People's Anger Group

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Areas with no western television reception

The Volkszorn group was the pseudonymous sender of two threatening letters to the State Council of the GDR and the GDR television , demanding that Westrundfunk and Westfernsehen be made possible in the so-called “ Valley of the Unsuspecting ” ( Dresden district ).

prehistory

The German TV broadcasting with its transmitters DFF 1 and DFF 2 was not very popular among the population. The news program Current Camera is said to have had an audience rating of 1%.

Western television was not possible in the greater Dresden area , but also in other parts of the GDR (e.g. Bautzen , Stralsund ). This was mostly due to the geographic conditions on site or the lack of transmission power . The reception was mostly only possible with a high technical effort, antennas were sometimes over 20 m high in order to be able to receive western programs. In the early phase of the GDR, the youth organization Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) carried out the so-called “ Aktion Ochsenkopf ” in order to destroy the “illegal” antennas or at least to turn them so that reception was impossible. Some GDR citizens therefore installed their antennas every evening under cover of darkness in order to remain undisturbed.

While at the end of the 1980s the western media were being used throughout the GDR, “antenna communities” had formed that set up antenna systems financed by private individuals, and later also occasionally installed satellite dishes so that private programs could also be received, and terrestrially receivable western programs sometimes directly in the community systems were fed in by new development areas, the GDR regime observed developments in the Dresden district with suspicion.

People's Anger Group

On July 18, 1984, the District Administration for State Security in Dresden received the order from the Deputy Head of the Stasi in Berlin, Gerhard Neiber , to deal with Department XXII ("Counter Terrorism") with a threatening letter confiscated from Department M ( Postal Control ) July 1984 and addressed to the State Council of the GDR . The address and the sender of the letter were written with a font template and the text of the letter consisted of cut-out and glued together newspaper headlines and reports with the demand that radio and western television programs in the Dresden area be made possible within four months. Otherwise there would be an explosives attack on the Dresden television tower . The investigations of Department XXII fizzled out and the threatened demolition date passed.

On November 13, 1984, the television of the GDR received a threatening letter with the same font and the wording:

"Last warning. WE DEMANDED 3 WEST PROGRAMS FROM THE STATE COUNCIL IN JUNE. DEADLINE IS UP. WE ARE EXPANDING THE LIST OF OBJECTS TO INTERSHOP , LENINDENKMAL , HOTEL BELEVUE , POST OFFICES ETC. UNTIL 12/20/84. BLASTING IS EASY, BECAUSE TECHNOLOGY IS SENSITIVE, LIKE IT. VOLKSZORN GROUP. "

  • TV tower Dresden

  • Hotel Bellevue

  • Lenin monument on Wiener Platz

Investigations by the Stasi

The Stasi checked 1,800 people without success. The "Tower" file grew to ten volumes of 3000 pages each. The writers of the threatening letters were never identified. After three years, the unsuccessful investigations were stopped on September 25, 1987 and the bundle of files relating to the OV tower was archived.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steinmetz / Stiehler, Life without Westfernsehen , p. 83.
  2. ↑ Steinmetz / Stiehler, Life without Westfernsehen , p. 81.
  3. ↑ Steinmetz / Stiehler, Life without Westfernsehen , pp. 81–82.
  4. ↑ Steinmetz / Stiehler, Life without Westfernsehen , p. 82.
  5. ^ BStU - Notes - Western television for everyone. In: www.bstu.bund.de. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
  6. ↑ News.de editor: The valley of the clueless: People's anger, cables, ox heads. (No longer available online.) In: News.de. Archived from the original on June 16, 2016 ; accessed on June 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.news.de
  7. ^ The group "Volkszorn" - a story in which the television tower in Dresden also plays a role. In: Fernsehturm Dresden eV Accessed on June 16, 2016 .
  8. ^ University of Leipzig: University of Leipzig: News. In: www.zv.uni-leipzig.de. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Steinmetz / Stiehler, Life without Westfernsehen , pp. 82–83.