Episode 4: Waves of Reflection - Soundscapes in German Post-War Radio Dramas

Welcome to the fourth episode of Sounds of War, in which our host of this episode, Wulf, engages in an insightful conversation with Caroline Kita, an Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kita delves into her current book project centred around post-World War II German radio dramas. She explores how the soundscapes in these dramas engage with and address the memories of the war.

So, please join us as we discover the profound role of sound in these productions and how they navigate the complexities of remembrance in the aftermath of World War II. 

The podcast is produced and edited by Sigrid Saabye, and Caroline Kita and Wulf Kansteiner are participating in this episode.

The original podcast music is by Evan MacDonald.

In this episode, we also use soundbites from two German radio dramas borrowed from the NDR: the radio drama 'Was wäre, wenn (What if?)' from 1947 by Axel Eggebrecht and produced by the Northwest German Radio – and the radio drama 'Klopfzeichen (Tapping Sounds)' by Heinrich Böll, produced by the North German Radio in 1962.

Another sound used in this episode is a soundbite from a speech made by Joseph Goebbels in 1943, borrowed from the Österreichische Mediatek.

The Sounds of War podcast is a part of the SoundTrak project, a research project affiliated at Aarhus University and funded by the Velux Foundation. For more information, visit our project website at this link: https://cas.au.dk/en/soundtrak/.