So how did things go that was going on yesterday
afternoon. It went really well. Yeah, I
was surprised There were probably 25, 30 people there
. And uh, we had them scattered all over
the multipurpose room on different monitors. And so did
the presentations. Yes. The the audience followed them
around to where their monitor was. That sounds much
less formal and more collaborative, wow, That's great
. Some very interesting, diverse work for everyone working
on. Oh, yeah. It was just all
over the place from the LGBT People, The railroad
. Through the railroad. Yeah. There was a
woman that was doing history of Virginia. We're hearing
from my publication. Uh, I'm sorry. I
don't think I know your name. Oh, yeah
. You're the one who set all this up for
me. So thank you. I appreciate that.
To me. The purposes of getting people to present
what present, what they've done. And then,
yeah, we're doing great. Like races. I've
run the first half the time, it was perfect
. And then somehow as it went on slowed down
. So I said it was a full hour and
a half of people talk. It was whereas it
was supposed to be right at an hour and somehow
the math, I think too. Mhm. two
of the later ones were really kind of projects.
So there was much, here's what we're doing rather
than kind of like the fourth one, Veterans one
and the LGBT Library, which is really fascinating.
Right, still. Okay, Right. Well,
the rural electrification. Yeah, that was actually.
Is that Richard? Yeah, Yeah. I think
he's doing tomorrow. We have the whole thing.
But then having the, something special questions about,
yes, most of the projects today we are today
. All of them I think had students and researchers
great something that presented. How are you? I'm
doing. Well, your plan sort of, I
have a bunch of scribbled notes that I'm now hoping
I can read your stuff. Yeah. This is
like a little german television, yes. Television over
here. Yeah, they do. They do in
fact, yeah, over here sort of like,
right here. Okay. So we can watch clips
so we don't have to watch clips. I brought
a few that we can talk about it, but
how is the audio going to be? I think
good. We tested it. Do you want to
hear it? And I should make sure that everything
is and that this is a better, yeah,
it's a little more consolidated. And we just got
these new chairs. Okay. The posters turned out
great. Yesterday was really good. Yeah. And
these came out this kid, is that the library
copy of your book? Uh, that's the same
copy. Okay. And then she brush, I
did bring a couple of people want to flip through
or whatever. I didn't know what to do.
So um oh and then you brought all these books
out. That's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
. That's great. I should have given you some
video recommendations or citations that you could look at.
I mean you probably don't have anything that I look
at in the book but I don't know. Yeah
. Because what yeah, assuming robert the stuff that
Erica Gruevski's doing for grant was interesting because they were
actually trying to catalogue, trying to help cataloging system
for the books that are in their resources. And
so I had never heard of these scared you are
. Mhm. Mhm. Computer coming up under.
Mhm. These restaurant anything. I think I'm good
. Yeah, friday three. Mhm. Yeah.
Obviously, living arrangement. The transition in our living
arrangement. It is wonderful. And I very I
very much enjoyed the last three years. There were
some really wonderful moments and I got to know some
really great kids, but I'm really happy to have
my own house and my own deck. I'm not
on for this. Am I? You didn't record
that, did you? He's not listening. So
I guess that's a good son. Okay. Yeah
. I thought that was kind of that it's very
educational. Yes. They approach things. Oh,
it was really it was really a learning experience in
so many different ways. You know, I would
say for one thing before I went into the college
, I sort of imagine them all as little adults
running around with great, you know, with responsibility
, all this kind of thing. And then I
just see them just like chickens with their heads cut
off. You know, kids who are just figuring
it out. And that was, it was interesting
to see they're also just so incredibly optimistic about the
world. Um, it is sort of the point
is to be multigenerational, but about half the building
, so less than half the building, about 140
students a year are freshmen. So almost half the
community turns over every year, which is good and
bad, right? When you actually get to the
point of building that community, it's rough, but
more extended where I get to spend three or four
years of students tend to build report with them,
just like they graduate. Yeah, just as you're
figuring out what we need is. Hmm. Yeah
, I spent some time this week writing letters of
recommendation for kids that were freshmen when we started and
they're graduating this year and I always knew that that
transition would be kind of difficult. I'm kind of
glad I'm not there for that because it would be
very hard at the end of the year. But
uh, but yeah, it was almost hard to
write it because I just had to had to catch
myself from being too overly effusive because of, you
know, uh yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't
call it. That's one thing they really wanted to
call us like parents. They wanted to call him
dad. I mean, it was like this,
this is not what this is right, Like.
Yeah, yeah, that was a little bit creepy
. But we did have a graduate assistant who lived
with us. Oh, thank you. I I
went the other recycling route. Um Yeah, whatever
. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway
, so you should do it sometime. You have
a four year old, mm hmm. Well they
have kids now and uh yeah. And then sacks
had kids. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
You know, it's you got to have the perfect
storm of how we know. Yeah. Yeah.
It's exciting. I'm glad that I did it.
I went to a residential college as an undergraduate and
it was something that I had always sort of aspired
to do. So I'm glad that I did it
. It was different than I expected. And yeah
, we'll try to use that on. I don't
think they had that. Yeah. Try to plant
, plant the seed. Should remind what could be
that have you met my colleagues from history? This
is Helen Schneider and matt Heaton, who you've probably
met because he did this a few weeks or a
few months ago, right? And an who's uh
a trained historian, but changing careers into accounting.
So she's gonna make so much more money than the
rest of us. It's the off season now.
Yeah. Okay. Well, welcome to library.
He trying new arrangements here. Yeah, Yeah.
It looks it looks more formal from the last time
I remember it was couches and things. Yeah,
I was looking forward to the couches and sitting around
now. I'm up here behind this and it's fine
. Mhm. Thank you so much to be right
. Yes, I will try to get all historians
. If we want to, we can watch some
clips. So if we get some audience enthusiasm.
No, actually, there are no soap operas here
. No, it's not soap operas. No.
So you don't want to watch a german soap operas
? You're next brother? Oh God, no,
no one wants to watch a german, so.
Well what? Except for the uh it's not exactly
the telenovela of the, of the continent, if
you will. Right, well, I'll sit with
you. Yeah. How are you guys down?
Yeah, I'm doing all right. He's okay.
