Voices in Ruins. West German Radio across the 1945 Divide

Alexander Badenoch

In the years immediately after the Second World War, when Germany was destroyed, divided and occupied, the radio was the best-preserved and most popular medium of mass communication. In Voices in Ruins, Alexander Badenoch explores the implications of radio’s dominance at the time by placing it within the longer history of Germany’s mass media to highlight the dynamics of continuity and change after 1945.

The book examines not just what was broadcast but how, and argues that the structures of time, space, personality and gender inherent in broadcasting were a key site where ideas of ‘normal’ and ‘exceptional’, ‘public’ and ‘private’, Heimat and Fremde were negotiated. Based around original archive research and a broad interdisciplinary approach, the book will be of interest to scholars in a wide range of disciplines including German Studies, Film and Media Studies, Gender Studies and Memory Studies.

Winner of the 2009 IAMHIST Prize in Media and History http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/voices-in-ruins-alexander-badenoch/?K=9780230009035