Access Authorization to the Broadcasting Studio Hamburg for Major Everitt, issued by the Broadcasting Control Unit Hamburg 1946

Source Description

After the end of the Second World War only few Jewish men and women returned from exile to Germany. The same is true for the media sector which was to be newly organized under the supervision of the respective Allied occupation forces after the collapse of the “Third Reich.” Walter Albert Eberstadt (1921–2014), son of Jewish parents and a former student at Hamburg's Johanneum school, was one of the few Jewish returnees who participated in the rebuilding of German radio broadcasting. Eberstadt's access pass issued on February 23, 1946 illustrates that he was a so-called “returnee in uniform,” i. e. a refugee who came back to Germany as an employee of the British occupation authorities. His pass was issued by the Broadcasting Control Unit, the military authority in charge of regulating broadcasting in the British occupation zone. It authorized its bearer, “Major Everitt” – Eberstadt's name during his time in military service – to access the premises of Radio Hamburg on Rothenbaumchaussee. In 2000, Eberstadt made this document available as a loan to the author for an exhibition project titled “Rückkehr in die Fremde? Return to a Foreign Country?. Initiated by the study group of independent cultural institutes Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Institute, the Foundation German Broadcasting Archive  Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, and the Foundation Archive of the Academy of the Arts  Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste, this project presented the first systematic study of the role remigrants played in rebuilding broadcasting in the four Allied occupation zones.
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Recommended Citation

Access Authorization to the Broadcasting Studio Hamburg for Major Everitt, issued by the Broadcasting Control Unit Hamburg 1946, edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-145.en.v1> [April 20, 2024].