A Monumental Find: 1930s German TV on Film!

"Achtung! Achtung! Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow!"

From 1935 to 1943, that commanding cry signaled "Attention!" to people gathered in public viewing parlors throughout Berlin, as well as private sets in the homes of Nazi big shots - viewers of the world's first full-scale television program service.

Television under the Swastika, an hour-long documentary produced by Germany's Spiegel TV, tells the story in newly rediscovered film, produced for broadcast before and during WW2, and then lost track of for 60+ years amid the archives of Communist East Germany.

Previously, so little film survived from pre-1948 telecasts that the origins of TV programming were as good as lost. Now it's evident that even in that early day, TV technology and the visual medium were developing fast under the Goebbels propaganda machine, helped along by German engineering know-how.

Nazi TV presented entertainment, documentaries (themselves mostly propaganda), sports including the 1936 Olympics, and public spectacles like the Party Congresses at Nuremberg. When live cameras did not work outdoors, a film truck with high-speed processor and transmitter link aired remote pickups with only a minute's delay, complete with announcer commentary.

With the start of war, the Deutscher Fernseh gave its facilities over to the fighting forces, installing TVs in barracks and hospitals. In Paris, where the French Post Office had had its own TV station, this too was used to entertain the troops and for French-language propaganda. The Berlin station was bombed off the air in 1943, but the Paris operation continued until the liberation in August 1944.

Anyone at all interested in broadcast history should run, not walk, to smashing telly! and view this incredible discovery!

Never underestimate the language barrier...

...and never overestimate the appeal of history that goes against the common wisdom. It turns out the Nazi TV archive is hardly "newly rediscovered." In fact the documentary was made in 1999, nine years ago, as Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz (which translates to the English title). However, the English language dub is newly released as of this summer.

Scenes from the documentary


Dachgarten (Roof Garden), variety cabaret from the roof of the German Radio building, 1935.


Fernsehaufnahmewagen (television recording truck), showing processor and transmitter uplink.


Olympic soccer: Austria vs Poland, via recording truck, 1936.


Hitler's motorcade entering Nuremberg, 1936. (Note the newsreel car is a 1935 Ford.)


Architect Albert Speer, interviewed from his car, 1936.


Cooking demonstration with Fritz Janek, announcer.


Mussolini and Hitler on parade, 1937.


Hootchie-kootchie dance from soldier show, early 40s.


Ballet and all-soldier orchestra, early 40s.


Ironic juxtaposition from feature on rehabilitating amputee soldiers, 1943.

Experimentelle Mörderwitzdemonstration (Experimental Killer Joke Demonstration), 1936.

lol

"The Adolf 'n' Anton Show?"

Seriously, this is fascinating stuff -- I'd read about the German experiments, but this is ample demonstration of just how advanced they were, right on a par with what the BBC was doing at the same time. Very interesting link.

Fletch said:

Experimentelle Mörderwitzdemonstration (Experimental Killer Joke Demonstration), 1936.

lol

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Good thing Earnest Scribbler was on our side.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Amazing piece of TV-history, thanks for sharing.. That "development-broadcasting-truck" system is so sci-fi! But it worked! Im amazed.

I wonder if Leni Riefenstahl was involved with this, or was she strictly film? I'm thinking the latter, because there's no mention of TV anywhere in her biographies or filmographies.

Good God that guy talking about the "re-education" for musicians playing out of tune is the most sinister thing i think i've ever seen.

Thanks for posting this. It's great stuff.

bk

Very cool!

Thanks

Brinybay said:

I wonder if Leni Riefenstahl was involved with this, or was she strictly film? I'm thinking the latter, because there's no mention of TV anywhere in her biographies or filmographies.

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Riefenstahl was surely considered too prestigious to be involved with the TV project. TV had already failed once, as a mechanical lo-res system. So people with reputations avoided it except for one-shot interviews.

In fact, doing TV at this stage was a tricky thing for any organization. You wanted to appear high-tech and to have publicity and "firsts". But you didn't want to disappoint the public all over again. So you broadcast only on a shoestring budget, and you publicized shows mostly after-the-fact, so you could "hide in plain sight" and not draw undue curiosity.

This pattern was followed all over the world, even where there were authorized public broadcasts, such as in England and Germany.

Brinybay said:

I wonder if Leni Riefenstahl was involved with this, or was she strictly film? I'm thinking the latter, because there's no mention of TV anywhere in her biographies or filmographies.

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Well, she was not - as far as I know - involved directly... but she was producing the famous documentary on the 1936 Olympic games and I remember reading somewhere that she gave some tips to the TV crews as to what to look for, what to film and where to position the cameras during their live broadcasts...

I remember watching that documentary a couple of years ago (I am German, a collector of vintage camera equipment and a producer for German TV, so there is a triple interest ) and I was amazed at the technology of the almost-live-TV produced in the camera-development-truck...