Square-eyed Farmers and Gloomy Ethnographers: The Advent of Television in the West German Village

I

Round about the year 1960 the first TV set came to Aulendorf … the news spread like wildfire. Many people … wanted to have none of it. But when some … visited to watch a few programmes … they eagerly began saving up for buying just such a box at Christmas.

Frau Tenberg’s recollections were fairly typical, even if television came to her village a few years later than elsewhere. ⁴⁵ Almost all Westphalian reporters stressed how quickly the new medium established itself. All agreed that radio had been much slower in conquering the rural population back in the 1920s and 1930s. ⁴⁶

What were the misgivings of the rural population, and how were they wiped out so swiftly? In the beginning, farmers often criticized TV as a luxury item, and they warned of it ‘beaming naked women into the home'. ⁴⁷ In 1960, ‘one saw it as too big an indulgence. A set cost 1500–1700 Marks back then … today the modest sets are cheaper, 400–600 Marks', reported farmer August Kroes. ⁴⁸ Up to the late 1950s, money was tight for all but the wealthiest farmers and even the publicans. ⁴⁹ In addition, many doctors warned of the radiation emanating from the cathode ray tubes in early TVs. It could harm people’s eyes and nerves, maintained a GP in Feudingen. For cataract patients, tinted glass panes were installed in front of the screen. The rays were said to be particularly dangerous for small children. Village rumour had it that once the TV set arrived, the rats abandoned the house ‘because of ultra rays and ultra sound waves'. ⁵⁰

Both health and money worries did not last long. Country dwellers swiftly embraced the new technology. But compared to the rise of the phonograph and radio, they found nothing ‘miraculous’ or awe-inspiring about television. The same people who typically recalled their first radio or recorded sound experiences as ‘mindblowing', ‘unforgettable', ‘mysterious and wonderful’ and ‘immeasurably astonishing’ were now prepared to take the arrival of TV in their stride. While they had admired radio as ‘magnificent accomplishment’ and ‘wonder of the world', ⁵¹ television was just the latest rung on the stepladder of technical progress. ⁵²

Initially, during the 1950s, TV conquered the industrialized and urbanized regions first. Urban areas, such as the Rhineland and Ruhr valley, registered about three to four times as many receivers per person as rural communities. Federal statistics show that farmers were consistently less likely to have a set than workers, clerks and civil servants. By 1960, one-quarter of West German households owned a set; by the late 1960s, it was three-quarters. A 1967 snapshot shows only 66 per cent of villagers lived in a home with a set, compared with between 74 and 79 per cent of town and city dwellers. This was hardly due to technical transmission problems, as already by the end of the 1950s nine-tenths of the population had a good signal. ⁵³ The main reason for the late take up of TV in rural areas was the difference in material wealth between city and countryside.

The reports from Westphalia confirm that during the early years of the medium (1952–4), sets were most likely to be found in pubs or in the homes of the wealthier villagers. ⁵⁴ Fifteen authors wrote that the local pub was the first to offer the experience of television watching, and that taverns were overcrowded when football games were screened. Sometimes two or three pubs or hotels installed TV sets at the same time, so they would not be outdone by their competitors. ⁵⁵ On the heels of the innkeepers came the factory owners and the wealthy farmers. ⁵⁶ Those who had the means to buy a set were either ‘the doctor, industrialist, businessmen’ ⁵⁷ or well-off farmers. The latter ‘acquired these early TV sets in order to bind the female and male farmhands to their house'. Agricultural labourers were increasingly hard to come by, and in the 1950s often insisted on writing television viewing into their contracts. ⁵⁸ Another group that bought receivers already during the mid-1950s were well-paid skilled rural workers, such as milkers. ⁵⁹ As the 1950s progressed, the families of workers who commuted to the nearby factories were generally quicker to purchase a set than smallholders and less well-off farmers. ⁶⁰ Even though many traders allowed for the receivers to be paid in 20 or 24 instalments, they remained costly for ordinary costumers until the late 1950s. ⁶¹ As a luxury item, TV could even stand in as dowry. At a country wedding in 1955, ‘the young woman brought with her a television set instead of the usual cow'. ⁶²

