, the television rooms also offered a video telephone service in addition to the television program, in which long-distance calls could be made from telephone booths with screen view of the conversation partner; this service was limited to the cable-connected Berlin – Leipzig route.
The first manhunt on television in criminal history took place on the television station Paul Nipkow on November 7, 1938, carried out by the later Nazi criminal Theo Saevecke .
On August 24, 1939, seven days before the start of the Second World War , the transmitter was shut down by order of the Wehrmacht High Command . The frequencies used were used for a beacon method by the Air Force. Herbert Engler , who had been director of the station since 1939, advocated the use of the media, which was still insignificant from a journalistic point of view, to support the troops. The classification of television operations as "important to the war effort" prevented it from ending prematurely. Transmission was resumed after the transmitter had been converted to a replacement frequency. Although the transmission systems were destroyed by bombs on November 23, 1943, television broadcasting via broadband cable could be maintained until October 19, 1944. He was finally hired when the personnel were no longer sufficient due to the war effort. On May 2, 1945, the Berlin radio station was occupied by members of the Red Army .
Organization and staff
Responsibility for the young medium of television was not so clearly defined in National Socialist Germany that the authorities involved could have pursued a straightforward policy. Reichspostminister Wilhelm Ohnesorge , whose department had done valuable work in the development of television technology for years, did not want to take responsibility for the medium as easily as it had done in 1933 with the radio competence for "Großdeutscher Rundfunk". Together with Reich Aviation Minister Hermann Göring , he was able to enforce the "Decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor on responsibility in the field of television" of July 12, 1935 from Hitler. This decree stipulated that the competencies for television technology remained with the Post, but that the Aviation Ministry should decide on questions of air traffic control and national air protection. The influence of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry should be limited to the program content. The instruction path for the program content led from the Ministry of Propaganda to the Reichsendeleiter and program director of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft , Eugen Hadamovsky, to whom the television broadcaster Paul Nipkow was also formally subordinate, to the director or director of the broadcaster.
Carl Boese became the first director of the television station "Paul Nipkow" . Hans-Jürgen Nierentz followed on April 22, 1937 in the rank of artistic director , who in 1939 was replaced by Herbert Engler. From June 1, 1937 to April 30, 1939, Leopold Hainisch was senior director. In 1936 the transmitter had 14 employees and an annual budget of 300,000 Reichsmarks . For 1940, the German Stage Yearbook, under the name Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk, already notes over 70 positions filled by name in the structural units: production boss , program management , casting office , television play group , dramaturgy , senior management with the sub-areas of set designers , technical directors and technical members , plus production I. "Current events" , Production II "Art and Entertainment" , Production III "Film and Image" with the sub-areas of scene technology and economy . The well-known managers and employees included, for example: Hannes Küpper (acting chief dramaturge and 1st game director), Arnolt Bronnen (dramaturge and game director), Hanns Farenburg (acting senior director), Alfred Braun (acting production manager of Production I - Current Affairs ) or Cläre Schimmel (Assistant clerk in the occupation office ).
Studios and broadcasting systems
The station was initially located in the broadcasting house opposite the Berlin radio tower in Berlin-Charlottenburg . The studio was located in the nearby long-distance cable house of the Reichspost Central Office in Rognitzstrasse 8/9, where a memorial plaque is now attached. From 1937 onwards , Walter Bruch set up an electronic recording studio in the Deutschlandhaus, which was also almost next door, at what was then Adolf-Hitler-Platz 7-9 (today Theodor-Heuss-Platz ) . The studio moved there on December 13, 1937. The move was completed with the shutdown of the 180-line program operation and the activation of the 441-line program operation on November 1, 1938. The facility included a main and an auxiliary studio; In 1941 a smaller third studio was added. The transmitter was located on the Berlin radio tower and from 1938 in the tower of the Amerikahaus adjacent to the Deutschlandhaus . On June 17, 1935, a 10 kW mobile television transmitter was used for the first time. The last broadcasts were produced in 1944 in the domed hall of the German Sports Forum .
audience
Since the program of the television station "Paul Nipkow" was transmitted via FM , it could only be received in the Berlin area. The range of the transmitter was 60 to 80 kilometers. Television sets had been on the market since 1930, but were still made by hand and only in small numbers. The devices, which were already equipped with a Braun tube , cost between 2500 and 3600 Reichsmarks. Private devices were almost only available in the apartments of high-ranking NSDAP officials and high-ranking radio managers. In addition to the above-mentioned television managers, a private device owned e.g. B. Joseph Goebbels , Eugen Hadamovsky , State Secretary Walther Funk , the chief engineer of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, Ernst Augustin, Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach and Reich Aviation Minister Hermann Göring .
