APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
Radio and television are perhaps the sole mass communication media in which the East German regime does not enjoy a monopoly of information control. Western radio stations, notably the U.S. Government-managed Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) in West Berlin, virtually blanket East Germany, and West German television can be received in all but the northeast and southeast corners of the country. For many years the East Germans sought to blot out Western programs with jamming, but they found that the jamming effort was very costly and not effective. However, the regime still jams RIAS medium-wave broadcasts of news and comment when it feels the political situation merits such moves, as for example during the Czechoslovak crisis. The regime also sought to prevent people from tuning in Western TV programs by prohibiting orientation of TV antennas to Western channels and by invoking social and economic, and sometimes political, sanctions against violators. These efforts were a total failure, however, and many East Germans continue to listen to and watch Western programs, especially since UHF transmissions make the position of antennas irrelevant.
4. Cinema and theater
The cinema industry is a monopoly of the state, organized under the Deutsche Film A.G. (DEFA), which is controlled by the Ministry for Cultural Affairs. In 1965 DEFA produced a total of 611 films, the lowest yearly production since 1960. Of the 1965 total, only 15 were full-length features. In comparison, the West German film industry produced 69 full-length films that year. The number of theaters devoted exclusively to showing films has declined steadily from 1,369 in 1960 to 858 in 1970. During this period, however, more multipurpose theaters, known as Dorfkinos (village theaters), were established. The number of these theaters, which included films in their schedules, jumped from 289 in 1962 to 1,015 in 1965, but dropped to 520 in 1970, probably due to the increase in the number of privately owned TV sets. Overall the number of film presentations declined from 2.5 million in 1960 to 973 thousand in 1970; 91.4 million persons viewed films in 1970, a far cry from the 237.9 million who viewed films a decade earlier.
The theater, as a whole, has become a virtually static art. The number of full-time legitimate theaters in 1970 stood at 101, with a combined seating capacity of nearly 51,000. This represents an increase of 13 theaters over the previous 15 years but a drop in seating capacity of nearly 10,000 seats. During approximately the same period there was a decrease in the number of theater seats from 3.4 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1955 to 3.0 seats in 1970. The number of theatrical performances also dropped from 29,566 in 1955 to 25,918 in 1970. Total attendance that year was 12.3 million, markedly below the 1955 high of 17.5 million. The irregular decline in theater attendance during the 1960's may be due to the TV explosion which has affected other countries in a similar way. While the quality of contemporary theater is far below that of the immediate postwar period, the faithful rendering of classical works has managed to retain a loyal theater following. This trend seems to have carried over to the Workers and Farmers Theater (Arbeiter und Bauerntheater). Encouraged by the regime in the early 1960's, factory and farm collectives formed theater groups. At their peak in 1964 there were more than 4,400 members of such companies with 135 theaters. By 1970 the membership in such companies had dropped to about 3,000 with only 95 theaters, but attendance for that year was 713,500 for 2,200 performances.
K. Selected bibliography
1. General and historical
Childs, David. East Germany. New York, 1969. Covers many aspects of East German life from an English point of view. Not notably biased but not very well written.
Doernberg, Stefan. Kurze Geschichte der DDR. Berlin, 1965. Standard text by leading East German historian. More useful for the image the regime would like to transmit than for the information it contains.
Dornberg, John. The Other Germany. Garden City, 1969. A journalist's view of contemporary East Germany, paralleling his work on West Germany, Schizophrenic Germany (1961).
Flenley, Ralph. Modern German History. London, 1968. Traditional text oriented on Prussia. Much revised since the first edition in 1953, with two chapters by Robert Spencer on post-1939 developments.
Government of the German Democratic Republic. Introducing the GDR. Dresden, 1971. The usual propaganda booklet for foreign visitors. Has the advantage of appearing after the Ulbricht-Honecker changeover and reflects the early emphasis of the new regime.
Hanhardt, Arthur M. The German Democratic Republic. Baltimore, 1968. A political scientist's analysis of East German political, economic, and sociological problems. Concisely written.
Ludz, Peter Christian. The German Democratic Republic From the Sixties to the Seventies. Cambridge, Mass., 1970. A West German political
44
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