He's getting older. He's 11. He's cranky.
Yeah. Quite cranky. So I'm about to leave
. I'm going out of town for a week tomorrow
and I have to leave him in doggy spa which
he doesn't love. But well I call it that
because the last one that we used to take him
to we called the doggy concentration camp because he really
didn't like it there. And the last time I
took him there I had to literally drag him through
the door. It was terrible. So we did
the stopgap measure of using the vet which he also
didn't like. And when he goes to this place
he comes back as a whole dog which you know
he's not totally anxious and he's not completely wiped out
. And so he's doing all right. Did you
lose 1? No? Okay. Maybe I'm thinking
of Elizabeth. Yeah. Yeah. Well he bounces
when he's outside and when he's in the brush,
he loves that. But inside if if he feels
like he's gonna be touched wrong, if he's going
to come off the couch wrong, he just yelps
. And it's just he's very vocal in a a
few minutes. I was I think there's some kind
of pain that highlight tell us. All right,
No. Yeah, we'll be very thankful. Be
very thankful. Yeah, sure. I can be
ready. Welcome to the library. We're always happy
to have people come and we have been having this
really successful book talk series and today is is heather
comfort. And I am Bruce open hugs and I
am the coordinator of the reference desk here in the
library. And I just wanted to welcome you to
the library and then I'll turn it over to dr
ewing, he will introduce our speaker. Okay,
thanks. I'm gonna stand over here where the microphone
is just okay, you can't hear me. Um
So yeah, sometimes in the complicated elections and sciences
and um this is a series that we co sponsor
with university libraries. Thank you could have been disastrous
on many levels in this fine piece of equipment here
. Um and I guess the fourth year we've been
doing this. Um and I think it's been a
really successful effort to bring attention to scholarship um done
by by faculty, across the range of this historians
in this case. Um And um so one of
the challenges always is thinking about what connects the scholarship
. Um and the term visibility um is one that
we've kind of evolved over time, but it's actually
worked out to be a really nice theme experience this
morning and teaching a course on Russian history To actually
put out the photo of the fall of the Berlin
Wall since, as you know, it's the 25th
anniversary of that sunday. Mhm. Well, you
know, what is today, and what was interesting
was the students immediately recognized it. Just the photo
no gator for location or anything, because I think
it's become such a powerful image for us of this
really tremendous transformation. And of course, as we
all know these students now, we're not alive at
that time, he seems so young. Um but
it's one that they know, you know, they
kind of instinctively know it. And I think what's
interesting about what I was thinking about setting that up
this morning, and also thinking back on it is
um you know, that's an experience that much of
the world experience through television, you know, and
so are images of that are not just images of
the event itself, but they're actually an image of
an image. Um and and it was one of
the early, you know, kind of really live
broadcasting things where people were knowing they knew as much
about what was going on as the people that were
there, even even those of us on several hours
behind or whatever, and then the time zone.
So I think it works really well, and part
of the reason we scheduled scheduled Heather's presentation for november
Was to recognize that 25th anniversary of course have many
anniversaries going on, it's the centennial of the First
World War. Um and as we had a workshop
on Tuesday for Montgomery County called the Teachers on World
War One, and at the end of that,
one of them pointed out that it was the 8/100
anniversary of the Magna carta, and we're gonna have
a workshop on that which prompted exactly that kind of
laughter. Um so, so keep your eyes open
for that, but I think, you know,
these themes around visibility and scholarship are perfectly well suited
um for heather's work on television, in the german
democratic republic, so I will turn it over to
her and she'll take questions at the end and then
there's um food and drink for you to enjoy during
the presentation or effort. Thanks feel and feel free
to eat. Well, thank you. Do I
need to use the microphone, or? Okay,
Am I talking too loud if I use this?
No, this is good, so I'm gonna have
to be stuck here, is what we're saying,
Okay, it's what slightly quieter than me speaking.
Is that better? Sorry, Well, thank you
so much tom and I'm really happy to be a
part of this series and I'm so grateful that you've
done this. I think you were the progenitor of
this in the first place. And it's been a
really wonderful opportunity for all of us to get to
know the really excellent work that is being done in
our college. And so thank you. And I'm
honored to be included in this, Given the introduction
that Dr Um gave me about November nine in the
fall of the Berlin Wall. I'm sorry to tell
you that I'm not gonna be doing very much with
that today. The book that I'm talking about is
this and it's envisioning socialism, television and the Cold
War in the german democratic Republic. Thank you very
much. It is very nice to hold it in
my hand. It was published I think in february
. I got my first copy in april when I
bought it from amazon myself. So I was very
happy to see that the cover turned out well.
And look, it's got a purple back, which
was very exciting. Um so yes, After 10
or 15, or you want to say how many
years of work, it's really gratifying to see it
here. But in the book, I don't really
go beyond 1970. The period that I'm really interested
in is this period of the 1950s and the 1960s
, this moment in time where we have the emergence
of a new medium of communication. That is this
, this medium of television at the same time as
we have the emergence of these new states coming out
of the rubble of the Second World War. So
, the Federal Republic of Germany, that is West
Germany, which is not the one I talked about
, was founded in May of 1949. And East
Germany the communist one, which I do talk about
was founded in october of that year. So six
months later, 1952, both of them had started
having television services and television was relatively new. This
may seem strange because of course, some people are
aware that the Nazis broadcast television right in the 1930s
, most famously from the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
But this was a very different kind of television.
The television that emerges in the 1950s is very different
. It's an all electronic system. It relies a
lot on light. The mechanical system that came before
relied a lot on extreme darkness. If you can
imagine that it's a very different kind of a medium
. So you would take the camera into a room
, make it completely dark and then shine a light
on whatever it was you wanted to see. A
chemical element would basically react against that light and that's
how the signals would be transformed. So just imagine
what modern family would look like today if we were
all sitting in the dark and all we could see
was their faces. Unless they happen to go out
from beyond the spotlight will be a very different kind
of a medium. So, So 1952, very
new kind of a medium emerging and it's moving pretty
pretty fast and hello, moving fast and quickly across
the continent. So we see it emerge in West
Germany and East Germany in the early 50s, we
also see it emerging. Czechoslovakia, Of course,
places like the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union and
France had already been experimenting with television in the 30s
, albeit albeit that was cut off by the Second
World War. So what I was really interested in
is how these two things really influenced and complicated one
another, you have a state who is now coming
out and trying to create a whole new society,
a new nation if you will. And here's this
new means of communication with which they can possibly do
that. But television itself Does not spring fully formed
in 1952. There is not a sense of,
oh the Americans have television and this is what they
do with it and this is how the technology works
and that's what we must do. They did not
have that kind of a model. And it might
even surprise you to know that of course television in
America in the 1950s was not as developed as we
often think it is. Um many historians of American
television talk about the 1950s is the period of sort
of a nationalization of television, if you will,
that is that in this period you have television services
in New York and in Chicago and in L.
