Hans Bredow

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Hans Bredow

Hans Bredow (full name: Hans Carl August Friedrich Bredow, born November 26, 1879 in Schlawe , Pomerania , † January 9, 1959 in Wiesbaden ) was a German high-frequency technician .

He was chairman of the administrative board of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG) and is considered one of the founders of German ship and international radio traffic, German radio and German television broadcasting. He coined the term broadcasting in 1919 and used it publicly for the first time two years later.

For a short time in 1945 he served as President of the Prussian Province of Nassau .

biography

Family, training and work at Telefunken

Bredow was born as the son of Carl Bredow and his wife Julie Fronhoefer in Western Pomerania and later attended the secondary school in Rendsburg . After his apprenticeship in electrical engineering, he studied at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and at the Friedrichs-Polytechnikum in Cöthen . In 1903 he became a project engineer for the field of high-voltage systems at AEG in Berlin and Riga .

On May 1, 1904, it was taken over by the subsidiary Telefunken , founded jointly by AEG and Siemens & Halske , which at that time was still called the Society for Wireless Telegraphy . In 1907 he was able to break the Marconi Company monopoly for wireless telegraphy in radio communications on German ships with the telephone system . On May 1, 1908, he became the technical director of the Telefunken company, which he led together with Count Georg von Arco .

Radio communications on ships and in the South Seas

In 1909 he founded Australasian Wireless Ltd. in Sydney . Just one year later, he was able to expand his positions, so that Marconi recognized the German telephony system in shipping as equal rights in an agreement. In 1911, Marconi ceded radio operations on German ships to the German Operating Company for Wireless Telegraphy (DEBEG) founded on January 14, 1911 . Bredow took over the management of DEBEG himself.

In New York City in 1911 he founded the Atlantic Communication Company , which organized transatlantic radio communications from the Sayville station to Nauen from 1913 in the area of ​​ship and overseas radio between Germany and the USA. At the international radio conference in London in 1912 he participated as a representative of the German radio companies. In the same year he coordinated the technical cooperation between cable and radio telegraphy. In the same year he built the German South Sea Society with the German-Dutch Telegraph Company . From 1912 to 1914, this company was able to connect wireless telegraphy to the colony of German New Guinea in the South Seas to the world cable network via the Jap - Nauru - Samoa - New Guinea connection .

Radio communications with South America and patent exchange

In 1913 he reached an agreement in New York City in which the establishment of a radio telegraphy service between Germany, North America and South America via the stations in Sayville, Nauen and Cartagena was decided. In the same year negotiations led to the fact that the German radio patents could be exchanged for the English ones. This agreement led to the establishment of two companies for radio operations, the Sociéte Anonyme Internationale de Télegraphie sans Fil in Brussels and the Amalgamated Wireless Australasian Ltd. in Sydney.

Radio communications with Africa and Java

After attempts made since 1911 to establish radio telegraphy connections between Germany and its colonies in Africa , the radio service from Nauen to Togo , German South West Africa and Cameroon was started in 1914 . During the First World War , Hans Bredow, Egbert von Lepel and Alexander Meißner carried out experiments with transmitters equipped with electron tubes.

In 1917, Bredow proposed to the Dutch government to set up a radio telegraphy connection to Java . This proposal received a positive decision and led to the construction of the Kootwijk station in the Netherlands in 1918 and the Bandoeng station on the island of Java. As early as 1917, Nauen was expanded into a major station for global radio traffic, as Bredow had proposed. The company Transradio-Gesellschaft , which Bredow managed, took over the operational service .

During the First World War he was promoted to officer ( lieutenant ) in the radio troops.

Radio communications with South America, change to civil service

At Bredow's instigation, preparatory work began in 1919 for a telegraphy service between Germany and Argentina, which was implemented at the beginning of 1924. Bredow was appointed chairman of the board of directors of the Telefunken company in 1918. In March 1919, Bredow moved to the Reich Ministry of Post as Ministerialdirektor and began to set up a "Reich radio network". In mid-1919 radio communications with other countries could be resumed via numerous stations, especially again with the station in the USA.

Expansion of the telegraph service until 1933

Hans Bredow laying the foundation stone for the Haus des Rundfunks on Reichskanzlerplatz in Berlin in 1929
Opening of the 9th Great German Funk Exhibition in Berlin in August 1932

On November 19, 1919, Bredow showed the mode of operation of entertainment broadcasting in a public event, using the term broadcasting for the first time in a lecture two years later . On April 1, 1921, he was appointed Secretary of State for Telegraph, Telephone and Radio Operations and began organizing a public broadcasting company. In 1922, the first public radio telephone service was started, which served to transmit business news.