In order to make the productions of the television station accessible to a larger audience, the Reichspost set up public television rooms in its post offices , in which 20 to 40 people gathered around two television sets, whose screens were initially only 18 by 22 centimeters and very poorly resolved low-contrast images offered. The first television room was set up in the Reichspostmuseum on April 9, 1935 , and others followed. In autumn, a large-screen TV station opened for 294 viewers, in which the image area was enlarged to three by four meters with the help of an inter-film projection device. A second large picture site with 120 seats was opened in 1936. At the height of the station's activity in August 1936, there were 27 television rooms in Berlin. If you count the “home receivers” in private households, the number of televisions in all of Berlin was around 75. By the beginning of the Second World War, this number rose to around 500. After the beginning of the war, the television rooms were temporarily closed and the receivers were used in troop support and in hospitals. The television rooms soon resumed their operations, however, and from 1941 to 1943 the Berlin program could even be received in the newly opened Hamburg television rooms via broadband cable . B. at Dammtor, in Schlueterstrasse and in the post office in Altona. In Potsdam and Leipzig there were individual television rooms since May 13, 1935. In 1941, a third large-screen space with 200 seats was set up in Berlin's Bechstein Hall. Since admission was free and because they were heated, many people would have liked to visit the TV rooms during the war.
program
From the beginning of 1936, daily television programs intended for the public were broadcast in Germany. The two-hour program consisted of about half of the live broadcasts and half of the sound films. According to internal planning, the opening program on January 15, 1936 ran as follows:
| serial no. | content | Image source | Duration | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Else Elster techn. announcement | cell | 1 minute | |
| 2 | Evil opening words | cell | 2-3 minutes | Only for January 15, 1936 |
| 3 | Else Elster announcement for Schaeffers | cell | 1 minute | |
| 4th | Willi Schaeffer's announcement of the film | cell | 1 minute | Attention! At the closing words, Schaeffers switched to film generator. |
| 5 | Film review | Filmmaker | 26 minutes | Attention! At the end switch to cell! |
| 5a | While the film is running, the microphone is open for interposing sentences of the speaker Bublitz | |||
| 6th | Willi Schaeffer says de Vogt at | cell | 3-5 minutes | (possibly longer) |
| 7th | Carl de Vogt sings to the lute | cell | 5 minutes | |
| 8th | Willi Schaeffers announces the film | cell | 3-5 minutes | Attention! Switch to film generator! |
| 9 | Film cross sections | Filmmaker | 11 minutes | Attention! Switch to cell! |
| 10 | Willi Schaeffers announces Elster | cell | 3-5 minutes | Companion on the grand piano: Albes. |
| 11 | Else Elster Chanson | cell | 5 minutes | On the piano: Albes. |
| 12 | Willi Schaeffers announces de Vogt | cell | 3-5 minutes | |
| 13 | Carl de Vogt sings to the lute | cell | 3 minutes | |
| 14th | Else Elster final rejection | cell | 2 minutes |
In the course of 1936 the following fixed program for the period from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. emerged:
- Current picture report
- Artists introduce themselves
- Excerpts from sound films
- Cultural films
It was initially broadcast three days a week, from May 1935 daily, from 8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. During the Summer Olympics in August 1936, the daily broadcast time was temporarily extended to eight hours. In August 1937, television reports from the Nuremberg Party Rally of the NSDAP were also transmitted to Berlin via broadband cable . Outside the actual broadcasting time, test programs and music were shown during the day.
The program consisted of a mixture of live moderation from the studio, television games and recorded film clips, short films and newsreels . There was also a regular news program (“Bild des Tages”), a “Current Photo Report”, a discussion program (“Discussion Group”), a program “Artists introduce themselves”, animal programs and a popular variety show hosted by Ilse Werner the title "We send happiness - we donate joy", which has been broadcast live every Friday since March 1941 from the domed hall of the sports forum of the German University for Physical Education . In the program “The Criminal Police Warns!” The population was asked to help with the hunt for criminals. After the start of the war, a troop support program “Soldiers play for soldiers” was added. Programs such as “Gesunde Frau - Gesundes Volk” and the kitchen program “Die Hausfrau im Krieg” were specially addressed to the female audience.