A. And they're basically broadcasting to themselves. Right
. It's only with the emergence of shows like I
love lucy that were filmed instead of instead of televised
. They were actually filmed on film that you would
use for the cinema for example, and then flown
across the country where you actually see people all over
the US watching the same programs, Not at the
same time, but close to 2345 hours later.
Right, so this is our this is emerging in
the not in America in the 1950s. So although
we might think that the Germans were a little bit
far behind, there's still a lot of work to
be done in places uh in North America, for
example, part of what I try to do in
the book is really argue against, as I've suggested
in these comments against a technological determinism that we have
television, we automatically know what television is. And
what I do is I sort of try and trace
the ways in which the television emerged and grew in
the GDR. And what historians of technology bring to
this is a sense that, you know, technology
isn't just patents, it's not just what sits on
the table in front of you. It's how those
things confront the social, political, cultural conditions of
the, of the geopolitical context within which it emerges
. So, I'll tell you a little bit of
a story which is sort of a through line of
the book, if you will. Um, in
the GDR television emerged, uh, in a way
that suggested that the state and others really sought in
a very instrumental kind of away And that is in
the early 50s when television was starting to be built
, there was absolutely no discussion of, well,
there was little discussion of reception, there was no
discussion of what a program might look like. It
was all about the technology itself. And by that
, I mean, the technology, technological infrastructure of
broadcast dissemination, right? It was about building television
towers. It was about covering territory, essentially.
And this was all part of this emerging Cold War
. Right. This idea that we need to have
sovereign territory. And one of the ways in which
we can achieve that is by covering our territory with
broadcast signals. A so other people can't take those
signals, Because if you're not using your broadcast frequencies
in the 1950s, they could be redistributed away from
you, for example. And so that they can't
broadcast in as well. Like we can sort of
keep those out. So it's sort of a um
offense if you will, a broadcasting fence in some
ways. Um so very instrumental Um in this period
between 52 and 56, which is the point where
we see some significant change that I'll talk about in
a moment. There's it's defined by a narrowly political
mission. Right again. First, this this political
mission to cover territory to protect territory in the GDR
. And then once 1956 comes along, it's a
very important moment in time in European history. This
is uh Stalin, for example, who was the
head of the soviet union, died in 1953 in
1956. Khrushchev, who is sort of the successor
, if you will, of Stalin comes to power
. And one of the things he does is he
unleashes a wave of desalinization. He goes out in
the 20th party congress and he says, look,
here's what Stalin did we denounce these things that Stalin
, did we want to move on and have a
different kind of a system? And this allowed some
sort of liberalisation across the Eastern bloc and led to
a number of uprisings, particularly in Poland and Hungary
. The Hungarian one was particularly long and drawn out
and brutal, and I'm not going to go into
it today, except to say that this was really
fundamental for Eastern, intelligent. It seems very strange
, right? Um but this is the moment that
the s a day the ruling Socialist Unity Party of
the G. D. R. That is the
Communist Party that's running the country, decides that in
fact television needs to be there, that this is
something that is important, that we do need to
not just have the infrastructure, but also the programming
to go along with. And interestingly, the reason
that they had come to this decision was because the
east german television service, which had been around for
now several years and sort of experimenting with different kinds
of programming um had reported on the uprising but had
not reported correctly on the uprising. Now, we
might think at face value, that seems that they
were saying something that might have been in favor of
the revolutionaries or they might have showed the wrong pictures
, but in fact, it was that they didn't
really deal with that at all right. They dealt
with what was going on at home and there are
a lot of real structural factors for that. And
one of the things I do in the book is
sort of give you an example of what television was
actually, what was actually a possible on television in
early 1956. And I start with this example of
the olympic games in Cortina D'Ampezzo, which had happened
nine months before. And one of the things that
that lays bare is that the kinds of reportage that
we are used to write that crosses international boundaries,
that shows us live events as they are happening in
other countries, that infrastructure did not exist. It
was not possible for them to get pictures from Hungary
. They didn't have people in Hungary to take those
pictures, They didn't have live feeds that were coming
from Hungary to do that. So, it was
very difficult for them to do those things. They
were also following what was a fairly set in stone
kind of agitation plan that had come down from the
S a day that said, okay, the things
that you're responsible for are working towards german reunification,
right, that is at this point in time,
there's still this sense that there's going to be a
one Germany and what we need to do is prove
that were on that side, Right? So what
did they do? They went out into the folks
calmer and they took film, and this was the
People's chamber of Government which was debating the kinds of
things that were going on in Hungary, and they
reported the elements of it that talked about german reunification
, right, just as they had been told to
. So it's interesting, you know, political,
one of the things I think that you can take
from this is that political mandates are slippery. They
need to change up a little bit uh in a
spontaneous way to uh to recognize current events. And
this was not something that they were doing at the
time, but in any case, it unleashed sort
of a wave of uh concern and attention from the
government, who then continued to develop the infrastructure of
the service, but also was interested in developing studio
facilities and Receivership. So they encouraged Eastern and industry
to start producing much cheaper receivers than they had before
. So television started to demonstrate how politically important it
could be. Um television, of course, is
this suggests, was not particularly, it was very
compliant in this uh in this task that was set
out for it, right? We don't look at
the television service and say, wow, that's where
the dissenters were, right, That's not what we
think. But neither can we say that these are
the people who were sort of uh constructing a very
repressive sort of vision of something. These were people
who were experimenting with the technology that they had,
trying to figure out how to make this something meaningful
within the lives of East Germans and something that became
increasingly clear over the next several years. Was that
a, you have to have some kind of a
program, right? You couldn't be broadcasting two and
four hours a day, five days a week,
like they were doing in 1952 and 1953. Uh
, and you can see a concomitant rise in the
amount of programming to about eight or nine hours a
day by 1960. Right? So you have to
have programming. You also have to have an audience
, right? And early audiences were intel were public
, right? There were there were people who went
and visited television rooms in vacation lodge is uh,
in community clubs, in state government buildings and that
kind of a thing. This was really a stopgap
measure. It was not something that the East Germans
ever said, we want people to watch television and
public because then we can keep an eye on what
it is that they're thinking about things, right?
