Establishment according to Art. 36 Unification Agreement

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From October 3, 1990, the day of German reunification , to December 31, 1991, the facility provided the area of ​​the former GDR with radio and television in accordance with Article 36 of the Unification Treaty in accordance with the general principles of public broadcasting . It replaced the previous state broadcaster of the GDR and was the predecessor of the state broadcasting corporations in the five new states and East Berlin .

History of origin

In contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, where after 1945 the state broadcaster of the time of National Socialism was replaced by a public broadcasting organization with state broadcasting corporations, which was decentralized by the federal states, the state broadcaster of the " Third Reich " lived in the GDR as the state broadcaster of the GDR under the leadership of Organizationally, the Central Committee of the SED continues. The State Committee for Radio (radio) and the State Committee for Television were responsible for the program, the studio technology of the Deutsche Post for the production and technical processing.

In the accession negotiations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR, the political will was that the organizational model of broadcasting in the GDR should be ended and that the West German model should become the basis for new state broadcasters in the East German federal states. Since at the same time the politically burdened and implausible staff of the state broadcaster should not simply continue in the new state broadcasters and the apparatus of the GDR radio and television was much too bloated for a modern broadcasting company, the old organization had to be terminated, there was no transfer of operations and there will be no transfer of employment contracts to the new state broadcasters. At the same time, however, the new federal states , which were only founded on July 22, 1990 by GDR law and only elected their state parliaments on October 14, 1990, needed time to pass the laws for the new state broadcasters and then to build them up.

Until then, the screen shouldn't be black and the radio shouldn't stay silent. The negotiating partners regulated this interim period in Chapter VIII "Culture, Education and Science, Sport" of the Unification Treaty, namely in Article 36 with the heading "Broadcasting". In it they have provided their own "facility" for the continued operation of radio and television in the accession area for 15 months. Paragraph 1 of the article states:

"The broadcasting of the GDR and the German television broadcaster will be continued as a joint state-independent, legally competent body by the states named in Article 1, Paragraph 1 and the state of Berlin for the part in which the Basic Law has not previously applied until December 31, 1991 at the latest, insofar as they perform tasks for which the states are responsible. The institution has the task of providing the population in the area named in Article 3 with radio and television in accordance with the general principles of public service broadcasting ... "

The Unification Treaty was negotiated in the summer of 1990 and signed on August 31, the Volkskammer and Bundestag approved it on September 20, the Federal Council on September 21, and it entered into force on September 29, 1990, four days before Unification Day.

Because international broadcasting was not part of the federal state's task (as in the Federal Republic of Germany, Deutsche Welle was financed by the federal government, not from the license fee), the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Hans Neusel , issued an organizational decree on September 26, 1990, according to Radio Berlin International when the GDR's international broadcaster had to cease operations on October 2 at midnight.

organization

Deutscher Fernsehfunk and Funkhaus Berlin (as the former television and radio stations of the GDR called themselves since 1990) continued to work as they were under the direction of their (acting) general managers Michael Albrecht and Christoph Singelnstein . What was new was the involvement in the "facility" with the organs provided for in paragraph 2 of Article 36, "The Broadcasting Commissioner" and "The Broadcasting Advisory Board".

“... The broadcasting officer manages the facility and represents it in and out of court. He is responsible for fulfilling the mandate of the institution within the framework of the funds available and must immediately draw up a budget for 1991 that is balanced in terms of income and expenditure. "

The broadcasting commissioner should be elected by the People's Chamber on the proposal of the Prime Minister of the GDR Lothar de Maizière or, if that did not happen, by the state spokesmen of the five new federal states and the mayor of (East) Berlin. In the hot last months of the GDR, the People's Chamber had other things to do to be selected as a radio officer so appointed Federal Minister Guenther Krause on October 15, a day after the state elections in eastern Germany, the incumbent state representatives and the Berlin OB Tino Schwierzina to Election of a radio commissioner in the branch office of the Federal Chancellery in Klosterstrasse in Berlin and proposed Rudolf Mühlfenzl , the candidate of the Federal Chancellor, for election. He was elected and appointed on October 23 by the Federal Minister of the Interior, who also paid him and his eight advisors. Only two of the eight consultants came from the field of public broadcasting, the others from the field of commercial radio and television or from state chancelleries:

