POINT OF INTEREST

NDR-Studio

Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 1 , 24937 Flensburg

After World War II, NWDR and one of its successors, NDR, reported about the minorities on both sides of the border and their needs and demands. They broadcast live locally and produced their own programmes, for example for the German minority in Denmark.

On 12 November 1950 in the Flensburg German House (Deutsches Haus), 1,400 guests celebrated the opening of NWDR’s first studio north of Hamburg, located the neighbouring music pavilion and initiated by the British Allies. Hans Bodenstedt, the former director of NORAG, and Heinz Adler, a member of the board of management of NWDR and mayor of Flensburg from 1963 to 1977, supported opening the studio in Flensburg. They argued that it was necessary to “send out a signal for German culture on the border to Denmark”. The latter appeared to be at risk from the “New Danish Movement”, which considered that the acceptance of a disproportionate number of displaced persons in Schleswig-Holstein threatened its cultural identity and demanded the integration of Schleswig into Denmark. NWDR director general Adolf Grimme charged the new studio with two tasks: first, to report about the refugee issue and, second, to fly the flag as a bridge-builder at the border to Denmark. The Flensburg studio, which at that time was responsible for the whole of Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark, produced German programmes for the Danish school radio as well as “Der grosse Grenzverkehr” and, from 1951, “Von Binnenland und Waterkant”. After NWDR was divided into NDR and WDR in 1956, Flensburg reported about Denmark and Schleswig as a branch of NDR. From the mid-1970s, the studio increasingly broadcast reports on national events (construction of A7 motorway from 1969, the floods of 1976, the Brokdorf nuclear power plant from 1975, the snow disaster in 1978/79). This led to a crisis which culminated in 1978 when the state government terminated the NDR state treaty. It alleged that NDR was too left-wing, focused too much on Hamburg and not enough on the region. Regional broadcasting centres were set up in Hannover, Hamburg and Kiel with their own regional radio and TV programmes. The start of “Welle Nord” in April 1981 strengthened the Flensburg branch. It has had a TV studio since 1998 and today produces more than 2,500 radio contributions and 400 films a year in the pavilion at Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse 1.