Under the sign of the swastika

What is the nature of television and its current off-shot projects on mobile phones and tablets is an old question. The archives of the already somewhat forgotten state of East Germany proved to be a real gold mine when it comes to the history of the Cold War, but it is less known that documents from the Nazi Reich were also found there, which illuminate some episodes from that era in a new way. One of the most interesting discoveries certainly belongs to a series of 280 rolls found in canisters in the mid-nineties, which represented the last legacy of the first real television network in the world - the one created in Nazi Germany, with a program broadcast daily from the Berlin studio "Nipkow" from 1935 to 1944. (Paul Gottlieb Nipkov was a German inventor, along with Berd and Zvorkin, one of those who founded the principles on which television broadcasting is based. pictures.)

Official history acknowledges that public television broadcasting began in the mid-1934s, somewhat simultaneously in Great Britain and Germany, and then in the Soviet Union and the United States. But, that is not exactly the most accurate determination - after the experimental release of the signal in 1935, the first public TV service actually started operating in March XNUMX in Germany, whose prime minister at that time was Hitler. It is the year in which the burning of the Reichstag has already taken place, the multi-party system has been effectively abolished, the Jews have come under the attack of racial laws, and the first political opponents have already felt the charms of the system of future concentration camps.

But for the majority of Germans, who had just survived the Great Depression (the world's economic crisis number 1), the new system also showed certain initial advantages, through increased state care for the individual. Admittedly, increasingly isolated from family and everything else that would interfere with direct communication with the party in power and its leader.

In all of this, the state government saw new technologies as a way to better explain the party line to the masses. Correctly understanding that it is not enough to win minds, but also hearts, she tried to leave at least a semblance of seduction, through various products of the popular culture of the time, which, as we will see, was not much different than today's.

THE LONG BERLIN AUGUST 1936: The fact is that television was a relatively unknown medium at that time, but its ability to make a seemingly perfect copy of real life quickly showed its advantages, especially when it came to large events such as the Nuremberg Congress or especially the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936.

Ah, the Olympic Games, that wonderful training ground for all the athletes of the world! These in Berlin were the springboard for launching television into the biggest possible doors - it is estimated that as many as 160.000 people watched television broadcasts from the sports grounds, mostly in specially arranged public viewing areas in the city (Fernsehstuben).

The television of that era recorded its first great successes right then - under the management of the German Post, it was installed all over Berlin, as far as Potsdam and Leipzig, to broadcast the competitions directly to those who were not lucky enough to get a ticket. Despite the not always high-quality picture (the result of the use of three different systems, as well as the imperfections of Telefunken's equipment at the time), television drew people into the live drama at least as much as visualized radio - one viewer at the time stated that the broadcast of a polo match was excellent as long as the horses were only black or at least dark, but that is why the excitement that accompanied the event was present throughout the match.

Here's how it looked: in order to make TV reception available to everyone, the postal service arranged public television rooms, for 20 to 40 viewers and with two TV sets at their disposal, the size of which was initially a tiny 18x22 cm. The first such room was opened on April 9, 1935 at the Postal Museum, but later the rooms were bigger and better equipped, with seating between 120 and 294 and 3×4 meter screens. During the long Olympic August of 1936, there were 27 such locations in Berlin. It is estimated that the total number of television receivers at that time was only about 75, of which only a few were privately owned, but soon, at the beginning of the war in 1939, the number of televisions reached 500, so that from 1941 to 1943 this number would increase twentyfold, and nicely heated television rooms became one of the more pleasant ways to an evening is spent in the city (Michael Kloft: "Television Under Swastika", TV Spiegel documentary).

In a moment we will pay attention to the fact that the great launch of a new medium that changed the world was connected to this cheerful manifestation of emerging globalism, because it gives us an opportunity to see the context in which it appears. It was the Olympic Games where, for the first time, media presentation created a mood and turned a previously unheard-of number of distant people into indirect visitors to the drama on the battlefields - through radio broadcasts even more than through the then-presented television, but the shape of things that came was already clear. It was also the first Olympic Games, at the opening of which the Olympic flame was brought to the stadium in a spectacular relay - another idea that came from Germany (Carl Diem, a distinguished sports worker even after the war). They were rapidly modern, strangely comprehensive Games where the demonstration sport was also - art (that is, artworks with sports themes). Finally, it was the ideological Games that brought to light the aggressive racist political features of some of the leading European regimes, a great harbinger of the hell of world war.

