The Literary Programme Offering of the Reichssender [Reich Broadcasting] Hamburg

The project concerns the literary programme offerings of the Reichssender [Reich Broadcasting] Hamburg between 1933 and 1939/40 with the aim of comprehensively analysing these in the context of the literary field of Hamburg or respectively the northern German broadcasting area.

The project is based on research conducted by the “Research Centre for History of Broadcasting in Northern Germany” (J. Fuge, C. Hilgert) at the end of 2007 for the Historical Commission of the ARD, which investigated in all just over 5,000 “literary programmes” of the Reichssender Hamburg, announced in the programme guide “Die Norag” or, respectively “Funk-Wacht”, which in a broad sense touched on the frame of reference of literature.

The investigation promises an insight primarily into two areas:

• the development of the literary field in the media metropolis of Hamburg and
• possible continuities and discontinuities from the 1920’s into the 1940’s.

The core questions are: What role does radio play in the literary field? Does it represent a medium of modernisation? What was its role in the development of the “media worker” in the 1930’s? Did it provide regional offers of identity and/or new programmes specific to the Nazis, old and/or new experiential worlds?