The history of a medium Radio Around The World © Anmol Arora / Unsplash One hundred years ago, in October 1923, the very first German radio station went on the air in Berlin. On this occasion, we celebrate radio, in retrospectives and personal radio memoirs by international artists and authors! Radio – then and now Stories Radio – then and now Photo (detail): © picture alliance / ullstein bild The Early Days of Radio “Attention, Attention” It is more than 100 years since the radio began to conquer the world. We have listened to the first sentences transmitted by wireless telegraphy: a journey back in time to the earliest beginnings of radio technology and radio entertainment. Radio, by chance, plays the right sounds of longing always at just the right time, Charlotte Krafft, "A tale of love. A tale of war. For Emile." © Theredmonkey/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA-3.0/ Radios The nine coolest radio devices Don’t radios all look more or less the same? Quite the contrary, as the history of the radio goes to show: a look back at its many past permutations reveals some remarkable contraptions whose designs were often way ahead of their time. © picture alliance / Photo12/Archives Snark “There was nothing to say” Bertolt Brecht and the radio When radio in Germany celebrates its one hundredth anniversary, there is one guest who definitely deserves to be invited to the party: Bertolt Brecht. Andreas Ströhl has written about the role that Brecht played in shaping radio as we know it today. Photo: Collection of Eva Sudrow Radio in the GDR Radio and the Fall of the Berlin Wall Eva Sudrow worked in the DDR Rundfunk radio drama editing room in East Berlin, and later for Deutschlandfunk. She did radio for half the country, and subsequently for the whole country. Verena Hütter interviewed her. Benjamin Gavaudo, Licence Ouverte Musical Wires The Théâtrophone We’re celebrating radio. But what existed before radio came along? The théâtrophone! Users had to sign up with the telephone company – just as we subscribe to a streaming service provider today – and music and operatic performances were broadcast over the phone. Lev Bratishenko tells us the story of the théâtrophone. © Library and Archives Canada, e010860600 The century of broadcasting in Canada In 2019, Canadian radio celebrated its 100th anniversary. Together with the Musée des Ondes Émile Berliner and the Société Québécoise de Collectionneurs de Radio Anciens, we present milestones in the history of the long-lived – and still very much alive – mass medium. Each turn of the dial brought new sounds. Jürgen Ziemer, "You Do Right" © Hör Berlin Webradio | DJ-Livestream Live from the storage room During the pandemic, dance enthusiasts took to the Internet. Resourceful club owners, DJs and radio producers established a new, multimedia radio format without further ado. Photo (detail): © picture alliance/Bildagentur-online/Ohde East Frisia On the Pirate Waves Playing some different music for a change, broadcasting alternative political content or fooling around on the airwaves – why were there so many pirate radio stations in East Frisia, of all places? © picture alliance / Jacques Breuer Growing up with the radio „You do right“ What influenced you? The radio! Hamburg music journalist Jürgen Ziemer talks about growing up with the radio in the 1970s and 1980s: with the Beatles, Karlheinz Stockhausen, krautrock and “Anti-hits”. Photo (detail): © Marta Krus Foley Artist The Art of Sounds Creaking doors, singing swords and and the crunch of snow underfoot – sounds bring stories to life. Foley artist Max Bauer speaks in an interview about his profession. Stories Illustration: Maria Krafft Corello’s Code A tale of love. A tale of war. For Emile. This is a tale of nothing less than war, and of love in times of war. It is a tale of the radio operator Corello and the officer Emile, and about the code of their love that Casares attempted to decipher. Illustration: Tanita Olbrich The Wave And all the prophets? I am or I am not a nurse, a sailor on a submarine, a schoolgirl − Marius Goldhorn’s story is about a voice on all frequencies and a little boy with a fondness for currant buns. Photo: Leonhard Hieronymi No news on the planet Let’s keep playing the music! Leonhard Hieronymi writes about the year 1997, when the radio station Planet Radio went on air and had such a momentous impact on the author – who, then aged 10, used to listen to the station in his mother’s Mercedes. © Jay Heike / Unsplash How much is the fish? Three Radio Stations Enis Maci tells the story of three radio stations at three different points in time at three different locations. Radio memories from the Vatican, the Ruhr region and the Dollart. Top