This was something where they said, We don't have
any television sets, any television sets. And this
was the case in 1953. Any television sets that
are being constructed are being sent back to the Soviet
Union in in uh to fulfill reparations obligations. So
we don't have that kind of thing. By 1954
, they're starting to sell more sets within the public
. So that was a stopgap measure, but certainly
it was the first place. Can you not hear
me? Okay. It's getting harder. I'll try
and stand closer. Is that better? Okay.
Um Right. Uh so you need to have programming
, you need to have an audience who's gonna watch
that kind that programming uh and it needs, in
order to have that audience. It needs to be
something the audience wants to watch, right? And
this is something they increasingly figured out over the course
of the late 50s. What is it that people
want to watch? And what do you imagine it
is that people want to watch anyone? What sports
? I got early votes for soap operas over here
. Yeah. News. Yeah, absolutely. Right
. Sports being a really big one among men and
youth, and kids really want to watch sports.
They do want to watch news. And in particular
, what they're really interested in is something that's live
, right? That was the one thing about television
that really could differentiate it from other things, not
radio so much, except that you could see it
, right? You're seeing something going on live and
ostensibly unmediated. I mean, of course it is
mediated, but we can talk more about that later
if you want. But this certainly was the promise
, if you will, of television Before 1955,
it was very hard for them to fulfill this in
the way that viewers would have wanted, in part
because they had no technology to transmit outside in the
out of doors. Right? So they were watching
things happen live because it was transmitted and it was
gone. That was it. So, so if
he was recording me now, this could be transmitted
live, but that wasn't the live that people wanted
, right? The live that people wanted were the
things like Cortina d'Ampezzo. And of course, the
day wanting people to see pictures from the streets of
Hungary, for example, that's the lives that people
wanted. Um, they also wanted to watch entertainment
programming. And this is something that came over from
films that came over from radio. This is nothing
new. Uh, and it's something that the service
had to really figure out how they were going to
do this and still fulfill their political mandate, right
? And by this time their political mandate was to
reach East Germans, but more importantly, or at
least as importantly, reach West Germans, right.
They wanted programming that was going to reach a pan
german audience. Try them, try to bring them
over to the side of the Communist Party. Right
, Okay. So they were fairly compliant in this
. And in the next section of the book,
I talk about the way in which television, I
don't want to say was used because that suggests an
intention that I don't think was necessarily there. But
the way in which it sort of accompanied, if
you will, the second Berlin crisis, this crisis
between 1958 and 1961 that ultimately ended in the construction
of the Berlin Wall in August of 1961. And
one of the things I do, there is some
sort of cultural studies style textual analysis of crime thrillers
and I look at the kinds of language and images
and plots that they're putting forward to sort of suggest
what's going on in the GDR. And with out
of the G. D. R. In this
very same language is being used in the context of
August of 1961 to explain why the wall is being
built. So I think there's a really important sort
of connection there. The television was able to familiarize
to normalize too, to bring this kind of language
to viewers in a way that was much less,
a much less, what would one say, shocking
perhaps than just seeing the image of a wall being
built and going, oh my goodness, what is
going on here? So, I think that's really
important. After the wall was built, the television
, the country in general was less interested in repression
and more interested in sort of organizing consent, if
you will, that is reaching out to people and
saying, hey, we're all in this together,
let's develop a community. And I think this is
what we can see going on in television as well
. Right? Um, at the moment that the
wall is being built, there are a number of
productions that are underway that are that have been,
that are underway because they're supposed to be part of
a special centerpiece program that's supposed to celebrate uh,
celebrate the 20th anniversary of the of the of the
G. D. R. Right? And what
we can see here is in these in these kinds
of programming. We see new experiments that are pushing
and new and I would argue very modernist kinds of
directions right there looking very different than the kinds of
programming that people have seen to this point. They
also have very specific political, political points. But
those political points are fairly uh, they fit fairly
well with the general project of what what the essay
is trying to do. But in the context of
the wall, we also see these kinds of programs
being censored. Right? So we see two instances
of what seems like incredible repression, Right? We
see the wall being built. And then just,
just, just a few months later, we see
these programs being yanked from the air. Right?
Um, what I try to do in this is
try and rethink the way in which we can talk
about censorship uh, in in the GDR. Because
what I think is going on with this particular set
of programs is not what people normally say. So
one of the things that makes this different from our
normal vision of censorship is that these programs were allowed
to air, they actually went on the air and
then they were later retracted. So in other words
, they were not rerun, for example, people
were not supposed to see them. It's not like
people could disseminate them or anything like this. And
yet there was this incredible discussion in the press about
them. Right? So censorship, right? There
is not great at sort of tamping down when something
happens, right? If you want something to go
away, you don't censor it because then it gets
talked about. But what it also I think tends
to show this this excerpt is that the kinds of
programming, the kind of program that this was also
did not resonate with the public. So it didn't
resonate with the sort of higher ups if you will
, but it also did not resonate with the public
. The public was very confused. And I have
a clip, some clips here that we can look
at later if anybody is interested, but was very
confused by this. And it didn't they didn't really
know who to root for. And there were lots
of these kinds of questions. So the question of
narrative is really important, right? The question of
narrative is really important. They wanted these evening filling
entertainments, things that were easy to digest, things
that they could sit on their couch and sort of
watch and and go to work the next day or
at the end of the weekend. Right Then.
