Today Germany has about a thousand local and amateur radio organizations. About 75% are united in about three dozen large organizations, some of which cover the entire nation. Altogether about one million German radio listeners are organized; that is, about 22% of all known radio owners. A comparison with political parties, which have barely 10% of the voters as members, shows how high this figure is. Regardless of what is said in theoretical discussions, this figure persuasively shows that there is a living need for organization among listeners. We need only consider the development or foundation of some important listener organizations.
The Workers Radio Association of Germany [Arbeiter-Radiobund Deutschlands, the Arabu], founded in spring 1924, sees its task to be in the technical area as well as in assisting its pooer members and in expressing its Marxist tendencies in the cultural and political aspects of radio.
Segall says this about its goals: “Two requirements are the total conversion of the radio to a government monopoly and the remodeling of cultural advisory boards which should affirm the ideas of leading politicians.”
The association was composed of 246 local groups in 1929, of which 227 engaged in radio assistance and 174 in technical aid. The first magazine, Workers’ Radio [Arbeiterfunk], appeared sometime after its foundation in August 1924. Today it appears as People’s Radio [Volksfunk].
The association is a member of the Workers Radio Internationale [Arbeiter-Radio-Internationale].
As the politics of the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] and the SPD [Socialist Party of Germany]diverged more and more, a communist opposition group developed in June of 1929 within the association. It succeeded, and established a new organization, the entirely communist Free Radio Association of Germany [Freien Radiobund Deutschlands]. This association published the Workers Station [Arbeitersender] as soon as it had sufficient members and a secure financial base.
The German Radio Technical Federation [Deutsche Funktechnische Verband e.V.], which is closely related to the Workers Radio Association, was founded in 1925 as the successor to the German radio cartel. It includes over 500 societies scattered about the Reich. Furthermore, the Radio Amateur Association [Bastlerbund Sendung} was founded on 20 February 1927 by about 3,000 people in Berlin’s Great Theater. It has about 100 local groups in Germany.
On the national level, the Federation of German Radio Participants [Reichsverband Deutscher Rundfunkteilnehmer] was founded on 12 August 1930 with the leadership and participation of the National Socialists, the German Nationalists, and the military federations like the Stahlhelm and others. After several months, it established its own magazine for the entire country, the weekly German Broadcaster [Der Deutsche Sender].
Its program demanded “the financial independence of radio from the Postal Ministry, the exemption and reduction of radio fees for the unemployed and underpaid, the elimination of shallow intellectual programming from the radio, and the exclusive employment of German artists and intellectuals.” It also demanded “laws regarding the total structure and improvement of radio.”
The Federation of German Radio Participants may further be the first radio federation that openly came out against nonpolitical radio, and clearly said: “We demand the immediate and unlimited politicization of the radio in the service of the German freedom movement.”
About a year after its establishment, the National Socialists undertook a drive within the federation and established about 3,000 radio listening rooms around the entire nation which were united under the leadership of radio wardens in the National Socialist Federation [Verbandsgruppe Nationalsozialisten].
The listening rooms developed lively political and propaganda activity in most areas. They were especially interested in technical service [Technische Dienst], technical aid [Funkhilfe], interference locating [Störsuche], and short wave communication, either independently or in cooperation with other local organizations.
This organization succeeded in gaining dominant influence in the Federation between June and December of 1931, and on 19 December 1931, it overthrew the German Nationalist board during a stormy membership meeting at the Hotel Prinz Albrecht in Berlin. Again, the superiority or organization to the press was clearly demonstrated. The official radio magazine of the Federation was completely under German Nationalist control. Not once was it allowed to mention the existence of the National Socialist Federation, founded six months previously, to its readers. But by October the National Socialists had become so strong that they published a monthly propaganda magazine for their members (Let the Radio be German [Deutsch der Rundfunk]).
When on 19 March 1932 a second membership meeting of the Federation finally expelled the boar members of the German Nationalists and the Stahlhelm, they established two competing organizations, the Association of Nationalist Radio Listeners [Bund Nationaler Rundfunkhörer] and the Union of Stahlhelm Radio Listeners [Vereinung der Stahlhelmfunkhörer], along with the magazines National Radio [Nationalfunk] and The Stahlhelm Broadcaster[Der Stahlhelmsender]. The total effect was minimal. The German Nationalists had little organizational strength, and unlike the Federation of German Radio Participants that published a weekly and a monthly, the two magazines appeared to be similar and competing.
One might also consider the insistent evangelical or Catholic radio listening groups as well as the politically or culturally neutral federations and federations of German expatriates. These are widespread.
The Evangelical Union for Radio [Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Rundfunk] under Hinderer’s leadership works in this manner: “In the same way as the radio transmitter reached the entire country by establishing provincial transmitters, the greater part of the evangelical press federations were established in individual provinces. During the first year of their existence, the novel problem of radio came to the foreground. The organizational consolidation of these offices was intentionally delayed until the foundation for a truly fruitful work could be laid. This consolidation occurred in 1927. The Evangelical Union for Radio is controlled by the Evangelical Press Federation of Germany. At present the tightly unified society is composed of 23 state and provincial offices. It gathers biannually for meetings, publishes monthly magazines, and engages in correspondence.”
