Radio test center

The Rundfunkversuchsstelle was the first facility in Germany to explore the technical and artistic possibilities of the new medium of broadcasting . It was founded in May 1928 in Berlin by the Prussian Ministry of Culture and abolished in 1935 by the National Socialists .

Laboratory for new tones

The radio test center was affiliated with the Hochschule für Musik zu Berlin and promoted, among other things, the development of new musical instruments, above all the trautonium , a forerunner of the synthesizer , and a harmonium with innovative sound systems based on the plans of the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni . The test center was regarded as a “laboratory for new sounds”, but as a research facility it was also concerned with the sound film technology that became popular in 1929 and the first possibilities of storing music on records (“cutting” - hence the recording).

New methods of music education

The Rundfunkversuchsstelle not only had a technical interest in both, it also tried out new music-pedagogical approaches using recording and playback media. As early as 1929, six sound films were made on topics such as “Music and Dramatic Lessons”, “Introduction to the Basics of Playing the Cello (rigid and loose grip)” and “Voice and tone formation”. University professors at the beginning were Leopold Jessner , Franz Ludwig Hoerth , Carl Flesch , Leonid Kreutzer and Hermann Weißenborn . Weissenborn came up with the idea of X-raying a singing test person in order to expose a running film and record the sound at the same time. The development of this music-pedagogical, but life-threatening technique of X-ray sound film took place mainly in the test center.

Electronic music pioneers

In and out of the institute went, among others, the pioneer for “electrical music” Friedrich Trautwein (the construction of his Trautonium was largely financed by the Rundfunkversuchsstelle) and the composers Oskar Sala and Paul Hindemith , who taught at the music academy and in 1930 “Seven Pieces for three trautonia ”composed.

Harbinger of the broadcasting schools

Two years after it was founded, the Rundfunkversuchsstelle introduced “courses for radio speech and radio music”, which were regularly overcrowded by the large number of visitors. Karl Würzburger and Karl Graef from Deutsche Welle GmbH held courses in “funky speaking”. Although it de facto matured into Germany's first radio school, the radio test center resisted calling itself a school. In 1931, 460 people took the courses for "speaking, practical phonetics and singing in front of the microphone, announcement, reporting, radio, manuscript, radio play, musical radio play." There were also courses for sound film. The idea of distance learning (“wireless study”) was also considered. However, the head of the research center Georg Schünemann was unable to develop it further due to protests from music teachers.

Abolished by Goebbels

After the National Socialists came to power at the beginning of 1933, the radio test center was dismantled and finally dissolved in 1935. Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had been a thorn in the side of the institution because of the “degenerate” music from its inception.

literature

Dietmar Schenk: The Berlin University of Music: Prussia's Conservatory between Romantic Classicism and New Music, 1869-1932 / 33 , Pallas Athene, Contributions to the History of the University and Science, Volume 8. ISBN 3-515-08328-6 .
Christine Fischer-Defoy: Art, power, politics: the Nazification of the art and music colleges in Berlin , Elefanten Press 1988, ISBN 3-88520-271-9 .

Web links

short YouTube video with Oskar Sala in the radio test center at Trautonium 1930

Individual evidence

↑ Because the radio test center's X-ray sound recordings were made together with the Jewish radiologist and doctor Viktor Gottheiner, the National Socialists later denied the test center's pioneering work.
↑ Rundfunk Jahrbuch 1933 , published by the working group of publishers of official radio magazines and the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft , Verlag JS Preuß, Berlin 1932, p. 132f. The book is in the library of the Museum for Communication Frankfurt .

[1] Because the radio test center's X-ray sound recordings were made together with the Jewish radiologist and doctor Viktor Gottheiner, the National Socialists later denied the test center's pioneering work.

[2] Rundfunk Jahrbuch 1933 , published by the working group of publishers of official radio magazines and the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft , Verlag JS Preuß, Berlin 1932, p. 132f. The book is in the library of the Museum for Communication Frankfurt .