When affluence spread to the villages, during the 1960s, receivers were high on the list of priorities. In 1970, an ethnographer who took an inventory of the Hessian hamlet Mardorf – a remote, rather traditional community – found that of the 265 households, 230 owned a TV set, but only 30 a phone and just about half a washing machine. ⁶³ The new medium appealed to all generations in the rural household. Where, as often, the older generation lived next to a young family, a TV was considered a suitable present for a 70th birthday, name day or Christmas. As 71-year-old farmer Clemens Stücken joked, ‘the retired couple would present the young couple with a television set’ at Christmas, only to be given a TV recliner in return. ⁶⁴ Some families introduced a piggy bank to which ‘old and young contributed their savings'. ⁶⁵ ‘If the old people initially had misgivings, that changed over time; they now are watching, too, they even purchase a set', farmer’s wife Ariane Lütke reported. ⁶⁶ Once the TV arrived, the older family members watched even more than the young, as they had more free time and preferred staying at home to going out. ⁶⁷ Particularly those who were bedridden, had difficulty walking or whose eyes were too poor to read the paper were ‘very taken’ by telecasts. All nursing homes installed sets in their common rooms; they were unfailingly popular. ⁶⁸ This fits with the findings of the 1964 survey of Tecklenburg, Oberhausen and Iserlohn, where those above 45 years of age enjoyed TV more than the young adults. ⁶⁹ ‘It is delightful how precisely the aged love to participate in watching … in their faces you see rapt attention', even ‘tears of joy’, testified Sybille Tenberg. Fellow farmer’s wife Emilie Worting related at 77 years of age how she had bought her own set: ‘although I am old, I do not want to miss out on television entirely'. ⁷⁰

Like Frau Worting, most villagers waited or saved for several years before they purchased. Between 1954 and about 1961, viewing was a communal experience. During this transition period, neighbourly contact was intensified – in ways not uniformly appreciated. Almost every evening, the television pioneers of the early and mid-1950s had to cope with crowds of friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. One example was ‘Klausi', a smallholder in Laer (a suburb of the coal-mining city Bochum) who held cattle and went around the villages with horse and cart selling fruit, vegetables and meat. Klausi’s passion was breeding carrier pigeons and entering them in races. In 1954, as his neighbour recalled, one of his pigeons:

flew so fast that she brought him home a TV receiver … Klausi was besieged with congratulations … Even television heard of it and went to see him at his vegetable cart. A few days later, then, he could watch himself on his new TV set. Of course the neighbours … had to see the new device – preferably when it was switched on … the living room where the box stood in a back corner was too small for the crowds of visitors, and they had to stand in the hallway and watch through the open door … the family could never watch anything on their own … During the winter, those viewers who worked in the mines and received a coal allowance brought with them a bucket full of coal so that the room could be heated … It went like that for a long while, until about half a year later the next person in the neighbourhood bought a TV. ⁷¹

The practice of communal viewing was fraught with tensions. Sometimes traditional social hierarchies were turned upside down, for example when landlords went to watch at their lodgers’, or farmers at their milkers’. ⁷⁹ But more often, people felt unease at ‘running the risk of bothering the neighbours and being an unwelcome guest'. ‘When private TV visits become too frequent, one is certain to be a nuisance to the hosts.’ ⁸⁰ Dorothee Schulte in Rhede remembered how they:

went to my brother’s to watch particular programmes, Ohnsorg theatre first of all, then circus and crime stories. But it wasn’t a good feeling for us all of the time to be knocking the others’ door down once again … I do like watching TV, but if my place were so crowded as my brother’s was, I would have been sick of it in no time. ⁸¹

Eventually, most households decided to purchase a set. People were tired of putting up with talkative hosts at the neighbours’ and garrulous youths at the pub, ⁸⁸ and of being outvoted by others opting for another channel. ⁸⁹ ‘At home one can view and hear properly … nobody interrupts … everyone has his beer, his cigar and biscuits', village teacher Heinrich Kotter summed up. ⁹⁰ Another factor also weighed heavily: the pressure exerted by children and teenagers. All too often, they proved to be ‘the driving forces’ behind the purchase. ⁹¹ ‘In many cases the parents were pushed by their children to buy a set. If they resisted, the kids would work on the grandparents until they relented.’ ⁹² Schoolchildren argued that ‘everyone’ in their class had a set at home. Once they spent long spells at friends’ homes and even brought home teachers’ recommendations for certain programmes, the parents were likely to give in. ⁹³ Children became the most faithful users of the box during day-time. In Hessian villages in 1970, between a fourth and a third of parents attested that their offspring liked to play Bonanza (after the American Western series). ⁹⁴ A teacher of biology now found his pupils ‘rather disinterested’ in the slides with which he had been able to ‘maximally enthrall classes’ in earlier years. He also observed that most parents placed no or very few restrictions on the youngsters’ daily viewing. ⁹⁵

