This is the first study of mass media in Germany from a social and cultural-historical perspective. Beyond the conventional focus on organizational structures or aesthetic content, it investigates the impact the media has on German society under varying political systems, and how the media is shaped by wider social, political and cultural context.

'This book is a valuable corrective to commonly-expressed assumptions about how 'the media works', and historians of modern Germany will ignore its conclusions at their peril.' Josie McLellan, German History

'...[A] well designed collection of commissioned essays...this volume can claim to offer a concise while diverse panorama of both the history of mass media in Germany and its actual media historiography.' - Andreas Fickers, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

'In their introduction, the editors classify their volume as a contribution to the 'cultural expansion of social history'. What their volume does, however, is more than that. For it also brings politics back into social and cultural history by demonstrating that, in an era of democratization and consumption, the spheres of politics on the one hand, and culture, entertainment and leisure on the other, could not be kept as clearly separated from each other as before.' - Dominik Geppert, Journal of Contemporary History

Autorentext
KONRAD DUSSEL Professor, University of Mannheim, Germany BERNHARD FULDA Research Fellow, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, UK HEATHER GUMBERT PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, USA KNUT HICKETHIER Professor, University of Hamburg, Germany JUDITH KEILBACH Research Assistant, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany HABBO KNOCH Research Assistant, University of Göttingen, Germany KATE LACEY Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Film, University of Sussex, UK THOMAS LINDENBERGER Project Director, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam, Germany PATRICK MAJOR Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Warwick, UK GIDEON REUVENI Research Fellow, Institute for Jewish History and Culture, University of Munich, Germany DETLEF SIEGFRIED Associate Professor of History, University of Copenhagen, Denmark MARKUS STAUFF Research Assistant, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany

Inhalt
Mass Media, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Germany: An Introduction; K.C.Fuhrer & C.Ross PART 1: RECORDED MUSIC AND BROADCASTING Entertainment, Technology, and Tradition: The Rise of Recorded Music from the Empire to the Third Reich; C.Ross 'Underground': Counter-Culture and the Record Industry in the 1960s; D.Siegfried The Invention of a Listening Public: Radio and its Audiences; K.Lacey Radio Programming, Ideology, and Cultural Change: Fascism, Communism and Liberal Democracy, 1920s-50s; K.Dussel PART 2: FILM AND TELEVISION Two-fold Admiration: American Movies as Popular Entertainment and Artistic Model in Nazi Germany, 1933 - 1939; K.C.Fuhrer Looking West: The Cold War and the Making of Two German Cinemas; T.Lindenberger Television and Social Transformation in the Federal Republic of Germany; K.Hickethier Split Screens? Television in East Germany, 1952-89; H.Gumbert Technical Innovation, Social Participation, Societal Self-Reflection: Televised Sports in (West) German Society; J.Keilbach & M.Stauff PART 3: THE PRINT MEDIA Industries of Sensationalism: German Tabloids in Weimar Berlin; B.Fulda Reading, Advertising, and Consumer Culture in the Weimar Period; G.Reuveni Living Pictures: Photojournalism in Germany, 1900-1930s; H.Knoch 'Trash and Smut': Germany's Culture Wars against Pulp Fiction; P.Major