Radio — Modernisierung der Sinne

Summary

The present essay advocates the prudent co-operation between literary, cultural and media research. The possibilities and perspectives of this co-operation are illustrated examplarily by the cultural and literary history of the radio in the twenties. The textual sciences have to learn from the neighbouring disciplines working anthropologically, iconographically, and acoustically, and vice versa. The starting question of these innovative and mutual tasks should be to find out, how the mass culture — especially the radio — covered our twentieth cetury with intellectual, mental, sensual, and tonal-aesthetical definitions of form. The techno-medial medium radio, too, has had ist entry into the network of experiences and interpretations of our epochal awareness, into the perception of what we consider as modern age of what we are able to perceive as tradition. The shapes of radio’s words and sounds stay what they have always been: destined by (mass-)culture and — at the same time — a special mental figuration of this century, made for communication.