II

With the end of communal viewing, a new era began during which TV imposed new rhythms, rules and schedules on farm work and leisure activities, on neighbourly relations and village associations. Television was not the only factor contributing to the unravelling of the fabric of traditional rural society. Rather, it was a catalyst accelerating the breakdown of the boundaries of rural communities that had begun much earlier. The 1950s had seen massive changes to agricultural practices, in addition to the beginnings of suburbanization and mass motorization. Commuters moved to the villages, tourists and campers discovered the countryside, and the first malls were erected outside cities. ⁹⁶ But the ‘decisive transformation of everyday life’ happened during the 1960s – within 10 to 15 years of the start of regular broadcasts. ⁹⁷

One of the biggest changes introduced by TV in everyday life was that people stayed up longer and got less sleep than before. Sleep deprivation was recorded by many, either as observed in others ⁹⁸ or as their own experience. ‘We often sat in the evenings in front of the set … it got late and you could not get away from it and go to bed.’ ⁹⁹ ‘The man who fetches the milk in the mornings from the farmers and delivers it to the creamery said: ever since farmers X and Y had a TV, the milk hasn’t been put out at the road at the right time.’ ¹⁰⁰ Representative ‘before and after’ polls indeed prove that television shortened the nights, and therefore (on average) slightly lowered the mood of those who had recently acquired a set. ¹⁰¹ This effect was particularly pronounced in the countryside, where people traditionally went to bed earlier than their urban peers, and programming schedules conflicted more with the daily rhythm. ¹⁰² Still, on average, rural viewers watched longer than urban viewers ¹⁰³ and had slightly more positive attitudes to broadcasting as well. ¹⁰⁴

The Westphalian respondents agreed that the purchase of a set led to a temporary addiction to television. ¹⁰⁵ People became ‘Fernatiker’ (a pun combining ‘Fernseher’/TV and ‘Fanatiker’/fanatic) displaying ‘a certain insatiability'. ¹⁰⁶ But after a few months, ‘the novelty wore off’ and the lure of daytime programming waned. ¹⁰⁷ Particularly in winter, the afternoon broadcasts were attractive draws for country people. Early darkness meant the set was switched on earlier. The summer, in contrast, saw more urgent tasks to be tended to. ‘When the gardening work starts in the villages, and the days get longer, the television set will not be switched on that often anymore.’ ¹⁰⁸

Even the organization of the farmers’ working day was changed by TV’s arrival. The evening’s leisure was moved forward to fit in with the programming schedule, and the late feeding of cattle ended, as Sybille Tenberg described in 1965. In many families, ‘there was a rush to get finished with the tasks by eight p.m.’. ¹⁰⁹ To tune into the main news show Tagesschau, the evening meal had to be brought forward.

As a rule, the mother has prepared the supper by then, or one has already eaten it … Eating habits have changed, because now for supper there is always only open sandwiches – rarely a warm dish such as fried potatoes, milk soup or leftovers from the midday cooked meal. Earlier, it was pretty much the other way around. ¹¹⁰

Television dominated the evening to such an extent, the village veterinarian reported, that cattle farmers would typically call in for help right after popular broadcasts. ‘They don’t like going to the stables when a suspenseful programme is on … but after it ends, the cases will be all the more urgent.’ ¹¹¹

The new medium impacted not only on when leisure time started, but also where and who it was spent with.

Earlier, on warm summer evenings, the family members sat in front of their houses on a bench and talked to their neighbours across the street, with the men smoking their pipe or a cigar, and the women knitting socks or darning. Now, instead, they sit in front of the screen … On the long winter evenings, the men would play Skat or Doppelkopp [card games] while the women did needlework. That, too, is now rare. ¹¹²

This account by retired teacher Bernhard Sonderen from Hagen is remarkably similar to those by Otto Schulz-Wessel from Petzen and Paul Burgmann from Laer. The latter two added that before TV, the men used to read the paper or listen to the radio, and neighbours would stop by for a chat or, occasionally, meet in the pub. ¹¹³