I argue that of course, by 65, which
is the end point for me, um, television
had achieved political discipline, right? It had managed
to it had gone through all of these cultural debates
. It was sort of on the margins of a
cultural debate in 1961, it became very central to
cultural debates by 1963, And it had sort of
pushed to the forefront of this and managed to achieve
some kind of political discipline. By 1965, it
retrenched into more conservative kinds of programming, and it
became sort of a model for what they called socialist
realism, right? And socialist realism is a very
slippery concept. We're not always sure what we're talking
about, but here, what I mean, is
a naturalistic style of representation that deals with the everyday
lives of ordinary Germans, right? And this was
expressed very specifically in a set of very specific narratives
of socialist conversion. Right? You see this going
on Over and over across the 1960s in 1961,
in 1965, and in 1968 in particular, there
are these very um expensive and also very popular miniseries
that are run all of which followed the same general
trajectory. Right? That is that you have the
Nazi officer, right? And he's gamely fighting the
Second World War. But by the time we get
to the Battle of Berlin, he's deciding maybe I
shouldn't have to defend that bridge, or maybe I
don't need to kill people into that mass grave or
shoot people into that mass grave. And he starts
to have this conversion. He ends up back in
East Germany, he meets with communists, he's still
not convinced, but over time he manages to be
convinced and he becomes one of the foremost sort of
representatives of socialism within his community itself. So it's
in five or six parts, it will show this
conversion over time. This narrative just came forward again
and again and again on television, many of which
many of these shows were actually adapted from memoirs that
had been written by people who were who had fought
in the Second World War. And we're sort of
trying to tell their story if you will. So
very much very much becoming a model, if you
will of the kinds of stories that that um the
s a day the ruling Socialist Unity Party would have
wanted to see and showing them the way people wanted
to see them. That is naturalistic lee. Right
, okay, I don't really want to go too
far anymore, except to say that. Um because
I think I'm seeing some glazing over, I don't
I don't want to lose anyone here except to say
that some of the things that I tried to do
in the book were sort of hit some of the
high political moments and see how television fit in.
I think you can get a sense of that,
but I also was really interested in trying to excavate
if you will sort of the experience of the programme
of Daily Life and how television fit into that.
I also really wanted to work on some television aesthetics
. Uh you know, see how the emerged how
television art had changed over time. But of course
, that's very difficult in working on television from the
1950s, anyone want to guess why There's no footage
, right? There's like literally nothing live television was
live until the, until the invention of recording technology
in 1957. The American Ampex Corporation was responsible for
that, but the East Germans didn't get recording technology
until 1962. So that's most of the way through
my period. Right? So in some cases,
you can see shows that were partly live studio footage
that were then inter cut with things that they had
to film elsewhere. Because that was the only way
to do it. I am actually luckier than most
historians of television. Most historians of television suffer from
the, from the complete lack of sources. In
this case, the context of the Cold War was
very helpful because over the course of the fifties and
the sixties, the East and West Germans were actually
filming each other stuff, literally putting a camera in
front of a television receiver and just recording whatever came
over the airwaves To try and see what was going
on on the other side right now, I don't
think I need to tell you that this is not
television is not a document, right? It does
not document uh, what is going on on the
other side. But certainly that's the way that they
imagined that. So after the fall of communism in
the 1990s, they switched their, uh, their
archives. And so we do get to see some
things uh, that we otherwise might not have seen
. But however, it is very, it is
incredibly fragmentary. And so, um, so,
um, I think I'd like to leave it there
for a bit. Do you have any questions or
would you like to watch any clips, clips?
Okay. Um, let me see. I brought
, what time is it? I don't even have
any idea. It's 3 30. Okay, mm
hmm. This one is not actually from East German
television. This one is from uh, a film
, a recent film from the early 2000s called Xanana
lay. Uh, does anybody, has anybody watched
this film? It's a German film directed by a
former East German. He was born in East Germany
in 1959. And he directed this film. It
was often sort of criticized if you will as being
too much of a glorification. It was part of
this whole Austell g um this movement, if you
will, of memoir literature and that kind of thing
that was emerging by the end of the 19 nineties
about the experience of living in the GDR. And
people at the time, particularly in the west were
a little bit horrified by this because people were saying
good things about the G. D. R.
And so they saw it as being a little bit
of glorification. But this clip, I think is
particularly interesting because this is, it takes place in
the household of a family who lives in East Berlin
. But their their relatives from the city of Dresden
have come to visit them. And the thing that
Dresden, the thing that sort of distinguished the city
of Dresden was it was in the so called calderon's
lows in that is the valley of the clueless.
They were so called because they could not receive Western
television signals because the territorial signals did not reach them
. So here's the representation of the dresdner relatives coming
to watch Western in television. And I'll talk over
it. So we don't really need to hear the
sound. Mm hmm. The Messina Anton tell us
. And again, I didn't subtitle it because I
don't think it's really important to know what's being said
here. Except that the guy sitting on the end
of the couch number is explaining what's going on on
the screen. Like it's kind of self explanatory,
but he's doing it nonetheless. And what we really
care about here are the reaction shots. What are
these relatives doing? Mhm. Mhm. Usually they're
so excited about Westbourne zan. They always what time
has passed. We're still watching less television he's asleep
. What's also interesting about this is it fits into
a film in which a number of different types of
immigration are happening. So it's the next morning he
wakes up they're still watching Western television and he shocked
because right situation. Oh because they're watching the test
signal and why would anybody watch the test signal?
Right so back to the immigration thing. So there's
a woman who pops her head the wife pops her
head around there and she's actually making preparations to try
and flee the flea east Germany across the border.
And in the film she makes it to the checkpoint
but she doesn't have the courage to go through.
So she comes home and her son, of course
, is in another room playing with, you know
, Western listening to Western rock music. So that's
yet another kind of immigration, right? Immigration through
television. Immigration through pop culture, and immigration across
the border itself. So, anyway, that I
I brought that because I think it's a really interesting
example of the ways in which people thought about east
german television, it's boring, it's dull. Why
would you want to watch it? Everybody watched Western
television. And one of the things I think I
demonstrate fairly well in the book is that that is
not the case, right? They did watch Western
television. They also did watch Eastern television, and
really where the fault line lay was what kind of
programming was being shown if the West was showing a
feature film that people were interested in, and the
East was showing news the west was gonna win.
