Atlantic Communications: The Media in American and German History from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century

by Norbert Finzsch (Editor), Ursula Lehmkuhl (Editor)

Overview

Atlantic Communications examines the historical development of communications technology and its impact on German-American relations from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Chronologically organized, the book is divided into five parts, each scrutinizing one or two central themes connected to the specific time period and technology involved. The book starts with "speech" as a dominant medium of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when cultural brokers played a significant role in producing and spreading knowledge about "America". During the nineteenth century, the technological competition between the old and the new world became a driving force for the history of transatlantic relations. This competition developed new dimensions with the invention of the telegraph and the emergence of news agencies. Information became commercialized. At the turban of the century the mass production of print media became technologically possible. Print media, daily jourbanals and especially weekly magazines became the medium of a critical style of jourbanalism. The Muckrakers, representatives of a political and intellectual elite, criticized the social and cultural consequences of technological progress, thereby highlighting the negative effects of modernization. During the 1920s and 1930s, radio developed as a new mass medium, the first one to be used widely for political purposes. Not only did Josef Goebbels recognize the political possibilities of reaching the people directly via radio; Franklin Roosevelt used the radio as well to transmit his political messages in the form of "fireside chats". Eventually, in the late 1970s film and television were discovered as a means to communicate the past, especially the historical experience of the Holocaust. Specific cultures of memory developed in both America and Germany. The demand to tackle the psychological and social problems stemming from the experiences during the Third Reich, advocated especially by the student moveme

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859736791
Publisher:	Berg Publishers
Publication date:	03/01/2004
Series:	Krefeld Historical Symposia Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Norbert Finzsch Professor of Anglo-American History and Chair of Department, University of Cologne. Ursula Lehmkuhl Professor of North American History, John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin

Table of Contents

Introduction—Ursula Lehmkuhl * Part One: Spreading "Good Tidings"' at Home and Abroad: Media and Mediators during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries * The Word of God as the Word for America: Religious Communities and Religious Fairs as Communicative Spheres in the Colonial Era—Frank Lambert * Bridging the Gap: Cultural Mediators and the Structure of Transatlantic Communication—Rosalind Beiler* Te Deum for Victory: Communicating Victories through Sermons, Illuminations, and Gun Salute—Sebastian Küster * Comments—Carola Wessel and Hermann Wellenreuther * Part Two: Narrowing Atlantic Distances: Communication in the Age of the Telegraph * The Telegraph and Transatlantic Communications Relations—Jürgen Wilke * Diplomatic Telegraphy in American and German History—David Nickles * Comments—Menachem Blondheim * How the Identity of Communication and Transportation was Broken: Comparative Views on the Development and Usage of the Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century Germany and America—Ursula Lehmkuhl * Part Three: Jourbanalism and the Problem of Modernity, 1880 to 1914 * Modernization and Its Discontents: Homelessness and Middle-Class Media in the U.S., 1850-1930—Kenneth Kusmer * Protesting against "America" as the Icon of Modernity: The Reception of Muckraking in Germany—Jörg Requate * Comments—Markus Behmer and Jessica Gienow-Hecht * Part Four: Producing and Consuming Radio—Political and Social Dimensions * "Radio Days": Did Radio Change Social Life in Germany and the United States?—Inge Marßolek * "Broadcasting Freedom": Radio, Big Band Swing and the Popular Music of World War II—Lew Erenberg * Comments Radio Nations: The Importance of Transnational Media Study—Michele Hilmes * Radio As Dispositiv: The History of the Yet to Be Written User-Manuals—Michaela Hampf * Television and Public Memory: Communicating the Past at the Beginning of the 21st Century * The Holocaust on Screen: Speculations on an American Motion Picture Genre—Thomas Doherty * The Radicalisation of German Memory in the Age of its Commercial Reproduction: Hitler and the Third Reich in the TV Documentaries of Guido Knopp—Wulf Kansteiner * Comments: Between Media History and the History of Social Communication—Volker Depkat, Regina Mühlhäuser and Olaf Kistenmacher