The Evangelical Union for Radio (whose magazine is The Radio Listener [Der Rundfunkhörer] became a member of the International Evangelical Union for Radio [Internationalen Evangelischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Rundfunk] in 1928. That organization is located in Berlin.
The Radio Union of German Catholics [Rundfunkgemeinarbeitsgemeinschaft der deutschen Katholiken] is a part of the Central Office for German Catholic Federations [Zentralbildungsausschuss der katholischen Verbände Deutschlands] under Marschall’s leadership. It sees its tasks as the transmission “by radio of our movement and work, and the provision of qualified persons from our circle for the various programs. We are ready to cooperate…”
The society also became associated with the Bureau catholique internationale de la radiophone at the 1928 Catholic exposition in Pressa.
Furthermore, nearly all the German states have local federations.
There are also a goodly number of federations which can only be spoken of as fraudulent.
A Cologne federation came in conflict with the National Socialist radio wardens at the beginning of 1932, was broken up, and declared bankruptcy.
The Marxist federations and the National Socialist Federation of German Radio Participants have absorbed or driven into dissolution countless small clubs and groups. Today, the apolitical, purely economic or technical federations are especially beginning to seek union. The German Radio Technical Federation [Deutsche Funktechnische Verband] and the Amateur Radio Federation [Bastlerbund der Sendung] merged with the Workers Radio Association (Social Democratic), the Federation of German Engineers [Verband Deutscher Radioingenieure] with the Federation of German Radio Participants.
All this clearly shows that listener organizations must take political instincts and vital questions as a basis, just as the mass struggle movements must. What appears to happen is that the number of listener federations gradually decreases, leaving room for large and essentially political groups. This is the same phenomenon we have witnessed in the history of German political parties. In 1919, forty-eight parties appeared on the ballot. By the Reichstag election in 1933, forty-four had either disappeared or sunk into insignificance. As is well known, only the National Socialists, Social Democrats, Centrists, and German Nationalists had factions, that is, more than fifteen seats.
If one wants to understand the psychological reasons behind the spontaneous growth of listener organizations to at least some extent, he must consider the practical experiences and lessons of a few of the successful and active people in this area. As long as the technical element in radio was primary and the programming secondary, the technicians and amateurs organized to exchange their experiences. There were about 9,900 radio listeners in 1924. The German radio industry has often gratefully acknowledged that many fruitful suggestions and many successful developments came from the amateur radio movement. As the initial difficulties were overcome and the transmissions gradually attained a certain artistic quality, the true radio listener appeared. By 1925, there were 789,000 of them. The fee was reduced from sixty marks per year to two marks per month, and radio became the property of the entire nation during a decade of stormy growth. The radio listeners now began to organize as the technicians had previously done. In place, however, of a society consisting of a limited elite of a few hundred men who understood radio techniques, they began to build rapidly a genuine mass organization from the listenership.
The technical and legal ignorance of the listeners regarding the unfamiliar apparatus was naturally one of the reasons that made unification seem advisable. The listener associations developed as interest groups. Nearly all the prospectuses and by-laws of the associations made references to technical and legal aid for the membership — assistance in locating interference, technical assistance, and radio protection. Technical assistance is especially likely to remain important and valuable to the listener for a long time to come because of the imperfections in the new discovery and the ever present disturbances that are difficult to eliminate under today’s radio conditions. As long as the state fails to establish radio protection laws to protect the whole and to protect this important means of communication, the radio federations will have the task of attempting to resolve these problems by their own means and influences in public and private.
Another very important problem is at the center of the discussions and demands of the federations. It often results in the most remarkable distortions. Pompous words are spoken about German, cosmopolitan, Nationalist, Marxist, Socialist, Democratic, and Aryan “culture,” which the radio supposedly has to care for, of the influence of the listenership on programming, of the subordination of the radio to the wishes of the hearer, etc. The central problem seems to be this: the listener instinctively understands that he has no control over the transmissions that come to him through the aether. He does not know their source, their bias, their truth or falsity. He seeks to exert a control that the radio itself cannot give him, that he cannot get in answer to his letter to the radio company, that no newspaper and no magazine can convincingly provide.
As long as he is politically, culturally, or artistically informed through a newspaper or through the printed page and picture, he can check the truth in other newspapers. Each man has a higher drive the yearning for absolute truth. If he learns that his newspaper lies to him, that newspaper loses him and he moves to another paper. It is different with the radio. He has no choice with the German radio, no really satisfying control. That which his radio, newspaper, or magazine tells him either before or after the program lacks the topicality, timeliness, and urgency of the radio program. It comes either too early — for what the listener actually experiences — or too late.
