All pretence, says Kisch, seen from the standpoint of the technician. The technician sees only data flows in the radio of 1925; and as he brings them into motion and controls them, he is the least involved with the radio broadcast. He dispenses with any sense of illusion. But, armoured with headphones, he is the manipulator of the prevailing times. He even "hears faster than he would hear directly. If for instance, distant trumpet signals should sound during a radio play, they will be blown in the hallway outside and the man in the control room will, after hearing them on air via Königswusterhausen, hear them again half a second later live: from the corridor, via the natural route".

This short Kisch text written in 1925 poses the primary question confronting all following theories on radio broadcasting: from which point of view are we to describe radio dramas and the radio? From this side or that side of the sound proof wall? From where we see or from where we don't see anything? From where we speak or from where we hear ourselves speak?

This cut, this break, this dividing axis permeates radio and also permeates our voice in radio, which all of a sudden sounds completely different; it dissects the connection of our heads to our throats, the "eustachian tube", when we wear headphones and speak! [2]

Everyone knows the shock when he hears himself speak with headphones for the first time. But "tertium non datur", either there is no original audio information in the radio that shouldn't be considered changed or influenced by the medium; or there is only original audio information which is original even while a more or less brilliant rendition.

The history of broadcasting theory documents these rather contrasting perspectives: there is the one theory which trusts in the simple representative effect of radio and is satisfied to transplant ordinary theatre pieces onto the radio stage with a few deletions and abbreviations; and there is the other, more original and much smaller tradition which evolves from the technique of the medium itself and earns the title of Radio Art or Audio Art. A dissected tradition right up to the present day.

An early exponent of this last mentioned tradition is the producer from Frankfurt and Berlin, Karl Flesch, who produced one of the very first German radio plays in October 1924 with his "Zauberei auf dem Sender" (Magic at the Broadcasting Station). But Karl Flesch, who thematizes the radio channel in everything that he does, remains, as we know, rather isolated in the Weimar Republic. Flesch's equally visionary and technically perspicacious understanding of radio tells him that broadcasting needs something that he didn't have at the time: a separate, independent medium of storage. Radio was '"Iive" during the first decades, a one way channel: But the listener, according to Flesch "demands the highest perfection from his equipment; if a real event is transmitted then it should be as close to live as possible; but if radio puts on something like music or a play, then the listener can derive an artistic impression only from perfect technical precision. And this can only be achieved if the preparations include the fixation of the work on a medium, be it disc, film, or Still's steel band. ( ... ) Where essentially is the diiference between a dead studio broadcast (dead because the orchestra plays without an audience anel the artist lacks a response) and an identical event, the same effect when between event and effect there is a shift in time? Only during a real event is simultaneity a pre-condition of participation. But what "event" takes place in the studio.?"[3]

The godfather of German and Austrian radio was Marconi's radio-telegraphy and not Edison's peaceful phonograph. Not until 1931 did the German broadcasting studios and the RAVAG obtain very heavy wax disc machines for recording, primarily for sports and politics, but not for radio plays. [4]

And even Selenophon, an Austrian audio film process, was only used by RAVAG for League of Nations broadcasts but not employed in its own studios. Why?

The first epoch of the medium is caught up in the context of military, and this means from 1903 on, communications transmitting technological strategies. Not the technology of electro-acoustical recording, but the technology of electro-acoustical transformation: microphones and loudspeakers, amplifiers, high frequency and low frequency transmitters and receivers, base emitters and grid modulators, rectifiers, amplitude modulation and frequency modulation are from 1923 on the important themes of Bredow, Czeija, the postal service, in industry and the military.

Whereas the Telegraphone of the Dane Valdemar Poulsen, already presented in 1900 during the world exhibition in Paris and copied in the AEG laboratories in the 20's (catchword Still's steel band) is leading a meagre existence. And this, as Flesch knew, could not be due to technical standards: since Poulsen's equipment had already stored 14 long hours of debate at the Copenhagen Technical Congress in 1908 on 2500 kilometres of wire. Besides, Poulsen was not just anybody; but the famous inventor of the spark gap transmitter from the year 1903, which as Bredow enthuses could produce undampened and therefore adjustable and stable amplitudes. Bredow also never tires of pointing out that it took only three years until such spark gap transmitters could be reproduced by the Lorenz AG in Berlin for use in telegraphy and the telephone system. Poulsen-Lorenz, that was the German head start. But as far as his revolutionary invention of the magnetized audio wire is concerned, it neither gets mentioned by Bredow nor is it in demand in the industry. Only 27 years later (what an eternity) do we find a patent registered by the AEG-Engineer Pfleumer, who suggests replacing the paper-coated wire with a magnetic film. [5]

In 1934 BASF produced the first 50 kiIometres of pIastic based magnetic tape and AEG built the famous K1, the first tape recorder. Frequency range 50 - 10.000 Hertz, noise suppression 35 DecibeIs, tape speed 100 cm/sec. This was without doubt fine for medium band wavelength transmissions. But it was not put into use by the transmitting studios of the Reich for next seven years.

Even the radiologist Dr. Hans FIesch, head of the Masurenallee in Berlin, was not able to equip the "Haus des Rundfunks" with recording apparatus that was already mature in technical development, but in the historical development of the media, was ahead of its time. [6] Therefore let us not reproach Oskar Czeija in Vienna for the same inability.

A long interrupted line of artistic reflection of the media itself toward today's Art Radio leads from Flesch to Vienna and also to Klaus Schöning's experimental studio in Cologne. But the fact that there is no continuity between Heidi Grundmann, Schöning and Resch, no development, but a break of a good 40 years; that one can hardly find something in Flesch's manner after Walter Rutmann's "Weekend" of 1930, can't just be attributed to ideological grounds. The conservative press called the aforementioned: "Bolshevistic sabotage".

The radio of the 20's in Germany and Austria is a one dimensional medium carrying only primary data flows because they provide a dress rehearsal for military use. Flesch is already thrown out and chased away in 1931, while Oskar Czeija is weIl aware of the rules to the game: with his short wave transmission wagon, numerous mobile broadcasting systems and his Selenophon he is technically on top of the times, but his media-political alliances become clear as early as 1927, when Czeija places the RAVAG directly in the service of the police and security forces during the July uprising. [7]

Original news was unknown to RAVAG; until the Nazis took power in 1938, one could only hear the censored announcements of the official government news service, which were sometimes wired directly to the broadcasting studios.

In Austria there were very few forms of radio art until the end of the RAVAG. Czeija was interested in optimizing transmissions, in covering the homeland with a radio network, and not in radio as a production and therefore art form.

Thus a radio play is transmitted from a moving train in 1930 (Vienna - Salzburg), and a little later, a transmission attempt is made from the Danube steamer "Dürnstein" from the Wachau. Transmission experiments. Both in close co-operation with General Vaugoin who in the meantime had become head of the Austrian Railways.

If progress in the medium itself should be made on this basis, then it had to lead, as we are about to see, via an hopeless metaphysical detour, directly to fascism.