In 1923, the lightning radio traffic for breaking news with particularly important information was started and the first entertainment programs were recorded on the radio. Since the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG) was founded in 1925 , Bredow was appointed "Reichs-Rundfunk-Kommissar" and chairman of the RRG in 1926. As State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Post, he was the first man for broadcasting in Germany and pushed the expansion of the station infrastructure forward. On the occasion of the commissioning of Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, he wrote in his foreword:

“More than three years had to pass before a large number of German national comrades could see a long-cherished hope realized. Now, however, German broadcasting will bring the largest broadcaster to West Germany. At present in Europe at all. The expansion of the German broadcasting network will be crowned with the commissioning of the 25 KW Rhineland transmitter. The expansion of the German main transmitter to a higher output is as good as complete, almost all of the intermediate transmitters are also in operation, and the enlargement of the German transmitter in Königswusterhausen has begun. So we can say with justified pride that in three years from the most modest beginnings an organization of equal technical, economic and cultural strength has been created, which proves far beyond the borders of the Reich that Germany is still involved in science and technology marched first in the world. "

- Hans Bredow : Foreword to the new station. In: Die Werag , radio magazine, December 3, 1926, issue 1

On January 30, 1933, Bredow submitted his resignation. The NSDAP magazine of the Reich Association of German Broadcasting Participants EV , “ Der Deutsche Sender ”, wrote after years of propaganda against Bredow in its edition of February 26, 1933: “State Secretary Dr. Bredow, the technical inspector, received the requested farewell. State Secretary Dr.-Ing. Kruckow . ”On October 26, 1933, his honorary citizenship of the city of Rendsburg was withdrawn, which he only got back on November 16, 1948 by the municipal authorities. When Bredow's closest collaborators were arrested, he sent a telegram to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Hitler asking for their release; in the event of refusal, he asked to share her fate. He was then arrested and spent 16 months in the Berlin-Moabit remand prison . His and Hans Flesch's convictions by the Berlin Regional Court for participating in party betrayals were overturned by the Reich Court in February 1937, and the proceedings before the Berlin Regional Court were then discontinued in March 1938.

Post-war tasks

From April 24 to August 4, 1945 Bredow was President of the Prussian Province of Nassau in Wiesbaden. From 1949 to 1951 he was chairman of the administrative board of the Hessischer Rundfunk . As part of the reorganization of the supervision of German industry by the Allies , Bredow was also elected chairman of the Buderus supervisory board on December 1, 1945 .

He was married to Elsie geb. Herrmann . Hans Bredow's grave is in the Neuwerk cemetery (Rendsburg) .

Functions and memberships

  • State Secretary for Telegraphs, Telephony and Radio
  • Reich Broadcasting Commissioner 1926–1933
  • Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Buderus Eisenwerke, Wetzlar
  • Supervisory Board Philipp Holzmann AG , Frankfurt / Main
  • Chairman of the German Association of Technical and Scientific Associations from 1948 to 1949
  • Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hessischer Rundfunk from 1949 to 1951
  • Trustee of the Hessian iron and steel industry

Honors

Fonts

  • From my archive. Broadcasting Problems. Heidelberg 1950.
  • Under the spell of the ether waves. Commemorative publication on the 75th birthday of the author on November 26, 1954. Stuttgart 1954.
    • Volume 1: The struggle for existence of German radio .
    • Volume 2: Funk in the First World War, the emergence of broadcasting .

literature

  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. German business publisher, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 .
  • Hans Bausch : The radio in the political power play of the Weimar Republic 1923-1933. Mohr, Tübingen 1956 (with an introduction by Hans Bredow).
  • Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it? 9th edition, Leipzig 1928.
  • Who is who? Berlin 1948.
  • Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is it? Berlin 1955.
  • Cuno Horkenbach: The German Empire from 1918 to today. Berlin 1930.
  • Heinz Pohle: The radio as an instrument of politics. On the history of German broadcasting from 1923/38 . Verlag Hans Bredow Institute , Hamburg 1955th
  • Otto Nairz: 25 years in the service of German radio communications: Hans Bredow 50 years. In: Rundfunk-Jahrbuch 1930 . Union Dt. Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1930, pp. 328–344.

Movies

  • Jürgen Corleis: Hans Bredow - achievement and legend. Sender Free Berlin 1979 (half-hour documentary film).

Web links

Commons : Hans Bredow  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Günter Bartosch: Between canvas and screen. Wiesbaden film and television city . Edited by the Friends of the Museum for German Television History, Reiss, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-928085-39-5 , p. 32.
  2. ↑ From the experimental stage to the propaganda instrument - The history of the radio exhibition from 1924 to 1939 , Eva Susanne Breßler, page 263
  3. ^ Karlheinz Spielmann: Honorary Citizen and Honors in the Federal Republic . 2nd Edition. Dortmund-Barop 1965, p. 520.
  4. ↑ Detloff Klatt: Meeting point Berlin-Moabit. Wichern-Verlag 1957, p. 44ff.
  5. ↑ Judgment of February 22, 1937, RGSt 71, 114 ( Az. 2 D 291/36)
  6. ↑ a b Information from the Office of the Federal President
personal data
SURNAME Bredow, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bredow, Hans Carl August Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German broadcasting pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Schlawe , Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1959
Place of death Wiesbaden