![Sylvia Dietl (2022): Transformation und Neustrukturierung des DDR-Rundfunks im Prozess der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands [The transformation and restructuring of GDR broadcasting in the process of German reunification]](https://journalistik.online/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cropped-journalistik-hintergrund-groß.png)
Reviewed and translated by Mandy Tröger
Rarely are there dissertations that make a central contribution to a better understanding of historic reality. Sylvia Dietl’s book is such a dissertation; it rewrites an entire chapter of German media history. This is no small achievement. An indication of the book’s strength are its 658 pages and over 1700 footnotes. But the book’s power lies in its content: Dietl analyzes the transformation and restructuring of East Germany’s broadcasting system more than 30 years ago. The political scientist does this on the basis of a broad range of sources, with analytical ingenuity and a love for detail. In ten chapters, she shows how the unification of the Western Federal Republic of Germany (FGR) and the Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR) came along with »a complete transfer of institutions from West to East Germany« (80). In the course of this transfer, the restructuring of East German broadcasting was »a harmonizing process according to the model of the Federal Republic« (80). In other words, the GDR broadcasting system was dismantled and, as part of a radical transformation process, integrated into the West German media system. This process – and the book shows this in all its complexity – was unregulated and therefore highly political. The consequences of this process remain with us until this day.
Dietl’s book is an important addition to a more recent body of literature that deals with the restructuring of the media in East Germany in the early 1990s – for example, the press (Tröger 2019) or book publishers (Links 2009). For the broadcasting sector, Andreas Rummel’s (1993) excellent work on the »Role of party politics in the development of [the public-service broadcaster] Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk [MDR]« offered initial analytical insights. Rummel shows how the majority parties in the respective state parliaments used the MDR state treaty to secure their institutional influence early on. This influence led, for example, to supervisory bodies becoming less distant from the state and at the same time more dependent on political and social interest groups.
Dietl’s dissertation takes this work and runs with it: the book documents and analyzes the dismantling, restructuring and rebuilding of an entire broadcasting system. In this context, also Dietl focuses on the role of party politics in the building of the new public-service broadcasters – in addition to the MDR, this includes the Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg (ORB), which, in 2003, merged with the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) to form the Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (rbb). Thanks to the 30 year time gap, the content and analysis of the book are based on an impressive variety of sources (e.g. interviews, press reports) and detailed archival work (e.g. with protocols, internal documents). The amount of labor involved in cataloging and evaluating these sources can only be imagined and their value cannot be sufficiently emphasized.
As a result, the book offers an institutional history of broadcasting in East Germany, but above all an analysis of the political and economic interests driving its transformation. The result may not be to everyone’s taste, but that is precisely why it is so important. Dietl documents how structural decisions for broadcasting in East Germany were accompanied early on by »self-interests, power struggles and distributional conflicts« (7) on the part of West German actors. Dietl concludes that alternative courses of action and innovative policy approaches were unwelcome and therefore ignored. Given current debates in Germany on the reform of public-service broadcasting, these points are highly volatile. Dietl’s study helps to locate these debates within their historical context, and it situates the roots of recent scandals, such as the Schlesinger corruption affair at the rbb, politically. This is an achievement for which the author deserves great credit.
The institutional history is quickly told: Until the end of 1989, radio and television in the GDR were organized as two centrally structured propaganda outlets with a total of 14,000 employees (125ff.). During the mass protests of 1989, citizens of the GDR demanded freedom of information, opinion and the press, and the topic of mass media became a central catalyst for the peaceful revolution that eventually brought down the Berlin Wall. With the end of the state regime, GDR radio and television underwent significant reforms with regard to content, personnel and their structural organization (144ff.); from February 1990, they were independent public institutions (163ff.). As a result of this liberalization process, GDR broadcasting experienced a momentum of its own, and, »for a few months, GDR media achieved a journalistic freedom and independence that had never existed before or since« (143).