But if it was the other way around uh the
East had had a much like a much better chance
of winning as well. Um Let me see.
I'll show you something from 1958, which is uh
sort of what I think most people expect to see
on East German television. It's highly political. It's
just a few minutes here and there are subtitles so
you'll be able to read it. He's like to
indians. Yeah. And I feel a little how
about these getting in english class and why is that
? Looks Colonel? Is that you want so long
? Yeah, tanks and guns are due to either
story in my head against this card in china,
right begin in between other than missing these events.
She Mrs nine last year. It's a good bye
, my little Zach. The strategy for$14.
Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Just give us
a push move up the knowledge. Okay. He's
been giving this a chance restrictions are in his eighties
. Mr english and mr don't know. But these
are kind of What's that? That notion that you
answer this famously excuse me? Mr Medina choice,
I'm sure his guns and then come back. So
not so many businesses. However, in a ring
with this man mm these dots are attracted by the
host getting there. No, it's more than anyone
in the history of the mind. It's off taking
an organization, understand for a productive cough if it
came from his body is that's kind of your I've
had men and young boys And it sounds using your
guy 11. The# five. My therapist set
in a machine and I like the idea of a
market as part of his own woman. Industry professionals
must get business. He visited Shiva's. Let's begin
this eventually. Yeah. Damn it commits some help
and making their starts. Mm been thinking about pregnancy
but I'm not so good animal shots. Again.
The event of a conflict of society doesn't understand about
Anderson feeling in these forget to eat like a minor
rights and houses. Yeah, I love that image
. The florid swamp, right? The florida swamp
of West Berlin. Fantastic impressions. Okay. Was
this is an example of one of those crime thrillers
. I was talking about where they're using this kind
of language and they're doing it for years. I
mean they're using this kind of language and developing different
kinds of plots. This was a very this was
not a very good episode of this particular series.
It was incredibly convoluted. There were like five different
plots and there were eight different people and groups involved
in this. But I think you can also get
a sense of what television looked like at that point
, right, fairly static still in a fairly small
studio. They all had, I mean, that
was effectively one shot. They had to really know
their lines and he does trip over his line there
at the end. They don't quite make the cut
to the, to the second speaker quickly enough.
So, um, it's really interesting sort of document
of the, of the kind of filmmaking that was
television making that was really, really possible at that
time. So that I think is what most people
think of when they think of east german television.
Here's something from a little bit later. Uh,
let's see You want this one. Okay, this
is from a variety program from 1965. Did I
show you this one? Oh, yes, yeah
. Variety shows have been in the news lately.
We can talk about that too if you want.
But this was a variety show. And uh,
when, I mean, variety show, I mean
a show that would include musical bits and invited acts
. So you can see there's an orchestra here,
but they would also have invited acts, but they
also did things outside of the studio that we're uh
crazy one could say. So, uh it was
all about honoring sort of ordinary socialists, right socialists
who had done their duty and had done it very
well. So there was someone who had moved into
into what they call a nobel venom, or one
of these newly built apartment buildings, uh, you
know, after the destruction of the war, and
uh, the show had gone in and changed out
their water supply for a keg. So basically their
water, their their uh, what do you call
it? A faucet was tapping a keg rather than
the water supply. Uh They did other things like
there was somebody who was getting married and they were
being honored for being wonderful and they put them on
a brand new Trayvon, which was an east german
car, which were very difficult to get right.
They loaded that Trayvon onto a helicopter and they flew
them to Hungary for a vacation. I mean there
were these very sort of and some of this is
visual and some of it is not right. The
question is, how much of that did we actually
see the idea of watching somebody put a turbans on
a helicopter and then fly them away is fantastic.
Were they able to actually show that? No.
Right. So instead you get the shot of the
family at the long dinner table sort of watching,
you know, this happened and that kind of thing
. But, so here we go. So this
isn't, well, I think it's self explanatory.
Well, we'll just go on from here, investors
in the disorder school for deep. Yes. Even
like that was the big thing is that the next
universe we have been in a man. There's a
place in the already, there's no defending bomb.
This club is provided point here. This is him
in his bedroom. Right? Yeah, supposedly.
Wow. This is later in the show. So
they take the bed out of the apartment they reconstructed
on a motorized platform. Your, your, yeah
, yeah. You finish that. Yeah. Everything
. He arrives at the fruity stop ballast and they
re create his bedroom around him. Come on.
Are you upset that we did this or was it
fun? It was fun. All right. Come
on, Sorry. So now he's honoring him and
he's saying now hopefully you understand what we've done here
, but we've done it for a reason. Sorry
. Okay, there we go. Wonderful first impressions
. But he because he pitches in, he's always
helps, right? He's always ready to help any
of his colleagues at work. And it's of course
many of these people were nominated by their colleagues or
their family members. And it was for things like
being really great for your family and raising great kids
and doing great work. And it wasn't the kind
of thing that we associate with the so called Chicano
fights of the Henoch a movement which was all about
. They went they went way over the quotas and
they, you know, they worked 18 hour days
. It wasn't about that. It was about just
living your life as a socialist. All right.
It was very it was very interesting show. Yes
. Yes. Yes. So there was another woman
who was a traffic officer and she was being promoted
and the way in which she was promoted is that
her superiors called in the show and the show went
and there was this massive traffic jam. So she's
standing in the middle of an intersection with cars everywhere
on all sides. And the show shows up and
says, and by the way, we're promoting you
Blah Blah Blah. So these very incredibly visual kinds
of things sometimes, right, what was what was
still possible at this time? And then by the
end of the 1960s you have these even more massive
spectacles, right Socialist spectacles that are all about working
with the population, right things that took an entire
day not to plan to do right there, doing
this from different places around the Republic. they've got
different studio facilities by this time, they've got different
camera positions, they have a moderator like this,
but then they're showing this full group over here and
this, and they would always do this on the
anniversary of the Republic, right, massive undertaking.
