Radio of Königsberg

It was on January 2, 1924, that the first radio broadcasting company of East Prussia was founded - "Ostmarken Rundfunk AG" (ORAG - Radio of the Eastern Territory), and six months later, on June 14, 1924, radio broadcasting itself began [1] (in general, 1924 is significant in that from March to October, 8 radio stations began broadcasting in Germany; another, the very first - Radio-Stunde, started operating in Berlin on October 29, 1923 [2]). Half of the ORAG shares belonged to the wood processor Walter Zabel, the other - to the Reich Post.

 

 

On the territory of his factory, located on Lomse Island (now Oktyabrsky Island) opposite the Sackheim Gate, on the other bank of the Pregel, Zabel installed a radio transmitter with a power of 0.5 kW and a transmitting antenna 45 m high. The enterprise was positioned as "the latest technical achievement in Königsberg", but even before the start of broadcasting, Zabel left it, selling his share to the company owned by the city of Königsberg, which managed the Eastern Fair (Messamt Königsberg GmbH). Thus, the radio station became the first "city" radio station in Germany and received the name "Radio Königsberg".

 

 

At the very beginning of its work, the supervisory board of Radio Königsberg included the director of the Eastern Fair, two city council members, and the city treasurer. Friedrich Wilhelm Odendahl was appointed the first director of the radio station [1,2]. The small staff included an announcer, editor, secretary, as well as a violinist, cellist, and pianist. The position of artistic director and first announcer of Radio Königsberg was taken by the director and tenor of the Königsberg City Theater, a native of Vienna, Josef Christian, who later became the director of the radio station, replacing Odendahl in this position [1] (by 1928, the permanent staff of Radio Königsberg amounted to 42 people (of which 15 were orchestra members), and by 1930 it had grown to 103 people [2]).

Initially, Radio Königsberg broadcast from one of the many buildings of the nearby Eastern Fair complex. The broadcast schedule included two news programs, which were broadcast at 10:00 and 14:00, stock market reports, and broadcasts of the exact time signal. The territory where the signal of Radio Königsberg could be received was inhabited by more than 3 million people. In particular, the signal could be received not only by residents of Königsberg, but also of Gumbinnen (now Gusev), Stettin (now Szczecin), and even Frankfurt an der Oder. It is important to note here that at this time East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany by the Danzig Corridor, so the appearance of Radio Königsberg, which could be listened to by Germans (and not only them, as we will discuss below) living outside the easternmost province of the Second Reich, was a kind of symbol of national unity. At the end of 1924, the number of radio listeners in the ORAG coverage area was just over 13 thousand people. By the end of 1929, it had increased to almost 65 thousand, and by the end of 1932, it exceeded 112 thousand listeners [1].

 

On December 22, 1926, a Meltzer transmitting antenna was installed south of Alte-Pillauer-Landstrasse (now Dmitriya Donskogo Street) between the Albertina Psychiatric Clinic (now the Regional Children's Hospital) and the St. Adalbert Chapel (now the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism). The height of the wooden masts was 25 and 30 m, the transmitter power was 1.5 kW. In March 1927, the masts were replaced with new ones, 80 m high, which were spaced 100 m apart [3].

 

Four years later, on December 15, 1930, three kilometers northwest of Heilsberg (now Lidzbark Warmiński) near the highway leading to Preussisch Eylau (now Bagrationovsk), the largest transmitter in East Prussia, the Lorenz company, with a power of 60 kW, was installed. The vertical transmitting antenna was attached to a wire stretched between two wooden masts 102 m high, spaced 200 m apart. In 1935, the transmitter power was increased to 100 kW, and the mast height to 115 m. In 1940, the wooden masts were replaced by steel ones 151 m high [3].

 

Already in July 1924, the broadcasting schedule of Radio Königsberg became more diverse [3] - it included music and literature programs, which later began to occupy the bulk of the broadcasting time. There were even programs on studying French, English, Spanish and Esperanto, lectures on various topics were broadcast, sports news was read out, and a program dedicated to chess was broadcast. A regular magazine Der Königsberger Rundfunk (Königsberg Radio) was published for listeners, in which the program schedule and various educational information were printed.

The Radio Königsberg Orchestra, led by the famous musician and conductor Hermann Scherchen* since September 1, 1928, performed works by both contemporary German composers and world classics, as well as light dance music. Soon it already had 59 musicians [2]. In addition to the orchestra, the radio also had a choir of 17 voices [1]. The musical programs of Radio Königsberg were extremely popular with radio listeners, and Scherchen's orchestra regularly toured throughout East Prussia**.

