New Objectivity - 906

Narrator (m):

The 1920s were characterized by an opening up to democratic mass culture, whose primary media were film and radio, supplemented by the growing print media of journals and magazines. In December 1923, the first German radio station, Funk-Stunde AG in Berlin, went on the air; between 1925 and 1931, all of the regional broadcasts merged to form the Reich Broadcasting Society. Millions of people were already listening to the radio at this time, including the man in Max Radler’s Radio Listener. A factory is seen in the background, identifying the radio listener as a member of the working class. The Workers’ Radio Club, founded in 1924, saw radio “as an important technological tool suited to manifesting the cultural will of the working class.”

Narrator (f):

Radler hangs the factory in the window frame like a picture within the picture on the wall of the room. A New Objective landscape strongly contrasts the site of alienated labor from the listener who is concentrating entirely on himself and the broadcast. Being seen against the blank wall lends contours to his inner, mental stature. He outgrows himself and the framework assigned to him. Radler shows a new type: the human being striving for individuality and personal development. The radio is the key technology of his training. On the note we see the dates and times for other broadcasts.

Narrator (m):

Their simple technology enabled many to build their own radios cheaply: The use of headphones was typical of the first radios. It was the hour radio pioneers and tinkerers. Authors such as Alfred Döblin and Bertolt Brecht numbered among those who influenced the medium already in the 1920s. In 1931, Brecht called for the medium “not only to broadcast but also to receive, not only listen to the listeners but getting them to speak and not isolating them but establishing a relationship to them.” Foreshadowing modern forms of communication, he called for the “uprising of listeners, their activation and their reinstatement as producers.” The National Socialists also accurate assessed the potential of the new mass medium, banning such organizations as the Workers’ Radio Club, bringing all content in line with its own politics, and using the medium for propaganda purposes.

Narrator (f):

In our New Objectivity ListeningBar, using the app or the listening stations on site, you can listen to samples and remakes of early radio works from the 1920s.