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| Country | Germany |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Hamburg,Lower Saxony,Schleswig-Holstein,North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Headquarters | West Berlin, Germany |
| History | |
| Launched | 22 September 1945; 80 years ago (1945-09-22) |
| Closed | 31 December 1955; 69 years ago (1955-12-31) (10 years, 100 days) |
| Replaced by | NDR andWDR |
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR;Northwest German Broadcasting) was the organization responsible forpublic broadcasting in the GermanFederal States ofHamburg,Lower Saxony,Schleswig-Holstein andNorth Rhine-Westphalia from 22 September 1945 to 31 December 1955. Until 1954, it was also responsible for broadcasting inWest Berlin. NWDR was a founder member of the consortium of public-law broadcasting institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany, theARD.
On 1 January 1956, NWDR was succeeded byNorddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) andWestdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).
Broadcasting in what was to become NWDR's post-war transmission area was initiated in the early 1920s:
From 1934 the north German station operated, under the name ofReichssender Hamburg, as an integral part of the national broadcasting organizationRRG – now controlled byJoseph Goebbels'sReich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and known from 1 January 1939 as Großdeutscher Rundfunk.
Externally, the Reichssender Hamburg transmittedpropaganda material to listeners overseas – in particular to those living in the British Isles – and, duringWorld War II, broadcast regular programming aimed at sapping the morale of the civilian population of the United Kingdom. Its most famous wartime broadcaster in English wasWilliam Joyce (popularly known, from his accent and speaking-manner, as "Lord Haw-Haw").
The Reichssender Hamburg was the lastshort-wave station to remain on the air in wartime Germany. Its substation inFlensburg, known as the Reichssender Flensburg, broadcast the last announcements from the headquarters of the German army,OKW, over localcable radio[1] and announced thedeath of Adolf Hitler to the German people on 1 May 1945.
All radio broadcasting ceased at the end of World War II and implementation of theAllied occupation of Germany.
In theBritish Zone of occupation, the military authorities quickly established a station known as "Radio Hamburg" to provide information to the population of the area. On 4 May 1945, transmission started with the announcement: "This is Radio Hamburg, a station of the Allied Military Government". The British Control Commission appointedHugh Carleton Greene, on secondment from theBBC, to manage the creation of public service broadcasting in their Zone. On 22 September 1945, Radio Hamburg became Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), the single broadcasting organisation of the British Zone. The army unit allocated to run the station was part of REMERoyal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and its commander was Lt Col Paul Archibald Findlay.
The forerunner organization of the Federal Intelligence Service, theGehlen Organization, infiltrated several agents into the NWDR during the Cold War in order to keep alleged enemies of the state in the station under control. One of these agents wasAugust Hoppe, editor from 1948 and later deputy editor-in-chief.[2] According to documents from theBND archive, the NWDR was classified as a "threat to the development of a healthy Western democracy" at the time. Half of the top management was very open to Moscow, especially the general directorAdolf Grimme and the reporterPeter von Zahn.[3]
In February 1955, the Länder of the NWDR's area decided to look again at the regulation of broadcasting. North Rhine-Westphalia decided to establish its own broadcaster, whilst Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein continued with the existing system. To this end, the NWDR was split into two broadcasters -Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) in the north and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in North Rhine-Westphalia.
NDR continued to operate out of Hamburg, whilst the WDR was established inCologne. The split was effective from 1 January 1956, although the station NWDR1 remained a joint operation with regional opt-outs.
The NWDR television service also remained a joint operation, from 1 April 1956 under the name Nord- und Westdeutscher Rundfunkverband (North and West German Broadcasting Federation - NWRV). The NDR and the WDR launched separate television services for their area in 1961.
In 1955, the NWDR had three radio stations:
NWDR was also the most active participant in ARD'sDas Erste, the joint German public television service.
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