Media and the making of modern Germany : mass communications, society, and politics from the Empire to the Third Reich / Corey Ross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ross, Corey, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media--Germany--History--19th century.

Mass media.

Mass media--Germany--History--20th century.

History.

Germany--History--20th century.

Germany.

Physical Description:

xiii, 426 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments, and none has exerted a more profound influence on the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany-debates that played fatefully into the hands of the radical right. Corey Ross provides the first general account of the expansion of the mass media in Germany up to the Second World War, examining how the rise of film, radio, recorded music, popular press, and advertising fitted into the wider development of social, political, and cultural life.

Contents:

Part I Introduction

Introduction 3

1 The Rise of the Mass Media: Modern Communications and Cultural Traditions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 11

A New Cultural Constellation: Producers, Consumers, and the Marketplace 11

The Commercial Press 20

Early Film 34

Conserving Sound: Phonograph and Gramophone 44

Cultural Authority and the Entertainment Market 52

Part II Taming Mass Culture: Strategies Of Control And Reform

Introduction 6l

2 Reasserting Control: The Regulation of Mass Culture 63

'Smut and Trash': Censorship and Youth Protection in the Empire 63

Morality and Censorship in the Republic 74

State and Communal Ownership 82

3 Attempting Reform: Legitimation, Education, and Uplifting Tastes 87

Commercial Culture and Social Reform 88

New Media and New Genres 100

Part III Mass Culture, Divided Audiences: Media, Entertainment, And Social Change In The Weimar Repubic

Introduction 119

4 Technology and Purchasing Power: Media Availability and Audiences 121

Cinema Distribution and Household Budgets 122

New Technologies and New Listeners: Gramophone and Radio Audiences 128

5 Meeting Demand: Consumer Preference and Social Difference 141

Between Popular Appeal and Particularism: The Print Media 142

Edification and Amusement: Radio Programming and its Critics 150

Cinema Programmes and Film Preferences 156

6 Media Publics Between Fragmentation and Integration 163

Social Segregation and the Cinema 164

The Fractured Press 174

Listening in Public and Private 181

Part IV Mass Media And Mass Politics From The Empire To The Weimar Republic

Introduction 191

7 Propaganda and the Modern Public 194

From Press Policy to 'Patriotic Education': State Propaganda in Imperial Germany 194

Propaganda, the Modern Public, and the Experience of Total War 204

Advertising, Mass Psychology, and the Power of Symbols 213

8 Republicans, Radicals, and the Battle of Images 223

Publicity for the Republic: From Propaganda to Instruction 224

The Radical Onslaught 234

Mainstream in Crisis: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda 246

Part V Mass Culture In The Third Reich: Propaganda, Entertainment, And National Mobilization

Introduction 263

9 Political Control and Commercial Concentration Under the Nazis 266

National Socialist Restructuring of Media and Leisure 267

Commercial Concentration, Expansion, and the Talking Film 271

Radio and Recording: State Control and Media Convergence 279

The Print Media: Abolition, Steering, and Standardization 292

10 Entertaining the National Community 302

From Agitation to 'State Propaganda: Politics, arketing, and Entertainment 304

'Film for All': Cinema and Society in the 1930s 311

Between Instrumentalization and Americanization: Press and Advertising 321

'Just don't be boring': Nazi Radio 330

11 The Media and the Second World War: From Integration to Disintegration 341

Defending the Attack: Nazi Remilitarization and the Media 342

A Virtual Volksgemeinschaft 346

Into the Collapse 363.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [393]-415) and index.

ISBN:

9780199278213

0199278210

OCLC:

213480131