Sometimes a third of def staff would be used for
this for months, right? To get this kind
of thing Specifically, hugely expensive, and it didn't
survive the 1960s. So part of what I what
I suggest here is that by the by the middle
of the 60s, they figured out how to represent
socialism in a way that is that is that is
palatable even to ever, you know, state authorities
, to the audience. And those, I mean
, those we talk about them in a very monolithic
kind of way, but they also, they occupy
multiple subject positions, let's say, right, they
have different um they have different agendas if you will
, but by the end of the sixties, they
can't afford to do this anymore, right? They
are by 1969 they've introduced a second channel which is
supposed to be about addressing West Germans more particularly,
it's also sometimes broadcasting color and not always, but
sometimes broadcasting color, which is also much more expensive
. They have much more of a schedule, a
much larger, longer schedule that they need to fill
and they cannot provide the programming for it. So
increasingly they, and it's not just them. This
is an international issue, right? Especially across the
smaller countries of europe, right? Where they are
increasingly relying on an international market, immediate programming.
So they're buying stuff from what they call the Socialist
Brother lands, they're buying them from Romania from Hungary
, from the soviet Union. They're also buying it
from the west. But the problem with that is
right. Political reliability, right? And as we
know, maybe you don't, the GDR was one
of the more conservative countries in the Eastern bloc.
And now they're trying to get programming from other countries
that don't necessarily share their same values. And it
becomes a very difficult, you know, fine line
. They consistently, over the course of the late
sixties are getting into trouble because they're going up against
that line. And they're saying, but wait,
this was shown in the, in the film theatres
. This is an award winning Czechoslovakian thing, why
can't why can't we do this? So, it
becomes much more difficult for them. And really this
this this wonderful sort of moment of nation building project
, if you will, kind of comes a bit
to an end, Uh, by the end of
the 70s. So there you have it. Questions
, questions, comments. Yeah, logistical question.
Um, so you're saying that it's sort of,
it's a sort of experimentation process in the sixties,
they figured out what's an appropriate and meaningful way to
represent socialism By what processes are they actually figuring that
out? Are they watching what they're actually taking away
, right, committee figure out which experiments are working
? Yeah, that's a good point. It's a
couple. There's a couple of different answers. And
one is that already in the middle of, by
1956, they had started to go out, they
started getting a lot of viewer mail, right?
And they were, you know, sort of putting
it in a box somewhere and reading it, but
not really doing anything with it. And then I
thought, well, maybe we can go out and
figure out what it is they actually think. So
, they started actually creating these relationships with viewers and
trying to, you know, they would go out
to the television rooms, or they would go out
to apartment buildings, and they would ask people what
they thought about things Very rudimentary audience research, which
by 1962 becomes much more methodical. So they actually
have an office that's that's doing audience research, and
there's lots of great examples. There are some people
who say, well, how can we believe the
audience research that is done by a communist country?
But the thing is they want to know these things
as well, and there's not really much of an
incentive when it's a proprietary document to hide much of
what is going on. So, um, so
I think that we can trust, we don't have
to take everything at face value, but we can
trust, and we can we can see the contours
of what emerges. But what's really important on the
other side of that is that um and people were
very vocal about what they wanted and didn't want to
uh incredibly vocal. Um and the other side of
that is that they're they're running up against the authorities
, right? So when something goes over the airwaves
and somebody says, wait a minute, this looks
just like this fetzer thing, and that's the other
clip that I brought with me. We don't have
to watch it. But it's the thing that was
sort of suspect because of the ways in which it
sort of represented people. Um It's um it really
was much more modernist, it was much more interested
in alienation. So it's a very it's not a
it's not a happy optimistic sort of vision if you
will, even though well what happens in it is
this dude flees from the Republic, but then he
decides to to go back, Right. That's happy
and optimistic, right? But it's the way he's
represented feeling alienated from his family, from socialism that
really upsets them. And those are the kinds of
things that are coming out of the eastern bloc,
right. Does that make sense? So there's a
lot of meetings that are held over that exact point
trying to find out where that line is. Does
that make sense? Yep. To what extent was
the programming determined by the competition that we had from
? Mm hmm. Um to what extent? Um
, It I would argue that it is more later
in the 1970s by the 1970s, you get to
this point where they become I think that was my
computer. They become very fearful about that competition.
And they there's much more of a desire of getting
Western stars for example to come and do things in
these variety shows and whatnot With TV sets in the
60s. by 19 Mhm. Right. By 1960
it's about one million. And by 1965 it's it's
much higher than that. It's like 56% or something
like that. I'd have to look back and know
the exact number. But it really does spread quickly
. Once it starts spreading, it spreads quickly.
And I think historians of the media there suggests that
it's spreading in some cases more quickly than you see
in West Germany in part because of this pan german
situation. You can see more things Compared to the
20s and the 1969. You said something right?
So there's this period of So there's cultural debates going
on in the early 50s, right? Around 52
53-56. There's there's a lot of cultural debate and
television is really on the margins of that. No
, it doesn't really participate by the early 19 sixties
, there are cultural debates that it's very much a
part of. So the this program which I'm now
regretting not talking more about or showing the clip of
is a television opera that was written by going to
ac unit who was who was a well known author
. And it was in a collaboration with age and
east german composer by the name of christ Spain.
And also understand ca who was a at that time
, he was working for data, which was the
film service, but he becomes a television director and
whatnot. And um Kunar had gotten in trouble already
in 1962 for other things that he had done.
Um he was part of the whole lyric. How
do you say that lyric didn't The sort of poetry
readings that were going on by the end of 1962
, that were seen as sort of subversive to the
state? So he drew attention that way. And
because of his involvement in this project, he brought
television along with it. Right. And then television
became sort of more suspect because of the kinds of
things that he had done for them. Um yeah
, does that does that sort of answer? Um
Okay, so the debate is getting going around 1962
and authors and whatnot are being more disciplined. But
in 1965 there's a meeting of the party at the
so called Alpha Planum, where they take a bunch
of German films that have been produced over the previous
year and they erase them from the docket, right
? They don't let them be released. And that
, I think is the final moment where you can
see sort of this discipline being laid down if you
will. Does that make sense? Mhm. What
must hey Sharon surprises as you went along? Yeah
. Parker research on of things that caught you by
surprise. Yes, there were lots of things.