Suddenly, then, what counts the most is not what one has carried home in black and white, but rather the spoken words that come with all their suggestive urgency from the radio speaker. The hearer seeks therefore to control and protect himself from this one-sided influence not by printed brochures and radio newspapers, but rather by something living. He does not want to believe the printed words of a newspaper critic, but rather, in this generation of mass movements, he wants to join a mass of those who sound the same, feel the same, and think the same. They desire for unity, for identity with a large community, triumphs over individualism. Thus the listener organizations develop. The listener feels that he as a member of a great unity which is not tossed this way and that by assorted and numerous opinions, but is rather firmly and steadfastly centered. That center is the community of certain views, interests, and feelings. In it, he feels sheltered from lies and deceptions, defended from all attacks on his mental stability. He feels as if he is attacking opposing views and doctrines.
For these reasons, the large ideologically-based organizations are today in the midst of most difficult political-ideological struggles as to their essential shape and form. At the same time, the old technically based organizations with decreasing memberships seek merger, or fall apart.
When genuine and active mass movements spring up from all sides, the foremost task of national politics is to incorporate them wisely into the unified life of the nation.
At a time in which the slogan of anti-parliamentarianism has become the rage and in which the glorious past is though to tower over all present organizational forms of the state and human society, the existence of federations, interest groups, and ideological associations and parties is, in an obvious misunderstanding, labeled as “parliamentarian” by those who are always limping behind events and developments. He who possesses no feeling for living growth sees in the current state of each only the contradictions and contrasts that everything living has.
A writer investigating such current developments can easily become an unfruitful critic. He who is able to describe and portray historical events brilliantly is at times helpless before current developments. Or, he may be so filled with hate and hostility because of his own unfruitful dogmas that he is unable to perceive the living force and the triumphant desire for freedom and form of new ideas, much less to properly evaluate them.
What, they ask, is the meaning of organization, federation, association? Why they become superfluous in the course of the development of political power. Party? The party is absorbed by the state! They are all parliamentary fossils. Whoever has power handles all these questions “from the top down.”
What nonsense! As if there has ever been word of a command transmitted into action that did not have an organization supporting its realization! Organizations become superfluous in the course of the development political power — that means no more nor less than anarchy and chaos, it means powerlessness! Organization is hierarchy, that is, order and subordination, the perfection of strength.
Today twenty million, and perhaps in the future forty million, radio listeners of differing political views have united their most vigorous elements in mass movements, in listener federations. The duty of a strong government cannot be to smash the controlling organs that spring from a living need of the masses. As is well known, one cannot in life simply abolish opposition, not to mention a totality. We cannot do it in ourselves, even less if we want to try the experiment with the masses. Psychology tells us that emotional forces cannot simply be eliminated, but rather they can only be suppressed.
This knowledge is also based on the methods of struggle used by all successful ideological movements. In Facism as well as in Bolshevism and National Socialism, intelligent leadership has realized from the beginning that it would not be sufficient to be critical of the existing order. One must also give the masses something to believe in.
Radio, the most advanced technical form of influence and education, must make use of these laws and experiences.
The listener organizations have developed out of necessity. Depending on their political outlook and their internal situation, they may be in strong opposition to or in general agreement with the governmental radio leadership. Likewise, the listener federation can be an organization of agreement as well as criticism. Should the state allow the free play of forces in the liberal sense to run wild and watch while its strongest weapon in the struggle for control of the populace becomes, in the long run, a football in demagogic hands? Or should one act in accordance with the comfortable and short-sighted views of the former Interior Minister von Gayl and build and lead the radio “without regard to the wishes of the organizations!?” Should the government apply the principle of lazisse faire, lassier alleras it does with the press and allow the strongest instrument of public opinion to fall into enemy hands, only to add grist to their mill by subsequent prohibitions? People did not worry about the mass parties on the left until they took over the state. In recognition of the technical and psychological marvel of the radio, a much bolder design must replace halfway and unfruitful methods — the radio corporation.
The concept originates with the Fascist corporate state, and suggests the professional organization planned by Hitler or the guilds of our Gothic past.
It much resembles Mussolini’s comprehensive newspaper policies, which firmly incorporated all of Italian journalism into the Fascist national state despite all the individual escapades, or the Theater Corporation established by the Fascists. The radio corporation, however, is broader in its aims and scope. It includes within its boundaries not only intellectual leaders and the economically concerned, but the listeners as well. The radio as an instrument and as an intellectual tool has become progressively more important in comparison with the transitory technical developments during the years 1928-1933. In those years, as it is well known, people attempted to meet the growing difficulties in all states through the construction of large transmitters. The large transmitter enabled centralized leadership and control, and was therefore considered superior to newspapers, which are not centrally led. We cannot forsee future developments with certainty. Present experience shows, however, that radio centralization by no means precludes strong opposition movements among the listeners as well as among the artistic elements. The new task begins here.
The radio corporation should bring together the creative artists and the participating listeners. Between them stand industry, commerce, management, and technology.
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