Reconstructing Media Culture: Transnational Perspectives on Radio in Silesia, 1924–1948

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This article contributes to a growing scholarship in the field of transnational radio history that attend to radio as a border-crossing medium. Within this burgeoning field, however, there is a persistent tendency to privilege radio produced by national broadcasters in capital cities. In this article, our focus on radio in Silesia seeks to intervene in current discussions of transnational and regional media history. From 1924, radio in German-controlled Silesia was established amidst ongoing border disputes after World War I. Despite the geopolitical significance of this region – and its radio programming, infrastructures and industry between 1924 and 1948 – it has largely been written out of both German and Polish radio historiography. Our analysis focuses on the institutional, technological and socio-political components necessary to understanding radio culture with a transnational and regional lens, taking the example of Silesia as a context of significantly altered population demographics and governance. Taking into account the conditions of radio institutions, industry and the materiality of infrastructures, we examine how radio in Silesia served as a political symbol in the context of ongoing border disputes and linguistic nationalism. As this article suggests, the case of Silesian radio challenges notions of a clear-cut ‘1945 divide’ in radio history, and our analysis will acknowledge how the material culture of radio figures in the complex situation of German, Polish, Russian and Jewish relations, and against the background of looting operations, property transfer and population expulsions in the early post-war period. This case is critically considered for its potential contribution to a more a layered, comparative research agenda on radio in Central Europe before, during and after World War II.