Relational Technologies: Materialities of Connection at Radio Frankfurt, 1929–1933

Dissertation project by Frederike Maas

The dissertation examines early radio as an experimental field for shaping new forms of mediated communication and technologically facilitated connection. At its center is the Frankfurt broadcasting station Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk, which, under the artistic direction of Ernst Schoen between 1929 and 1933, became a significant center of avant-garde media practice in the Weimar Republic. Schoen enlisted figures such as Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht for radio work, and together they pursued the goal, in Brecht’s words, of transforming radio from a “distribution apparatus” into a “communication apparatus.” Rather than accepting the unidirectional logic of broadcasting, practitioners in Frankfurt experimented with new formats, infrastructures, and aesthetic strategies that enabled reciprocal forms of address and active listener participation.

The study understands “radio” not as an isolated medium but as a multimedia ensemble, a constellation of loudspeakers, voices, magazines, postal networks, listener responses, broadcasting facilities, and embodied practices of reception. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials, including program scripts, photographs, and radio magazines such as the Südwestdeutsche Rundfunkzeitung, the dissertation shows how content and formats migrated across media boundaries and gave rise to new forms of mediated publicness.

Departing from this historical case, the dissertation asks more broadly what it means and how it becomes possible to enter into relation through technical media. By bringing the archival material into dialogue with contemporary media-philosophical positions, it argues that technologies mediate not only messages but modes of being-with-others, shaping the conditions under which sociality takes place. In doing so, it reveals how the early utopias and speculative visions developed in the context of the Frankfurt station continue to haunt and inform contemporary imaginaries of networked communication and virtual community. The dissertation thus contributes to media history and media philosophy by revealing early radio practices as precursors to today’s multi-media and participatory forms of communication.