In the midst of the controversy over whether to participate in the Games in a country that openly discriminates against people based on nationality, the American Olympic Committee broke in 1934 when it received assurances that Jews would not be prohibited from participating in them - this happened after a study visit to Nazi Germany by a legendary official Every Brandidge, who during the trip interviewed German citizens of Jewish origin through a local translator, a member of the Nazi party, and finally concluded that there was no problem, and in benefit of kind hosts added that he sees nothing strange in the fact that Jews cannot go everywhere, because they are also forbidden to enter the premises of his sports club in Chicago. The popular story says that the hero of the day was Jesse Owens, a black athlete who won four gold medals in the largest athletics stadium in the world at that time, in front of Hitler himself, who clearly did not like it, and did not shake his hand as a winner, but moved away from the scene. The truth is, again, a little different - according to Owens' personal testimony, Hitler, it seems, was leaving the sports arena anyway, due to other commitments, and he ran into Owens on the way, they even waved to each other. Of course, Albert Speer later testified how annoyed Hitler was by Owens' overwhelming victories, and he declared in his circle that blacks were born in the jungle and have more athletically perfect bodies than white athletes, and therefore they should be banned from participating in the Olympics in the future. In a well-known, unusual paradox, during his stay in Nazi Germany, Owens slept in the same hotels and traveled on the same means of transportation as all white people - something he was not allowed to do at home, in the United States. At a later reception in honor of the Olympic winners, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, he had to come by the back entrance and by freight elevator. Neither the then President of the USA Roosevelt, nor the later Truman, did not honor him with congratulations or awards. Owens was actually recognized as a finger in the eye of the Nazis much, much later, as such his contribution was minimized in the dominantly racist America of the time.

All of that was not on the available TV screens, because the news format had not yet been established, probably quite consciously. But the Olympic spectacle itself apparently sought and found a new dimension of spectacularity in television. Thus, sports and politics in an inextricable connection, for ideological and nationalistic reasons, pushed the new medium towards world importance. It was only a footnote from the future, an indication of what followed and continues to this day.

REALITY PROGRAMMING: After success with live broadcasts of sports and political events, TV station "Nipkow" came out with an ambitious studio program that attracted the attention of the public until the end of its operation. And now we come to the most interesting and provocative part of this archaeological saga - if you think that TV during Nazism had to consist of propaganda, there was actually very little or none of it in any direct form, as can be seen from the program scheme that has been preserved.

Namely, the Nazis had everything - reality TV about the life of a typical German family ("Evening with Hans and Geli"), a show with cooking for housewives, lottery draws, reports on the opening of new commercial facilities, naked singers, stand-up comedy, the first slow motion in the transmission of a boxing match, even a "Knowledge-Estate" type show, all with a depiction of the happy life of pigs on a farm. The language and programming of television, therefore, was exactly the same as it is today, on any commercial television in the world, including public service. The music was just fun, as it was after all, and everything was a bit - just fun. So, to say the least – a very recognizable program schedule for anyone who spends an evening at home in 2012, next to the TV set. In a way, domestic and international commercial television and public services are apparently still guided by this successful model set up in Nazi Germany in 1936.

Of course, others quickly came to the same idea, and the BBC discovered a similar formula with a little delay, and we do not have enough data on Soviet television and their regular program, except that in the first year of broadcasting (1938), they already produced the first TV movie and directly from Leningrad broadcast a trial of traitors (Stalin's purges were well underway). The United States was still limping along at the time, due to the typical absence of state aid in this sphere, and would develop its commercial television empires only after the war. However, Germany took the lead in designing and implementing television.

The rating and viewership in today's sense did not worry the owners of the state television broadcasting from the "Nipkow" studio much, because at the height of its popularity there were perhaps 10.000 TV sets in the entire great German country. But the plans for the new electronic medium were therefore big. A few thousand of the first viewers in the aforementioned specially built public television viewing rooms, and much less at home (mainly regime officials, who acquired the first television device, the Einheitsempfänger, with only one fixed channel), had the opportunity for a few hours a day for nine years to he watches German television as the Nazis wanted to see it - as a new medium that brought real events closer to them "as if you were there". The illusion of instant visual physical "presence" at the scene was the main asset of television in its early years. At first glance, television was not such a good tool for the transmission of ideological messages, not like the then ubiquitous radio or the then influential film works, or even "movie news", and here art in the service of ideology proved to be superior, but - reality TV transmitted everyday life with the fidelity of a hyperrealistic image, so the trivialization of the ongoing crime was more convincing. It is all the more convincing when you present the ideological image as life itself, in all its ordinariness, which the Nazis could not have missed.

The ruler among the media at that time was certainly radio, whose characteristics also show the same psychological need to build and experience a specially created image of a desirable reality, mediated by high-tech means that make the illusion imperceptible, and as "real" as possible. On the radio, it is created by the human voice, as the basic means of transmitting the fatal combination of message and impression, information and emotion. On television, this was joined by the image, and television's pretension to supposedly convey reality - from the beginning dictated by framing, fast editing and directing - quickly developed into a full-blooded version of parallel reality, in which "real reality" is only released when necessary and dosed. Television created experience desirable social relations, and the Nazis conducted this new technological breakthrough into consciousness with the expected ideological enthusiasm.

Joseph Hebbels (not Goebbels), the manager of the whole plan, once explained their vision to Margaretha, Rudolph Hess's sister, who was involved in the television development project: "We will be able to show everything, whatever we want." We will create a reality that the German people need and will be able to copy. Your role is to teach the Germans to live that way."

EARLY VIRTUAL DAYS: What do the recordings of early television made in Nazi Germany reveal to us in particular, which is shown to us as an exemplary, well-ordered country? A few things, but the basic discovery is to the point turning a citizen into a consumer, in the everyday consumer of ideologically correct attitudes, as well as mass consumption items.