It was obvious that the radio crews felt cramped in the old studio, so in the early 1930s an architectural competition was announced for the design of a new Radio House (Rundfunkhaus), which was to be built on the Gansaring next to the State Archives (now Prospekt Mira 1-3).

The construction contract was signed in November of the same year with the architectural bureau of Hans Hopp***, who had to make some changes to the original project. The building of the House of Radio is a wonderful example of functionalism in architecture. Its construction, which began in 1933, took a little time and already on April 1, 1934, Radio Königsberg began broadcasting from several studios located on four floors of the House of Radio.

 

 

Broadcasting was on medium waves. In 1926, broadcasting began with a morning weather forecast at 6:00 a.m. and ended at midnight with an hour-long musical concert. In 1935, weather broadcasts began at 5 a.m. [4].

Even before the National Socialists came to power, on January 1, 1933, all radio stations in Germany (including Radio Königsberg) became state-owned. Ostmarken Rundfunk AG was transformed into Ostmarken Rundfunk GmbH, Königsberg. In 1933, radio broadcasting was subordinated to Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda. On April 1, 1934, Ostmarken Rundfunk GmbH was transformed into Reichssender Königsberg (Radio Transmitter Königsberg) [1].

It is worth noting here that, although international shortwave broadcasting from Germany in German (the first listeners were German-speaking residents of the United States) began in 1929, the radio broadcasts were generally politically neutral [4]. But from 1933 onwards, broadcasting began to acquire a propaganda tint. Foreign broadcasting soon began to be carried out also to South America, Southeast Asia and Africa. In 1936, the Germans broadcast sports reports from the Berlin Olympics to the entire world for the first time (live television broadcasts were also conducted for the first time). Even before the start of World War II, in 1938, a “radio war” began, in which the shortwave radio transmitter was called the most powerful German propaganda weapon, and broadcasts were conducted in 31 languages ​​[4].

In this regard, Radio Königsberg did not lag behind the general German propaganda trends. After the start of World War II, in 1940, once a week a 20-minute broadcast from Königsberg was transmitted in Swedish. Initially, broadcasts to Sweden were made from the Berlin Radio House. But with the start of the bombing of Berlin by the British Air Force, the Swedish editorial office was moved to Königsberg. It was believed that the radio signal from Königsberg could be heard by about 10 percent of the Swedish population. The broadcast began with the words "Greetings, North, this is Germany speaking!"

 

When the Red Army troops approached the border with East Prussia, broadcasts to Sweden began to be carried out from Danzig (now Gdansk), and just before the end of the war - from a low-power transmitter installed in the vicinity of Oslo.

A little known fact, Radio Königsberg was also mentioned among several hostile radio stations broadcasting in Russian to the Soviet Union.

 

Recently, anti-Soviet radio broadcasts by fascist radio stations have become more frequent.
The fascist propaganda carried out by Hitlerite radio stations in German is also widespread.
In addition to frequent speeches by various fascist leaders with insinuations and abuse directed at Moscow, Hitlerite broadcasts convey malicious fabrications from the Goebbels press about the USSR. Thus, in the evening radio information on August 9, the Königsberg radio station operating for the East reported:
“Moscow is threatening peace. It is currently ordering 3 dreadnoughts of 35,000 tons each from America.”
“It has been discovered that the atheist movement in Belgium exists on Moscow money.”
Messages of this nature are repeated day after day.
The so far isolated case of anti-Soviet information being transmitted by German broadcasters onRussian language(about the hunger queues in Moscow, the failure of the five-year plan, etc.) testifies to the fact that German fascism during the war makes extensive use of radio propaganda in Russian. <…> During the
war, this propaganda will of course assume the most unbridled character.
In addition to the radio broadcasting network operating in peacetime, our probable enemies will be able to use a large number of broadcasting stations in wartime, which now only occasionally engage in anti-Soviet broadcasting.
The matter of combating radio intervention, due to the insufficient capacity of our broadcasting network, as experience with Czech and Japanese broadcasts has shown, is unsatisfactory and does not guarantee the suppression of anti-Soviet radio broadcasting.
For a successful fight against radio intervention, it is necessary to have at least one and a half times the capacity of the enemy, and taking into account the provision of our foreign broadcasting, even more.
The total power of our broadcasting stations on medium and long waves is not much inferior in absolute terms to the enemy's power, especially in the West, but this power is clearly insufficient to block fascist radio propaganda. On short waves, fascist broadcasting even has an absolute superiority . < my emphasis. - admin >
In connection with the fact that such a situation does not at all protect the USSR from fascist radio intervention, I ask that the question of measures to combat fascist radio intervention be submitted to the Council of People's Commissars for consideration.