Television ended these routines. As 78-year-old farmer Gerd Hüser from Hemmerde noticed, ‘the village streets are absolutely quiet in the evening … it seems a miracle if one encounters a pedestrian, or rarely a car. All the villagers are sitting in front of their screens', having become ‘reclusive’ and ‘encapsulated’. Burgmann concurred: ‘You can bet on the streets … being almost deserted, even on lovely summer evenings, if a popular programme is on.’ ¹¹⁴ Farmer Josef Langenholl from Körbecke argued that ‘the decrease of neighbourly get-togethers at home and in front of the doors’ resulted in people talking less to each other. ¹¹⁵ Television was also blamed for ‘a deplorable decline in contact with the neighbours’ on Sunday afternoons. ¹¹⁶ The traditional card game, where the neighbours rotated to host the men’s Sunday evening Skat, became less popular. ¹¹⁷ Elderly farmers like Karl Venneklos no longer dropped in on the neighbours, as he was afraid ‘of coming at an inconvenient time’ during the schedules. ¹¹⁸ Farmer’s wife Erna Unsehl from Havixbeck resented that, while visiting acquaintances, she had twice ended up joining the family in front of the screen. ¹¹⁹ Farm manager Wilhelm Holtrup agreed: ‘I have to confess that I myself don’t like it if visitors show up just when the news is on'. ¹²⁰ The spread of television brought with it new unwritten rules about when it was better not to knock on the door.

If TV led to a weakening of neighbourly networks, what was its impact on village rituals and communal leisure activities? Villagers often blamed television’s ascent for the ‘ebbing away’ of social life. ¹²¹ ‘Club life [Vereinsleben] suffers, particularly when big sporting events are on. First the TV, then the Verein duties.’ ¹²² Local clubs commonly began to reschedule meetings to avoid clashes with attractive programmes. ¹²³ Male choirs in Lüdenscheid and Hagen struggled with attendance at evening rehearsals. ¹²⁴ Likewise, attendance fell at meetings of the Laer pigeon breeder association and the gun club [Schützenverein]. Once in Laer, a popular broadcast almost led to the cancellation of the village fair. ‘The longingly awaited visitors’ only came ‘once the programme had ended'. ¹²⁵ Nearby in Leeden, fewer and fewer people turned up to lectures, church fairs and other events. That was not least because ‘people have become more critical and demanding by watching TV, and apply television standards to talks and carnival events'. ¹²⁶ A circus that toured the Westphalian villages in 1966 attracted a teenage audience in the afternoons but had to cancel evening performances. The circus director feared extinction ‘because the big hits of the major circuses are shown on TV and spoil the audiences, who no longer want to see a more modest performance'. ¹²⁷ The rural cinemas closed down almost everywhere during the late 1950s, ¹²⁸ and publicans universally complained about fewer guests as people took to consuming bottled beer at home. ¹²⁹ Only dance venues continued to thrive, with their Saturday and Sunday events drawing in young people who were evidently less keen on TV than their parents. ¹³⁰

The churches, too, were affected. Secularization was already well under way in Westphalia. Since 1945, secular leisure opportunities had lured away both boys and girls from Catholic activities. ¹³¹ During the 1950s, Catholic youth organizations had faced increasingly vocal criticisms from within and an exodus of female members. ¹³² Television now accelerated this process. Bernhard Sonderen reported from Hagen how the traditional biweekly screenings in the church hall – combining a newsreel with a diocese-approved film – petered out when fewer and fewer of the former 40 to 80 viewers showed up. The weekly church youth evenings lost in popularity, ¹³³ as did the meetings of the Catholic Rural Youth (Katholische Landjugend) in Schöppingen. ¹³⁴ In some cases, even worship now had to fit around TV. In 1965, the vicar of a Catholic church in Rhede announced to the parishioners’ astonishment that ‘today’s service will be delayed because of a TV broadcast that our children want to see'. ¹³⁵

Although some pastors initially advised villagers against television, their warnings fell on deaf ears. The religious argument against broadcasting focused almost exclusively on its impact on children ¹³⁶ and was delivered by the teachers in (denominational) schools. ‘The protestant church and the teachers always warned against children watching excessively', but ‘the masses’ were unwilling to heed such counsel, retired teacher Otto Schulz-Wessel recalled. In his memory, people’s general attitude was that clergy and teachers ‘should keep to themselves and their own stuff; our life is none of their business'. ¹³⁷ Likewise ‘to no avail', clergy in Lüdenscheid and Witten sought to ‘enlighten and admonish’ parents at parent-teacher evenings about the damaging effects of the new medium. ¹³⁸

