Published in the radio magazine Rufer und Hörer, September 1932.
1 Benjamin refers to his own play, What the Germans Were Reading While Their Classical Authors Were Writing, an excerpted version of which was published with “Two Kinds of Popularity” in the radio journal Rufer und Hörer in September, 1932.
2 See Benjamin, What the Germans Were Reading While Their Classical Authors Were Writing.
CHAPTER 43. The Situation in Broadcasting
The chaos of programs is inefficient and confusing. To address this problem, each station’s programming will now be broadcast on several other stations. So far so good, in terms of a simplification of the work involved; however, the following is now occurring: the many large stations abroad are interfering with the reception of the smaller German stations, to such a degree that their radius is limited to only forty or fifty kilometers. Conferences have been arranged to eliminate these disturbances through a sensible allocation of wavelengths. Without waiting for the results of these conferences, it has now been decided to build nine or ten large broadcasting stations, allegedly to ensure that reception will be free of disturbances. (Of course, there will again be separate programming for these stations. What is simplified at one extreme is lost at the other. A victory for double-programming across the board.) But the real reason for building these stations lies elsewhere: in politics. Long-range propaganda instruments are desired in case of war.
“Situation im Rundfunk,” GS, 2.3, 1505. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.
Unpublished during Benjamin’s lifetime. Likely written between 1930 and 1932. For further context, see the exchange of letters between Benjamin and Schoen from April 1930, where they discuss Benjamin’s plan to publish, in the Frankfurter Zeitung, an essay on the current political issues in broadcasting (GS, 2.3, 1497–505). This essay was, apparently, never realized. Benjamin’s comments also register an acknowledgment or anticipation of the reorganization of radio under the Papen government, introduced in the summer of 1932, which transferred control over broadcasting to the state and prepared the way for the takeover of the airwaves by the Nazis at the end of January, 1933.
CHAPTER 44. Listening Models
The underlying purpose of these models is a didactic one. The subject matter of the instruction consists of typical situations taken from everyday life. The method of the instruction is to juxtapose example with counterexample.
The speaker appears three times in each listening modeclass="underline" at the beginning he announces to the listeners the topic that will be covered; he then introduces to the audience the two partners who appear in the first part of the listening model. This first part contains the counterexample: how not to do it. After the first part, the speaker returns. He indicates the mistakes that were made. He then introduces the listeners to a new figure, who will appear in the second part and show how the same situation can be handled successfully. At the end the speaker compares the wrong methods with the right ones, and frames the moral.
Thus, no listening model has more than four principal voices: 1) that of the speaker; 2) that of the model figure, who is identical in the first and second parts; 3) that of the inept partner in the first part; 4) that of the adept partner in the second part.
Radio Frankfurt presented three listening models from 1931 to 1932:
1. “A Pay Raise?! Whatever Gave You That Idea!”
2. “The Boy Tells Nothing But Lies.”
3. “Can You Help Me Out Until Thursday?”
The first listening model showed one inept and one clever employee, negotiating with their boss. The second showed a ten-year-old boy who tells a fib. In the first part his father questions him, driving him deeper and deeper into his untruth. In the second part his mother demonstrates how to make the boy aware of his naughtiness without provoking defiance. The third listening model showed the clumsy behavior of a man who asks his friend for money and gets turned down, followed by the skillful actions of someone else in the same situation.
“Hörmodelle,” GS, 4.2, 628. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.
Unpublished during Benjamins lifetime. “Listening Models” was possibly written in early 1931, in conjunction with the broadcast of “A Pay Raise?!” Benjamin did produce at least one additional listening model, perhaps in collaboration with Wolf Zucker: a piece entitled “Frech wird der Junge auch noch!” [The Boy Is Getting Fresh, Too!], likely a version of the above-mentioned “The Boy Tells Nothing But Lies,” was broadcast from Frankfurt on July 1, 1931, and perhaps from Berlin as well (see editors’ notes in GS, 2.3, 1442; see also Schiller-Lerg, Walter Benjamin und der Rundfunk, 196–7, 213–16).
Appendix: Walter Benjamin’s Radio Broadcasts
The Appendix, a chronological presentation of Benjamin’s known broadcasts and, where possible, their titles, is intended to provide the reader with an overall sense of the scale and timing of Benjamin’s broadcast output. It is indebted to Sabine Schiller-Lerg’s seminal study, Walter Benjamin und der Rundfunk (see in particular her chronological listing of the broadcasts, pp. 530–2; for programming categories, see especially pp. 540–1), as well as to the editors’ notes to Benjamin’s Gesammelte Schriften. Both of these sources provide detailed information concerning the archival status, dating, and location of Benjamin’s broadcasts. Where indicated, the information comes from another source.
Below the individual translations in this volume, we have provided further information, where available, concerning the archival sources from which the dates of broadcast have been determined. There, where possible, we also indicate the length and time of the broadcasts.
For broadcasts that are translated and included in Radio Benjamin, the reader is referred to this volume. For broadcasts that do not appear in this volume but that have been translated elsewhere, the reader is referred to the relevant translation. For broadcasts that do not appear in this volume and, as far as we know, have not been translated elsewhere, the reader is referred to the relevant pages in the Gesammelte Schriften. In the last instance, the titles appear first in German, with a translation provided in brackets.
A word on the “lost or missing” broadcasts: these are known to have taken place in the sense that other archival traces, including announcements in radio journals such as the Berlin station’s Funkstunde or the Frankfurt station’s Südwestdeutsche Rundfunk-Zeitung, testify to the fact. These broadcast-events, for which there is no remaining typescript of the material in its broadcast form, fall into at least two categories: broadcasts for which there is no related, surviving “textual witness” to the broadcast material, in other words no existing material other than the mention of the broadcast in a radio journal or in Benjamin’s other broadcasts, letters, or other work; and broadcasts for which there exist other, related versions of the material, such as print versions published elsewhere by Benjamin. For the latter category, we refer the reader to the relevant pages of the related material in the Gesammelte Schriften, and, where possible, relevant translations of the related texts.