At the same time, there were early policy interests in the Federal Republic regarding the development of GDR broadcasting (183ff. and 283ff.). Its organizational structure was to be based on the model of the Federal Republic. Thus, with German unification on October 3, 1990, and in accordance with Article 36 of the Unification Treaty, GDR broadcasting was first turned into a so-called »institution«, continued until December 31, 1991, and then dismantled (315ff.). On January 1, 1992, new state broadcasters, based on the West German public-service broadcasting model, took over. The state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania joined the state treaty of the West German Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), and Deutschlandfunk, RIAS Berlin and the East German radio station DS-Kultur merged to the national broadcaster Deutschlandradio (453ff.).
This story reads like an institutional history of democracy, but more fascinating and revealing are the underlying battles of power and interest. This is because the creation of the new public broadcasters was a matter for the state parliaments, and their decisions were driven to a large extent by the conflicts of competing (West German) political actors. Their main concern – as the book shows for the various phases of the transformation – was to secure political influence of particular parties and state interests in the new institutions. They were not interested in a »media system oriented towards the common good« (162), for example as part of a »democratic grassroots movement« (163), as had been attempted in the interim period of the GDR. At the same time, West German public broadcasters, above all the NDR and the SFB, also pursued »intensive structural broadcasting policies« (548). This was also true for national broadcaster ZDF. The state broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk pushed for the building of the MDR and exerted influence both through the transfer of personnel and during the entire MDR planning phase (459ff.).
Dietl’s conclusion is scathing: the transformation process of GDR broadcasting was an unreflected and »uncritical system transfer« (613) from West to East Germany. Dominant West German actors never took the transformation of East German broadcasting as an opportunity to »take critical inventory of the deficits of their own broadcasting system and its institutions« (549). On the contrary, they used the »dysfunctionalities of the system that weakened democracy … to secure their own interests, such as opportunities to exert their scope of influence« (550). Thus, all the »weaknesses and dysfunctionalities« (550) of the West German public-service broadcasting model were transferred to the new East German institutions, where they were »in some cases even amplified« (613). According to Dietl, there was no critical reflection of this process whatsoever.
With such conclusion, the political scientist – even without the above mentioned body of literature – shakes up established narratives of a successful GDR media transition. She shows that West German actors pursued primarily their individual interests; reform perspectives and policies oriented towards a common good for broadcasting in all of Germany remained irrelevant. East German innovative impulses that went beyond West German norms were not taken into account, and independent East German broadcasting policies stood no chance because they were unwanted. Ultimately, this meant that »the unique opportunity for reconstituting an all-German broadcasting system«, and for developing and strengthening public-service media »was missed« (614). As a result, the scandals of recent years at the rbb and the MDR seem like the after-effects of political interests implemented at the time of transition.
The book’s attention to detail may seem too much for some, the connections it makes too complex for others. Nevertheless, they are the best proof that the most radical criticism of political and economic conditions lies in their detailed, methodologically sound and fact-based analysis. In any case, it is difficult to argue against the results.
About the reviewer
Dr. Mandy Tröger, born in 1980, is a Walter Benjamin Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Institute for Media Studies at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and Visiting Scholar at Canterbury Christchurch University in the UK. She works as a columnist for the Berlin newspaper Berliner Zeitung and has been co-editor of Journalistik/Journalism Research since 2024.
References
Links, Christoph (2009): Das Schicksal der DDR-Verlage. Die Privatisierung und ihre Konsequenzen [The fate of the GDR publishing houses. Privatization and its consequences]. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag.
Rummel, Andreas (1993): Die Rolle der Parteipolitik beim Aufbau des Mitteldeutschen Rundfunks [The role of party politics in the development of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk]. MA thesis, LMU München.
Tröger, Mandy (2019): Pressefrühling und Profit. Wie westdeutsche Verlage 1989/1990 den Osten eroberten [On the rise and death of newspapers. How West German newspaper publishers conquered East Germany in 1989/1990]. Cologne: Herbert von Halem.
About the book
Sylvia Dietl (2022): Transformation und Neustrukturierung des DDR-Rundfunks im Prozess der Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands [The transformation and restructuring of GDR broadcasting in the process of German reunification]. Munich: utzverlag, 662 pages, EUR 64.