  • Ronald Frohne (Legal and Human Resources; Deputy)
  • Roland Tichy (media policy, Stasi review, office manager; deputy)
  • Volkram Gebel (program monitoring)
  • Donald McLaughlin (Economics and Wealth)
  • Rolf Markner (budget, finances and fees)
  • Bernd Rieger (budget, finances and fees)
  • Helmut Haunreiter (technology)
  • Matthias Gehler (press officer)

The second organ was the Broadcasting Advisory Board, its tasks are described in Paragraph 4, Article 36:

“The Broadcasting Advisory Board has the right to advise on all program issues and a right to participate in key personnel, economic and budgetary issues. The Broadcasting Advisory Board can recall the Broadcasting Commissioner with a majority of two thirds of its members. It can elect a new broadcasting commissioner with a two-thirds majority of its members. "

Although Rudolf Mühlfenzl was controversial as the radio commissioner, it was never voted out. This was also due to the composition of the radio advisory board. Three of the 18 members were named by the state parliaments and the city ​​council of (East) Berlin , they should be personalities of public life as representatives of socially relevant groups. That was based on the composition of the broadcasting councils as the supervisory bodies of the state broadcasting corporations of the Federal Republic of Germany. In reality, however, the radio advisory board was more a reflection of the party political conditions in the state parliaments than one of the social groups. A writer was its chairman, Uwe Grüning , but he was also CDU-MdL in Saxony, and Günter Gaus , veteran left-wing journalist from the West, sat on the advisory board for Brandenburg, or rather the SPD. The advisory board advised Broadcasting Commissioner Mühlfenzl for almost a year from the constituent meeting on December 14, 1990 to the last on December 18, 1991.

development

The radio commissioner had to maintain radio and television coverage until December 31, 1991, and yet wanted to cut more than half of the staff. 3000 of the originally 13,000 employees of radio and television in the GDR had left by October 1990 through outsourcing of non-media-relevant areas such as polyclinics , retail stores and precision engineering workshops as well as individual dismissals of officers in the special deployment of the Stasi or television production staff. Mühlfenzl took over around 10,000 employees. By June 30, 1991 he only wanted 6300 employees, and by September 30th only 3150 employees. As of December 31, 1991, around 5,000 people were still working on radio and television in the GDR and were released at midnight that day. In the meantime, on December 15, 1990, Mühlfenzl had the ARD program switched to the first channel of DFF 1 and at the same time handed over the previously unused third channel to ZDF . The second GDR television program became the DFF country chain , new state studios were set up in the new federal states, which provided the ARD program with actuality and other productions.

On February 14, 1991, the broadcasting commissioner Rudolf Mühlfenzl, with the consent of the personnel structure committee of the broadcasting advisory council and the staff council of the institution, issued his service instruction No. 8: “Review according to the rule of law”. All employees received a questionnaire in the eighth calendar week of the year and should hand it in to their respective artistic directors or country directors by February 28, 1991. Among other things, questions were asked about SED membership, party functions, management activity, Stasi activity. Incorrect information should lead to termination without notice. The 9,600 questionnaires submitted were evaluated by two employees from the former GDR, 1,700 of which were marked for further evaluation. Two church representatives then evaluated 1,677 questionnaires, recruited 162 employees because of missing information and finally made the following findings:

  • 202 employees (93 at the FS) had relationships with the Stasi
  • 197 employees (106 at FS) should no longer be employed
  • 627 employees (375 at FS) should no longer be employed in management positions
  • 45 employees left for various reasons during the campaign

