Bayerischer Rundfunk

The radio era began in Bavaria on March 30, 1924 with the first broadcast of ‘Deutsche Stunde in Bayern’ (‘German Hour in Bavaria’) from the broadcasting hall in the Ministry of Transport on Arnulfstraße. Munich businessmen Hermann Klöpfer, Josef Böhm and Robert Riemerschmid had founded the station just under two years earlier, on September 12, 1922, as a regional subsidiary of the Berlin ‘Deutsche Stunde. Gesellschaft für drahtlose Belehrung und Unterhaltung mbH’. As the program was gradually expanded to include music, sports broadcasts and entertainment (Karl Valentin appeared on the radio for the first time on April 1, 1927), the new medium rapidly gained in popularity.

In 1929 the station moved into a new broadcasting center designed by Robert Riemerschmid – the most state-of-the-art in Germany at the time. On January 1, 1931 ‘Deutsche Stunde in Bayern’ was renamed ‘Bayerischer Rundfunk GmbH’ (Bavarian broadcasting company), and a year later the private shareholders sold their shares to the Reichspost and the state of Bavaria. This made it easier for the National Socialists to ensure the station’s enforced conformity as they transformed it into a ubiquitous propaganda tool via the subsidized ‘people’s wireless’ (‘Volksempfänger’) after they came to power in 1933. Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was in charge of all German radio, regarding it as “the most modern means of influencing the masses”.

In March 1933 the National Socialists occupied the broadcasting center in Munich, where they raised the flag swastika flag. In April, Goebbels himself announced a “new strategy” in National Socialist radio broadcasting, and inflammatory speeches were broadcast against the Austrian government three times a week from Munich starting that very summer. In November 1934 the publicly transmitted ‘Reich Broadcasting Trial’ began – an 86-day show trial initiated by the new Nazi Reich Broadcasting Director Eugen Hadamovsky against some of the former broadcasting executives, who were denounced as “leaders of establishment broadcasting”. In the same year, Bayerischer Rundfunk became part of the Greater German Broadcasting Company (Großdeutscher Rundfunk) as ‘Reichssender München’, losing all control over its programming in 1940.

After program operations ceased on April 29, 1945, the American military government took over the facilities and began broadcasting ‘Radio Munich – Radio München’ on May 12. The Americans handed the station back to the Germans on January 25, 1949, while at the same time continuing to broadcast via their own Armed Forces Network (AFN). Since then, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) has been the regional branch of the public broadcasting company ARD, which was founded in Munich in 1950. The legal basis for this is the Bavarian Broadcasting Act: this established three entities – director, broadcasting council and administrative board – with the aim of guaranteeing independence from the state and private interest groups.

Bayerischer Rundfunk was Europe’s first FM broadcaster as early as 1949; the BR Choir and Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Radio Orchestra were founded between 1946 and 1952; and in 1964, BR was the first ARD broadcaster to launch its own third television program, which since 1978 has been a fully-fledged channel known as ‘Bayerisches Fernsehen’. With around 3,000 permanent employees, BR is now the fourth largest broadcaster in ARD.