There is something about the language of television that cancels the distinction between private and public, something that steals the secret from ordinary life by showing it, in a similar way that a mirror steals the soul or the way that the Internet removes the possibility of real intimacy. Goebbels was reportedly disgusted when he saw himself for the first time on TV, because of the impression of his own ugliness. But in that ugliness of existence that TV represents, is the beauty of the TV image, and its transmission of reality has the potential of reality itself. The Nazis also recognized this, the power of television to dictate the atmosphere and create a new social context by creating an absolute semblance of reality.

The television recordings of the Nazi party congresses from Nuremberg show in a sobering way all the actors of the political scene at that time accompanied by the restless play of the TV camera. Beyond the artistic eye of a skilled director and beyond dictated pathos, they give us full insight into the fact that everything about Nazism at its early peak was spontaneous, full of real emotions. They are seen equally in the disheveled column of vehicles by which the leader arrives, by no means under the wire as the film Leni Riefenstahl suggested, then in the spiky love of the citizenry that is printed, in the casual approach of the security guard who is sure of herself and her surroundings, in the little girl who walks across the entire square to gave a small bouquet of flowers to the playful uncle Adolfo, in the commentator's voice, which still conveys the whole scene in the radio manner in as flat a voice as possible, with as many facts as possible. In the end, this all remotely reminds of some scenes we saw in childhood, here in our country.

The advantages of the new medium were, of course, obvious - the radio could not show the glamorous entry of Industry Minister Albert Speer into the frame in a sports convertible limousine, the entry of a reporter into the same car followed by a camera into which Speer then casually presents his view of the new party congress. No wonder that the future development plan of Volks TV was to network the entire country, and beyond: the station did broadcast its program primarily in Berlin, with 14 employees at its peak, it made its way as far as Hamburg via cable - but its most ambitious undertaking was the successful opening of a studio in Paris, which in the period from 1942 to 1944 was the largest in Europe.

In all that early production of television pictures, there was an attempt to let in some humor, which sometimes sounds eerie, especially when we see how a lecturer with a particularly large square head explains the world to the camera from a musical point of view, and says literally: "We have those who do not enjoy our rhythm, especially those who are engaged in the exchange of music with foreign countries. We do not surround them with them, but place them in concert camps, in which they have to sing in order not to get dinner."

That was a joke, if you didn't get it.

And then it is clear that jokes sometimes serve to place certain categories of people in the sphere of permissible lynching, on the other side of the law, through entertainment.

Fortunately, reality may be different, but it cannot be more real, so the events during the war were more than enough to shake even the most convincing ideological picture. Recordings from the penultimate year of the war clearly state this - namely, first the studio was moved to a large hall that served as a demonstration of flashy escapism, with a large number of dance-music programs of the variety type, whose live audience was - the army. This glamor is in stark contrast to the contemporary reports about the wounded in hospitals and their adaptation to life without a limb. One of the last contributions records as a great success of the German spirit the fact that vegetables were planted on Berlin's Alexanderplatz instead of grass.

In the end, the announcers did not lack educational and philosophical inspiration either: after showing a whole room full of stuffed heads of various game animals, the announcer concludes a hunting report with the following words: "Animals know that the hunter is their best friend." In the same way, the viewers probably know that TV creator their best friend. Television under the Nazis tells us about the triviality and omnipresence, even the unrecognizability of evil in its everyday form. It is easy to relate this knowledge to all forms of television today.

THE EPILOGUE IS AMONG US: The extent to which Germany was aware of pop culture at the time, with its ability to reach everyone's heart through mass production, is shown by various artifacts. Let's start with the famous military newspaper "Signal", whose glamorous photographic style and superior modern twist remain as one of the top publishing ventures of the time, but we should not forget how his idea was to create a composite photo portrait of a united Europe, but under Nazism; let's continue with the extensive film production of the state-owned concern UFA, which has successfully reproduced its acting "old system"; let's finish with the recent, somewhat bizarre discovery of 3D films from the Nazi era, which we came to thanks to the persistent research of the famous avant-garde documentarian of Australian origin, Philip Mota - these "space films", as the German creators called them, are a further indication of what we are talking about thought in the Nazi environment when it comes to the media sphere, and were probably tested as the next step after television, in the direction of total reproduction of the desired reality.

Every public narrative stream serves to establish a certain social order. Image control is the essence of totalitarian social order, because only in societies mediated by image, there is a potential for general control of flows. The cancellation of direct human contact is a prerequisite for the control of society in its totality. The producers of Nazism knew that only the reality that is invented every day, the reality that exists only through the image of reality, can be successfully dealt with in an ideological sense.

Mediated reality, therefore, has been with us for a long time. Now that we have reached the point where we live in an almost entirely mediated environment, the real question is where those who initiated the parallel reality are leading us.

THE PERFECT VEHICLE OF PROPAGANDA: A television program in Nazi Germany

THE IDEOLOGY OF REASON: One of the first TV sets, 1935.

LIFESTYLE: Commercial for television between the two world wars