“Sandman” and “Polizeiruf 110” survived everything. Thirty years ago there was a major media upheaval in the east: the former state radio of the GDR disappeared from the screen. How was that back then?
In the end, the presenter Heidrun Schulz plucks the microphone from her lapel with a crackle, then she can only be seen as a silhouette.
The light goes out. It’s over – the last edition of the television news “DFF Aktuell” on December 31, 1991. A good year after the German unification, the former state radio of the GDR is history.
30 years ago, the remaining television and radio programs from East Berlin and the new federal states were incorporated into the West German public broadcasting system. At that time they had little in common with the Black Channel and ideological club. After the fall of 1989, the broadcasters tried to swim free and to accompany the GDR citizens with useful and comforting things on their way into the unknown.
Broadcasting deadline on New Year’s Eve
Nevertheless, the broadcasters did not have a future. In the last few minutes the television program was once again exuding happiness: there was singing because of New Year’s Eve. A second hand moved forward to 12. Then transmission ended. On January 1, 1992, ORB – today RBB – and MDR started operations. In the far north, the NDR took over.
If you look at the huge area of the former broadcasting house on Nalepastraße in southeast Berlin today, you can guess what a turning point it was. Today the huge broadcasting halls with their sophisticated sound concepts slumber cold and empty in the building complex that was sold several times after the fall of the Wall and some of it was newly used. The orange-colored 1950s armchairs in front of the studio doors have cobwebs between their legs. But you can feel what it used to be: a dream in teak and marble, a prestige project of socialism.
How long is an «Ulb»?
Up to 13,000 people used to work on broadcasting radio and television, news, “sandmen” or “a kettle of color” on the station. Orchestra and choirs, drivers and hairdressers, canteens and daycare centers – a small town serving the State Committee for Broadcasting at the GDR’s Council of Ministers.
The mockery of the dreary GDR programs that the censors have controlled is legendary. How long is an «Ulb» or a «Schnitz»? Exactly, as long as it takes to find the button after a speech by Walter Ulbricht or a broadcast by Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler. “Propaganda and often pure boredom – that was what shaped television and radio in the GDR”, summarized the West German media manager Ernst Dohlus in a series of articles for the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
The journalist Alfred Eichhorn, who started working for GDR radio in 1967 and made the transition to Sender Freie Berlin after the fall of the Wall, doesn’t think this view is entirely fair. “It’s nonsense that nobody heard us,” says the now 77-year-old. Not only the youth broadcaster DT64, but also the major entertainment programs had reached their GDR audiences. And those who could, looked for the best of Western and Eastern programs. “You heard both,” says Eichhorn.
Grace period in the turning point
Eichhorn describes his time at GDR radio, at times in the political department, mostly in culture, as not rebellious. “Ultimately, what the party wanted was done.” He himself had some freedom, traveled to the Federal Republic and interviewed West Germans like Walter Jens and Günter Wallraff. There were also raised eyebrows about SED guidelines, but hardly any real criticism – even if some would later have presented it differently. “I was amazed at how many resistance fighters worked by my side back then,” jokes Eichhorn.
Things really got going at the time of reunification and after unification, when the former GDR radio, as an “institution under Article 36” of the Unification Treaty, had a kind of grace period. Eichhorn calls this a golden age. “It was as if someone had opened a window,” he quotes the writer Stefan Heym. Taxes, insurances, advice – practical help in life was popular and, according to Eichhorn, was also praised by the audience.
After the transition on January 1, 1992, the Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg (ORB) and the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk (MDR) began broadcasting. Today’s director Karola Wille is a contemporary witness. During the upheavals she had been a consultant in the legal management of the new MDR since November 1991. In retrospect, she tells the German Press Agency: “This founding period was a time of departure for us in the world of free media. We were aware of the responsibility that we were turning away from state radio. ” The MDR was a new establishment, six months passed between the parliamentary approval of the MDR contract and the start. You have to imagine something like that today. Wille says: “There was one employee in July, that was the founding director Prof. Udo Reiter with personnel number 1.”
Things said between the lines
How did the citizens perceive the new television? “The task was to create and consolidate identity in this difficult time of upheaval, and at the same time to maintain a balance between approaching the new and reflecting on the familiar. That was also the mix of programs. ” Intendant Wille says: “GDR television had a high proportion of entertainment.” That’s why there was the “Kessel Buntes”, “Polizeiruf 110”, “Achim’s Hitparade” on MDR – but from the start, the broadcaster set up its own news program with “MDR Aktuell”, developed a domestic political magazine – and with “Fakt” also nationwide for the first.
You have to imagine this time to be incredibly bustling. “We didn’t have a closed season and there was also the dual broadcasting system here,” says Wille. She has a sober view of radio in GDR times: “It was state radio in terms of content, personnel, finance and structure. Even with “Ein Kessel Buntes” there was only supposed freedom. But there too: you could say things between the lines, but there were limits. There too. “