TV week from January 3rd to 8th 1938:
|
Monday 20.00 A nice old man (listening scene) |
Wednesday 8:00
p.m. Ufa sound week 8:18 p.m. |
Friday 20.00 In front of the bus stop (short interview) |
The first announcer on German television was Ursula Patzschke-Beutel . She answered with the words: “Attention, attention! TV station Paul Nipkow. We greet all national comrades in the television rooms of Greater Berlin with the German greeting: Heil Hitler! " , And said goodbye with: " This is the end of the television program of the Reichssendeleitung its current picture program. Were you satisfied? If so, please tell everyone you know. If you didn't like it, please tell us. Write to the television company of the Reichssendeleitung, Berlin, Haus des Rundfunks. To round off the evening: marching music. Goodbye on the next show. Heil Hitler! ” The actress Else Elster was also used as the announcer. For dramatic genres, recitations and conferences, the station employed a group of permanent actors in the so-called television game crowd - including artists such as Oskar Ballhaus , Helga Marold , Georg Helge , Horst Preusker , Ivo Veit and others. a.
Since television recording technology did not yet offer the possibility of recording - most of the time it was broadcast live - nothing has survived from most of the productions.
The situation was different with the programs that were broadcast using the film-image method, such as some contributions during the 1936 Olympic Games. Since there were not enough electronic cameras available, film cameras mounted on a Reichspost wagon were used for filming were. The exposed film ran straight from the camera into the interior of the car, was developed there in a continuous process, and immediately afterwards electronically scanned and sent. Programs that were created in this way have been partially preserved.
In the last months of the broadcasting operations, instead of original productions that required a lot of staff, more and more "canned food" ran over the station, as the station's employees were increasingly being called off for military service. The original production that has been broadcast longest was the live show "We send joy - we donate joy", which was only discontinued on June 21, 1944. In order to avoid being deployed at the front, the television station's artistic ensemble finally formed a touring stage that presented its well-known television program in hospitals. Other employees were deployed to support the troops as projectionists.
technology
The television technology, on the development of which the industry worked together with the Reichspostforschungsanstalt , was still too immature at the time of the hasty opening of broadcasting operations to be able to offer the audience well-resolved clear images. Initially, 180 lines per picture and 25 pictures per second were transmitted, which flickered strongly and were so poor in contrast that the pictures had to be continuously explained by a radio announcer . Movies could be broadcast, but they had to be carefully selected because many image details were difficult to see when the television signal was played back. The sound was transmitted in parallel from the start.
The early television cameras were extremely inflexible. In order for the scanning device equipped with a Nipkow disk to be able to break down a person's image at all, this person had to be in a so-called “dark cell”, into which no daylight could enter. Since the recording device was very insensitive to light, the presenter also had to wear make-up and be dressed with high contrast so that anything could be seen in the picture later. The dark cell had a footprint of 2.25 square meters, so that only half-length pictures could be taken. In the summer of 1936 the cell was enlarged so that standing people could also be accommodated; later up to six people could be in the picture at the same time.
The picture flicker was reduced in 1935 with the introduction of an interlaced process in which each picture was scanned in two steps: first the even lines, then the odd lines. There were 50 fields per second (= 25 full images ). transmitted and thus minimized line flicker.
Outdoor shots weren't even possible at first. In daylight conditions, the “ interim filming process ” introduced at the beginning of 1935 provided a remedy, in which the images were initially recorded by a specially converted Arriflex film camera mounted on a converted furniture van . The exposed film was then no longer fed back into the film cassette, but instead fed through a light-tight channel, which also replaced the stand, into the specially equipped “intermediate film carriage”. The film was continuously developed and fixed there . The poorly dried film was passed through a projector without further interruption and thrown onto a rear projection screen from which a television camera scanned the image again. The film recordings had thus become an electronic image signal; In this way, the recordings could be sent with a delay of just under two minutes after they were taken and could also be "mixed" with the images from another e-camera.
From 1936 to around 1940, the Nipkow disk was gradually replaced by electronic image splitters. The basic idea behind fully electronic television processes had already been known in the USA ( Farnsworth ) since 1930 , but the construction of a functional recording device took a longer development time. A fully electronic Ikonoskop television camera, further developed from a "Farnsworth" , which enabled direct transmissions in daylight, was first used in Germany during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The device offered a resolution of 180 lines. A modified Leitz projection objective, designed for episcopes , with a focal length of 1600 mm and a front lens diameter of 40 cm was used. The device was eight feet long and weighed about 150 kg. This so-called "Olympic cannon" was designed by Emil Mechau at Telefunken GmbH and operated by the young Telefunken technician Walter Bruch during the Olympic Games . Bruch later developed the PAL color television system introduced in Germany in 1967 .
On July 15, 1937, the Reich Minister of the Post set a new television standard of 441 lines. An even higher number of lines would not have been possible with the transmission technology of the time. Today in Germany broadcasts are 625 lines (576 of which are visible), high definition television has 720 or 1080 lines.