Um First of all, when I started, when
I very first started the project, I wanted to
do a comparative study between east and west Germany between
52 seventies and that of course became very impossible,
right? There's a lot of logistical reasons why that
is it was it was difficult. Um One of
the things that really surprised me was once again,
I'm feeling badly about this, but this television opera
that I've been talking about, this thing that was
banned because it was the first thing that I saw
in the archive that um really just blew me away
. Right? I've watched a lot of programming and
a lot of it looks very similar and a lot
of it is, you know, it's early fifties
programming and if any of you have watched any of
that stuff, um the sort of fifties programming that
you see on american television today and like tv land
and that kind of thing is not really indicative of
the kinds of things that were being broadcast at the
time. It's just what we remember, if you
will or what the, what the, what the
industry remembers. Uh let's say it that way.
And it was really brilliant. It was so confusing
, but it was just really brilliant. It was
very, the production values were great, it was
very beautifully shot. It was an interesting story and
all of these kinds of things. So that,
so that was something, something else that surprised me
was how fragile, I guess would be the way
of saying it. Um Work on this. The
archive for this is uh and I think it's changed
a lot over time. So when I first started
working in the archive and that would have been in
2000, I was working in the old archive,
that is the archive that was held at where the
Tv station had been built and then operated through all
the years. And I mean, it was an
old building, it was kind of falling down.
The archivist was way cool, like way cooler than
most german archivists. I said, I'm interested in
looking at this, this and this. And he
said, come with me. And he took me
down into the cellar and showed me, you know
, these huge stacks of things and said, are
you sure you want to look at this, this
and this? Like, has anyone else here has
been an archive ever had that experience? You may
be, Yeah. So that was pretty surprising.
But it was interesting because fairly quickly, over the
course of the early odds, somebody figured out that
this stuff was worthwhile and they figured out it was
worthwhile because suddenly now people were trying to commission documentaries
and things. So the television that people had just
thrown on the dustbin of history and said, whoever
is going to want to watch this again right suddenly
became really important. So there were things like I
had older colleagues who had gone to conferences and needed
film and they would get film and I need these
three things and they would hand them a VHS tape
and say take it, can you imagine? And
interestingly, like by the time I got there,
that happened once, for me it did happen once
, I have to say, but it didn't,
it only happened once for me and but I took
it right back because they said, but bring it
back and these other folks that I knew who in
2003 and 2004, we're getting letters that were short
of cease and desist, but basically saying we want
our stuff back. Right. So, um,
I think it really shows the sort of trajectory of
interest and commercialization of this stuff. So it's become
kind of more difficult in some ways to see some
of the stuff. Also, the fact that there's
so much stuff out there that we still don't know
what it is. I'm sure there are, I'm
not saying, I'm sure I know that there is
a whole section of a room in the archive where
the archive has been moved to now, that has
not been catalogued, Right. And I just can't
even imagine what's in there, that and it kills
me. It really kills me. And I think
the final thing was, you know, I'm a
historian, I like my subjects to be dead.
Not all of my subjects are dead. And that
was a difficult thing. So, I sort of
went back and forth on this question of, am
I going to go and talk to these folks and
do interviews? Is that one of the ways in
which I'm going to do this? And that conversation
with myself was cut short fairly quickly because my first
few experiences with that were incredibly negative to some,
to some extent. And I'll give you an example
. So Hans Montebourg who was who worked in the
Department of Television Drama from Really a very early period
of time, I think already from 1953. Um
he was particularly important for me because after the wall
had fallen and all of this stuff was going to
be thrown out. All of his colleagues and people
from the television service that he knew they had all
these files and they're like, this is just gonna
be thrown out. So what do we do with
it? And he said, give it to me
. So he has rooms in his house that are
full of filing cabinets of things, Recollections documents.
Can you imagine a wonderful source? But he won't
let anybody look at it. And he auditioned me
to look at it by inviting me to his house
. I had to take the train out South East
Berlin and then we went to his favorite coffee shop
with the old yellow wallpaper and the doily curtains and
things like that. And he quizzed me on my
knowledge of the Eastern in television service basically. I
think trying to test what kind of story I was
gonna tell. And I managed to pass that test
uh and we went to the house and we looked
at things, but then it sort of fell apart
from there. But what came out of that conversation
was partly uh he was telling me he was trying
to engage me in wider resentments about things. So
there are other people who were around who I could
have interviewed and should have gone and talked to and
things like that. But he was trying to shape
that. I'm not exactly sure how to say this
. He was trying to shape my responses to them
in advance. I then subsequently went to a film
screening. That was a retrospective of films that had
been co productions with data and the D. F
. F. Which was the television service and a
lot of these people were there. But it was
fascinating to watch because they sat they stood in little
clumps and some of them would not talk to each
other and others of them would. I mean,
so I became very fearful of sort of retrenching these
resentments with no sense of what was real. Right
? Does that make sense? So there are people
that I mentioned in the book where Montebourg would say
things about them that I have no idea if they're
true or not. I'm not going to touch that
with a 10 ft pole. Right? I have
my own sense from the other documents and so that
that was unexpected, unexpected. No. Yeah.
Mhm. Any other while we're right at the end
, I don't want you to miss the refreshments.
Let me just ask you were doing that interview years
ago or so. Uh, what happened is he
still alive? Is he still guarding his house?
I saw him about three years ago. He's still
alive. This is gonna sound awful. Um,
he has a much younger wife, which I think
is like, which I'm not happy about because that
means that once he dies, there's still someone to
care, take this if you will. And the
thing is, he actually went as far as to
have a contract written up to give all of this
stuff to the broadcasting Archives that I worked for and
they even have a copy of everything. But at
some point he decided, no, people are not
going to treat this with the correct respect, so
we're not going to let people do it. So
it's just not, it's just not available. And
uhh so yeah, but I actually don't know if
he's alive today. I should check. I'll check
when I go home when I started my work on
Fascist Italy. There were people. Yeah. I
thought that the academic dangling chains should still be wearing
the tax and I'm carrying the swords. Yeah.
And I had I had similar to Yeah. Yeah
. People are people are difficult. Yeah. That's
why your stories, but I want them dead or
not or not. Sometimes they're great. Yeah.
That's why I moved to the 19. There you
go. See, that's the thing, you know
, any final questions, please do eat. I
feel terrible. I can leave this running if you
want to. Thank you are. There's books here
. If you want to take a look at them
, so Thanks. Yeah.