The state programs introduced in April 1990 in the run-up to the founding of the states were continued and strengthened on the radio. In the last part of his tenure, Mühlfenzl tried to secure as many parts of the GDR radio and television as possible. He brought the radio program DS-Kultur into the newly emerging national radio station Deutschlandradio , the radio symphony orchestra and radio choir merged into the newly formed ROC GmbH , the Berlin radio , the production of the television program elf99 and the television ballet were privatized. The dissolution and liquidation of the German TV broadcasting company and the Funkhaus Berlin, but also the maintenance of the program inventory, were postponed to the period after December 31, 1991. Rudolf Mühlfenzl founded the NFL-GmbH for the processing and dissolution of all contracts and material resources, the federal states the NLG-GmbH for the utilization of the land and the processing of all labor law claims and the heads of the state and senate chancelleries of the new federal states and Berlin accepted the offer the ARD announced that the German Broadcasting Archive would secure the archives and program stocks of radio and television in the GDR in trust for the new state broadcasters.

Finances

The establishment never had any financial problems. Because on September 14, 1990, the GDR media minister Gottfried Müller had published a law passed shortly beforehand by the People's Chamber, in which from October 1, 1990 the license fee from originally 9 marks in the GDR to the 19 DM per month customary in the West at the time was increased. Despite the discontinuation of the previous state subsidy, which in GDR times brought about as much money into the cash register as the license fee, and a considerable backlog of modernization, the facility was in the money. In 1991 it had a budget of around one billion DM. With the dismantling of the programs and the fact that new investments were made exclusively in the new state broadcasters, however, they needed less money than forecast. The facility was able to subsidize the newly emerging state broadcasters, assume all processing costs including all severance payments to the dismissed employees, and finally pay out DM 500 million to the new state broadcasters and federal states.

literature

  • Roland Tichy, Sylvia Diel (Ed.): Germany united broadcasting country? Fischer-Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-88927-260-6 .
  • Joachim-Felix Leonhard: The radio of the GDR becomes history and cultural heritage. In: Dietrich Schwarzkopf: Broadcasting Policy in Germany. Volume 2. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-30714-5 .
  • Claus Werner (Hrsg.): Medien-Wende, Wende-Medien, Documentation of the change in GDR journalism October 1989 to October 1990. Vistas-Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-89158-063-0 .
  • Heide Riedel: The new times are moving with us. 40 years of GDR media. Vistas-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-89158-095-9 .
  • Edith Spielhagen (ed.): So we could believe we were fighting. Experience with GDR media. Vistas-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89158-087-8 .
  • Günther von Lojewski , Axel Zerdick (ed.): Rundfunkwende. The upheaval in the German broadcasting system after 1989 from the perspective of the actors. MABB series of publications, Vistas-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89158-292-7 .
  • Rainer Stein: From television and radio in the GDR to ARD, the development and reorganization of broadcasting in the new federal states. Marburg 2000, ISBN 3-8288-8089-4 .
  • Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem: Broadcasting restructuring in East Germany: Opinion on proposals about the structure of public broadcasting in the new federal states. Hans Bredow Institute: Research Reports and Materials Vol. 13, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-87296-075-X .
  • Ernst Dohlus : No clear-cut - The dissolution of the state broadcaster of the GDR. In: epd-medien 45/2014, community work of the Evangel. Publizistik (GEP) gGmbH, Frankfurt, pp. 3–11.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ epd-medien 45/2014 "No clear-cut - the dissolution of the state broadcaster of the GDR, p. 4.
  2. ↑ Land introduction law of the GDR of July 22, 1990
  3. ↑ Art 36 para. 1 sentences 1 and 2 EV
  4. ↑ Art. 36, Paragraph 3, Clauses 3 and 4 EV
  5. ↑ Art. 36 para. 4 sentences 3 to 5 EV
  6. ^ Roland Tichy, Silvia Diehl: Deutschland einig Rundfunkland. P. 160.
  7. ↑ a b In the gray area - How the state radio of the GDR was dissolved: people, material and programming assets. In: Germany Archives September 22, 2014.
  8. ↑ a b In the gray area - How the state broadcaster of the GDR was dissolved: What happened to the money and the land? In: Germany Archives October 27, 2014