Political importance
The hasty opening of the first German television station at a time when the technology was still suffering from initial difficulties must be understood primarily as a propaganda measure by the National Socialist state, which at home and abroad likes to rely on its supposed modernity and the actual and merely alleged achievements of its Pointed out inventors and engineers as supposedly based on Nazism. Broadcasting began in response to news that regular television programming was being prepared in Great Britain as well . There Baird Television Ltd. in cooperation with the BBC broadcast their first television program on September 30, 1929. The BBC did not start broadcasting regularly ( BBC Television Service ) until seven months later than its German competition, but from the beginning it used the improved technology that was only available in Germany in 1937.
Apart from the elaborate advertising, with which the new medium should be brought to the attention of the German and international public, the National Socialist regime made little effort to develop television as a propaganda tool. Since radio and film were proven alternatives, there were hardly any arguments in favor of expanding television. In terms of technical standards, too, television could not compete with the much more mature film medium in the 1940s.
The Second World War drew a preliminary line under the development of television as a mass medium. Previously, the television research institute of the Reichspost, together with five German private companies, the Fernseh AG ( Bosch / Blaupunkt ), Radio AGDS Loewe , C. Lorenz AG , TeKaDe and Telefunken GmbH, had received the order to create a standard television receiver ("Volksfernseher") to develop. This was presented to the public a year later at the 16th Great German Radio and Television Exhibition, which opened on July 18, 1939 . The "standard television receiver E1" was a rather small table-top device with a screen size of 19.5 × 22.5 cm, of which 10,000 were to be produced initially. The target sales price was 650 Reichsmarks (for comparison: the cheapest radio, the subsidized German small receiver , cost 35 Reichsmarks). However, the industrial capacities soon lacked for mass production of this non-war-essential article. Until the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, only 50 devices were actually manufactured and sold at a unit price of 675 Reichsmarks.
After the beginning of the war, the technical development of television was only promoted in the research facilities of the Luftwaffe, which later used the young technology to direct Henschel Hs 293 D flying bombs to their target. On July 15, 1935, an engineer at the research institute of the Deutsche Reichspost had already registered a patent for the use of television technology to steer unmanned vehicles or torpedoes. From 1940 on, the Luftwaffe and the Research Institute of the Reichspost worked together on the practical development of a television steering device for bombs, which in the end worked very unreliably, but the basic idea corresponded to what was also being developed at the same time in American military laboratories.
The Rhein-Main area was to be supplied with the productions of the television station "Paul Nipkow" via the 53 meter high telecommunications tower Großer Feldberg , built in 1937 . The structure later served as a radar tower for military purposes only. Other television broadcasting systems that were built at the time but were no longer in operation were located on the Brocken and the Großer Inselsberg .
In the military laboratories, the technology made further advances, which, however, no longer benefited the mass medium of television before the end of the war. This applies, for example, to the first attempts with high-resolution television images (729 and 1029 lines), which were only used for military purposes in aerial reconnaissance.
During the German occupation of France , the Wehrmacht produced television programs in an improvised studio in Paris to support the German troops ("Lazarettfernsehen"), which were then broadcast from the Eiffel Tower (see Paris TV station ).
literature
- August Gehrts: 5 years television service of the German Reichspost. In: European Telephony Service. H. 55, 1940, pp. 145-146.
- Gerhart Göbel: Television in Germany up to 1945. In: Archive for post and telecommunications. Vol. 5, 1953, pp. 259-340.
- Erwin Reiss: We send happiness. Television under fascism . Elefanten Press, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-88520-020-1 .
- Klaus Winker: TV under the swastika. Organization - program - staff . Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-412-03594-7 .
- Heiko Zeutschner: The brown screen. Television under National Socialism . Rotbuch, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-88022-818-3 .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ March 22, 1935: First television program in the world. Deutsche Welle , accessed on July 27, 2015 .
- ↑ Police history, From the criminal album to the television search. on: tagesspiegel.de , March 31, 2011.
- ↑ Files RPM Department III, 52/130 November 2, 1939.
- ↑ a b German Stage Yearbook. 51st year, 1940, p. 658.
- ^ A b exhibition “50 Years of German Broadcasting” (1973) . In: Deutsches Rundfunk-Museum (Ed.): 1st supplementary sheets January 1982 . 1982, p. A15 .
- ↑ Erwin Reiss: "We send happiness". Television under fascism - the least known chapter of German media history . Elefanten-Press-Verlag, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-88520-020-1 , p. 97 f .
- ↑ Information according to the television museum