Radio Welten. Politische, soziale, und kulturelle Aspekte atlantischer Mediengeschichte vor und wahrend des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Radio worlds. Political, social, and cultural aspects of transatlantic media history before and during World War II)

Abstract

This small volume brings together selected papers and commentary about radio from the 2002 Krefeld Historical Symposium, all of which has been published in English (see Norbert Finzsch and Ursula Lehmkuhl, eds., Atlantic Communications: The Media in American German History from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century [2004] [reviewed in the JAH, Dec. 2005, p. 948]). Radio Welten focuses on comparisons between radio as a medium, as an evolving technology, and as a force in everyday life, in Germany and the United States. Though the volume's subtitle promises “before and during World War II,” the essays, in fact, touch on the earliest years of radio and have a good bit to say about radio after 1945. Lewis Erenberg discusses the extraordinary impact of Glenn Miller on wartime listening habits of average Americans at home and of soldiers in the field. He makes helpful contrasts with German radio broadcasts that employed popular music; his analysis of Miller's swing music is treated at greater length in his Swingin' the Dream (1998). Michele Hilmes discusses aspects of transnational media research, but makes some of those points more effectively in the introduction to her Radio Reader (2002).