Disability media aesthetics: Voices of the war-disabled people in post-war German-language radio plays

Abstract

This article explores the way the Radio Play Prize of the War Blind negotiated disability, media and aesthetics in post-war Germany. Initiated in 1951 by the League of the War Blind in the FRG, the prize developed a singular political power and aesthetic influence in the German-language radio play culture of the 1950s. The aim of this article is to discuss the prize within a broader debate about German radio during this critical period of its development from a propaganda tool of fascism to a (supposedly) democratic space of plural opinions and ideas. To that purpose, I will first present the historical conditions out of which the prize emerged. Second, I will reconstruct the discourse about blindness in contemporary writings on the theory and aesthetics of radio plays. I will then analyse Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s radio play Stranitzky und der Nationalheld that deals critically with the constellation of people disabled in war and the radio. Based on this literary perspective on subaltern and powerful voices, my article questions the correlation of Nazi theatre and German post-war radio play. Finally, I will present newly uncovered archival material that proposes a new perspective on the emergence of the radio play in post-war Germany.