World radio station

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T antenna of the transmitter (April 1931)

The world broadcasting station was the first state shortwave station in Germany and thus a forerunner of the National Socialist German shortwave station as well as the German Deutsche Welle and the voice of the GDR . It broadcast from August 26, 1929 to March 31, 1933 from Zeesen near Königs Wusterhausen on the frequency 9560 kHz (wavelength 31.38 m) and reached almost all parts of the world.

history

Technical preparations

In the early days around 1923 radio usually broadcast on medium and long wave frequencies. These were more suitable than shortwave for coverage within Germany, because shortwave is bad within a radius of around 1,000 km, but beyond that it is always better to receive. In the USA, therefore, the interest in shortwave stations was greater than in much smaller Europe.

In 1927, reports appeared in the Telefunken newspaper as well as in the magazines Telegraphen- und Fernsprechtechnik , Telegraphenpraxis , Deutsche Verkehrszeitung and in the papers of radio hobbyists and radio amateurs that the Reichspost , which was responsible for broadcasting in the Weimar Republic , was seriously experimenting with the idea of ​​a shortwave transmitter. In 1928 it became concrete: The Post placed the order with the leading German broadcast electronics company Telefunken . Telefunken had already set up such transmitters abroad, including in Buenos Aires in 1927 ; this station served primarily as a " dedicated line " for the exchange of programs between Germany and Argentina and worked well.

From 1926 on, Telefunken experimented with a single-stage shortwave transmitter on the Funkerberg in Königs Wusterhausen. In 1927, the Reichspost was first involved in trial broadcasts with a seven-stage transmitter in Döberitz . In the summer of 1929 the foreign press registered the activities; the English Wireless World assumed “31.38 or 25 m wavelength” - and was not wrong.

At the Great German Radio Exhibition in 1929, Telefunken presented the technology of the first German shortwave transmitter: crystal control in seven stages, an arrangement of the transmitter tubes optimized to increase performance. For the first time in Germany, the fair also presented receivers suitable for shortwave.

Started in 1929

On Monday, August 26, 1929, the "world broadcasting station" went on air. When it was taken over by the Germany transmitter in the immediate vicinity, it broadcast an operetta over shortwave 9560 kHz (31.38 m) and with a power of 8 kW, which was then considered to be lavish at the time: Die Feldprediger by Carl Millöcker , in a recording by Bruno Seidler-Winkler . This was followed by news and, in a takeover from Funk-Hour Berlin , dance music with Egon Kaiser . The broadcasting ended at 0.30 a.m.

As successful as the commissioning was technically, it had so little response within Germany. Only engineers and the program makers of the German broadcaster were on site. Even the “father of broadcasting” in Germany, Hans Bredow , hardly took any notice. Germans in exile, on the other hand, suddenly felt tied to their homeland. For example, a former Leipzig resident from the city of Utica, north of New York, wrote on Christmas 1929: “At the beginning [the music] came in with a little disturbance and what I call distorted. We just had pretty heavy snowfall. "And another from Leadville, Colorado:" The music was wonderfully clear and very loud. Time ¾ 11 a.m. to ¼ noon, temperature 7 ° C. ”A letter from a listener from Peru has been received from 1931, which, in addition to increasing the transmission power, suggests a change in frequency,“ because Germany is 31.38, Holland 31.4 , Denver 31.48 and Shenectady at 31.48 and recently Pittsburgh at 31.34 m or less. "

Regular broadcasting

A few weeks after the start of broadcasting, the program began daily at 2 p.m. with a detailed program preview. Because the station mainly served abroad, especially the USA with its many German emigrants, this late start in the day was an option because of the time difference; From November 1929, the broadcasting ended at 1.30 a.m. The international radio station appeared on the international shortwave program boards as "Königs Wusterhausen". The response from abroad became so significant within a few months that even government agencies saw the station as an opportunity to view shortwave as a flagship for foreign countries and to use it for diplomatic purposes. In addition to regular broadcasting, the broadcast tower of the international radio station also ran original sounds for friendly international broadcasters. At Christmas 1929 the broadcast quality was technically so good that 21 stations on the American network NBC took over a German-American music program; In return, American shortwave stations dubbed a program that could then be received locally in Germany via the German station. In August 1931, numerous broadcasters around the world took over the Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde directly from the Bayreuth Festival Hall.

International program

On May 1, 1930, the station started German language courses in the form of translated folk songs and read out diary notes. Later in the same year the infrastructure was ripe so that the world radio station could take over programs from radio stations throughout the empire and broadcast them worldwide. The reception quality internationally was at the level of the shortwave pioneers from Great Britain and the Netherlands. At the end of 1931 and 1932, the technology was increased: Two new omnidirectional antennas were added for the waves 31.38 and 19.73 m and three directional antennas for North America, the latter mainly for the purpose of the increasingly important program exchange. The international program exchange started on December 25, 1929. In 1932 a second, somewhat weaker short-wave transmitter was built by the C. Lorenz company from Berlin.

In the meantime, the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft used the world broadcasting station in its negotiations with broadcasters worldwide. As a result, in 1932, for example, the renowned science program The German Hour was distributed every two weeks across the United States (via NBC). German researchers spoke here in English, first the director of the Berlin School of Politics Ernst Jäckh , then the head of the Berlin Charité Ferdinand Sauerbruch , the Nobel laureate in chemistry, Friedrich Bergius , the industrialists Carl Friedrich von Siemens , Fritz Thyssen , and Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and many others.

On April 1, 1933, the National Socialists took over the station structure, changed the name to " Deutscher Kurzwellensender " (from 1943 Die Deutschen Überseeender ), and the Reich Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels used shortwave for international propaganda.

literature

  • Around the world with 8 kW. German world radio in the Weimar period. History of shortwave broadcasting in Germany 1929–1932. German wave. Cologne. Publishing house Haude and Spener, Berlin 1969.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In addition, until the 1920s there was a widespread opinion among engineers that “the short waves” were useless for transmitting radio communications.
  2. ↑ Werner Nestel appeared for the first time at the radio exhibition , a young graduate engineer who a little later was a central figure in the construction of large-scale broadcasting systems and the development of the popular receiver .
  3. ↑ The listener letters appeared in the magazines Der Deutsche Rundfunk and handicraft letters of the wireless , quoted from Lubbers, Schwipps: With 8 kW around the world.
  4. ↑ See the history of radio in Germany, section Der Deutsche Kurzwellensender

Coordinates: 52 ° 16 ′ 25 ″  N , 13 ° 37 ′ 5 ″  E