People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR
General Commissar of State Security Yezhov [5]

 

Based on the text of this report by Yezhov from August 15, 1937 to the General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Stalin and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Molotov, we can confirm what we said above: the Nazis, literally immediately after coming to power, did not stand on ceremony, describing the situation in the USSR to their radio listeners (however, the authorities of Poland, Finland, Japan, Czechoslovakia acted in a similar way, and the Soviet media behaved in a mirror manner in relation to their enemies). The mention of the "isolated case" of broadcasting in Russian in November 1933 does not necessarily refer specifically to "Radio Königsberg".

Beginning in the summer of 1941 (i.e. with the German attack on the Soviet Union), German radio broadcasting, which was not particularly pluralistic to begin with, was subjected to even greater censorship. All regional radio stations were united into a single national radio network, limiting their own broadcasts to morning broadcasts only [4].

Radio Königsberg last went on air on January 31, 1945. While retreating, the Germans blew up the transmitter in Heilsberg [1].

During the storming of Königsberg in April 1945, the Radio House building suffered quite a lot and had not yet been restored in 1960. But by 1962, it had been restored almost to its original form. The changes affected only the roof. Despite this fact, obvious to anyone who compares the Radio House in pre-war photos with its current appearance, some written sources and, especially, numerous Internet publications, claim that after the restoration, the Radio House lost one floor.

It seems to us that this error has its origin in the book by Baldur Koester "Königsberg. Today's Kaliningrad. Architecture of the German Time":

 

At the other end of the street (closer to Hansa-Platz) the Radio Building, also called the Radio House or the Reich Transmitter, has been preserved, Hansaring 139 - Prospekt Mira 1-3.
Built in 1930, architect: presumably Robert Liebenthal.
A very elongated, originally four-story building body with a tower-like, five-story top facing Hansa-Platz. The not very large, free-standing windows lie horizontally, interrupted by three vertically arranged ribbons of stairwells. At present, the building has been reduced by one floor <emphasis added. - admin >, since the reconstruction of the absolutely flat roof failed. Instead, the conventional roof with a slightly sloping corrugated asbestos-cement covering was chosen. At the height of the 5th floor, a closed wall surface facing the street was erected (by means of which the previous cubic completion towards the tower-like corner was achieved), and on the rear side, a new roof descends to the upper edge of the 3rd floor [6].

 

In addition to the confusion about the number of floors (although the phrase “originally a four-story building” quite clearly indicates that the building consisted of four floors, and in the passage about the “height of the 5th floor” it is generally unclear what the author wanted to say or the translator to translate), Köster assumes (again erroneously) that the author of the project was Robert Liebenthal, who designed the State Archives (now the Regional Scientific Library), which forms a single ensemble with the House of Radio.

 

 

 

 

By Resolution No. 132 of the Government of the Kaliningrad Region dated March 23, 2007, the building of the former House of Radio was recognized as a cultural heritage site of regional significance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

* Hermann Scherchen   (1891-1966) was a German violist, conductor and teacher. He played in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1914-1916 he conducted in Riga. In 1916-1918 he was in a Russian prisoner of war camp. In 1918 he returned to Berlin, founded the "New Musical Society", and in 1919 he created the magazine "Melos" dedicated to modern music. In 1933 he left Germany, led orchestras in Brussels and Vienna. In 1958 he toured the USSR.

** Despite this, it was not easy for the radio station to maintain such a large orchestra from a financial point of view. At the end of August 1931, Scherchen left his position as conductor and the carefully selected orchestra disbanded. The staff of musicians of Radio Königsberg was reduced to 17 people by the beginning of 1933, and when necessary, the orchestra of the Königsberg Opera House was called in [1].

*** Hopp Hans (  Gustav Karl Hanns Hopp, 1890 - 1971) - German architect who created a number of iconic administrative and residential buildings in Königsberg, including the Eastern Fair complex, the Park Hotel, the Devau Airport, the House of Radio, the Vocational School for Girls, and the water tower in Pillau (Baltiysk).

 

Sources:

1. Organisational chart of ORAG 1924–1933 (dienste.dra.de/rundfunk-vor-1933/pdf/ORAG_1924-1933.pdf)
2. Leonhard J.-F., Halefeldt H. O., Wittenbrink T., Schumacher R. Programming of health functions in the Weimar Republic. Band 1. — Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1997.
3. oldtimeradio.de
4. Riegler T. The Main Structures of Rundfunks. Data and facts about the implementation of radio and television. — Siebel Verlag, 2006.
5. Bulletin of the Archives of the President of the Russian Federation (supplement to the magazine “Source”), No. 1, 1999 — pp. 111-112.
6. Baldur K. Königsberg. Today's Kaliningrad. Architecture of the German Time. — Husum, 2000. — 256 p.