History
To Poland with Love: Broadcasting across the Iron Curtain
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- To Poland with Love: Broadcasting across the Iron Curtain
Author: Benjamin Zenner
For people, crossing the ‘Iron Curtain’ during the Cold War could be an extremely dangerous undertaking. Radio waves, however, trespassed this man-made border with ease. Before 1989, radio therefore remained one of the few direct connections between people on – quite literally – both sides of the fence.
From July 2nd 1951 until December 29th 1991, the English-speaking service of Radio Luxembourg was ‘on air’ on its now famous 208 meter medium-wave signal . Over the years, the antennas were upgraded repeatedly so that virtually all of Europe could listen to the ‘Station of the Stars’. Reaching far across the ‘Iron Curtain’ was mostly a side-effect of having such powerful transmitters.
One country where Radio Luxembourg enjoyed a particularly wide reception among listeners was Poland. The Polish authorities tolerated that their citizens listened to the broadcasts because the shows considered to be largely apolitical. Especially for young people, the station became a ‘window’ to Western music and pop culture, and listening to it was an important shared experience for many Polish listeners.
Sources:
The final hour and a half of broadcasting on the legendary 208 meter wavelength. English-speaking broadcasting at Radio Luxembourg had started all the way back in 1933.
Literature:
David Dominguez Muller, Radio-Luxembourg: Histoire d’un média privé d’envergure européenne, PhD diss. University Paris IV, 2001.
Denis Maréchal, RTL, 1933-1993: Un média au coeur de l’Europe, Paris: Editions Serpenoise, 1994.
For basic historical information on the history of Radio Luxembourg, and especially of its English-speaking service, see RTL Group’s official history page for Radio Luxembourg.
On how Radio Luxembourg is remembered in Central and Eastern Europe nowadays, see:
Milena Abdel-Massih and Anna Malewska-Szałygin (eds), Remembering Radio Luxembourg in the People’s Republic of Poland, Warsaw: Euroscript, 2012. Available online. (This is the catalogue of the exhibition mentioned below the title image of this page).