Our Westphalian sources rarely mention the pastors’ warnings in detail ¹³⁹ – presumably because clergymen, who already faced the tide of secularization, refrained from admonishing laypeople outright against TV. Parishioners might also have chosen to disregard any such advice when taking personal decisions about buying and watching. Instead, our reporters prefer to tell stories about progressive clerics who embraced television for their purposes. Thus, in June 1957 the new pastor in Hagen, a hamlet with particularly bad signal, installed two very tall antennas on the roof of the vicarage and the church hall. He held separate weekly evening screenings for the teenage boys and girls, and invited all villagers to watch selected movies and the yearly Cologne carnival procession. The idea was to ‘offer sound entertainment to the young in order to lure them away from the distractions of the street and pubs'. ¹⁴⁰ Other priests bought a set to keep abreast of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) and regularly invited parishioners ‘to watch broadcasts from the Vatican'. ¹⁴¹ Or they took to announcing recommended programmes during the service. ¹⁴²

Did people watch the regular religious features on West German channels? ¹⁴³ The teachers’ impressions were that they did not; younger families tended to tune into news regularly, but not to religious programmes. ¹⁴⁴ Only the elderly sought out religious fare. ¹⁴⁵ Typically, though, both Catholics and Protestants followed the broadcasts targeted at their own as well as the others’ creed. In the denominationally strongly divided Westphalian countryside, this was new and ‘introduced a conciliatory outlook'. ‘For many, it was interesting to see how worship is practised in the other church’ and viewers ‘liked to draw comparisons’ with their own experience. ¹⁴⁶ Here, television served to open horizons beyond the parish and one’s own church, therefore contributing to the decline of the local pastor’s influence.

The critics of television’s rise feared not only the weakening of church ties but also the decline of family values. The Münster questionnaire aimed at ‘gauging the ways in which television impacts the family community’ and enquired ‘whether family conversation had suffered because of it'. ¹⁴⁷ Here, the Münster archivists joined a chorus of modernity-sceptic voices in the early Federal Republic. Conservatives had responded to wartime changes to gender roles with the political project of reconstructing the family. The idealized, bourgeois, nuclear family was praised as a storehouse of German values, a basis of postwar recovery and a pillar of stability in times of social crisis. ¹⁴⁸ During the 1950s and 1960s, the educated middle and upper classes in particular invoked a ‘crisis’ of the family. To them, the bulwark of the family needed to be fortified against the rising tide of modern forces such as individualism, feminism, consumerism, communism or secularization. This discourse attempted to reinscribe a set of gender norms that were already under pressure. ¹⁴⁹ Now, scholars identified television as the newest threat to the family ideal.

The pollsters and sociologists of the time highlighted the danger presented by TV to family life, although they were unable to gather the necessary evidence. ¹⁵⁰ A nationwide poll in 1966–7 confirmed that levels of family conversation had not changed by the introduction of TV. ¹⁵¹ Respondents to other surveys, too, overwhelmingly attested that family life had not suffered from television, that they regularly watched together, and that TV made them spend more time at home and have fewer arguments than before. Nevertheless, scholars believed that the rural family was damaged by the ‘pseudo-togetherness’ and ‘superficial sociability’ of consuming TV. ¹⁵² For sure, there were differences in the ways rural and urban families watched the tube. The Tecklenburg survey showed that ‘country people much more often practise wordless television reception’ (59 per cent) than town and city dwellers (41 and 47 per cent). The more rural and the older viewers were, the more they tended to devote their undivided attention to the screen. But the study also evidenced that about half of all viewers, regardless of whether they were rural or urban, ‘often’ or ‘regularly’ talked about broadcasts after having watched them. Moreover, village families tended to be larger and have more children than city families, and were thus more likely to enforce silence when the set was on. ¹⁵³ These data hardly imply a decline of family cohesion. Instead, they suggest that contemporary scholars harboured an idealized middle-class concept of family conversation. They misread the findings to confirm their fears of traditional families being endangered by modern technology.

The Münster ethnographers fell into the same trap. While their questionnaire implied that rural family life had suffered from television, the respondents did not take the bait. They flatly declared that ‘TV has not changed family life’ ¹⁵⁴ and that the family chat was but a romanticized ideal. Was not the discussion incited by TV programmes ‘more interesting and fruitful than … the recent village gossip’? ¹⁵⁵ Were there not still ‘more than enough possibilities during mealtimes and work’ to talk? ¹⁵⁶ A retired teacher conceded that from among the peasants in Schöppingen, he had ‘not once heard family members complain’ about the issue. ¹⁵⁷ Work had always trumped the leisurely family chat, the villagers cautioned. Even in the pre-radio days, there had not been much serious conversation. ‘The women and girls did needlework, we children did homework, and our father studied the newspaper. Few words were exchanged, the trivial events of the village were quickly dispensed with, then it was quiet under the petroleum lamp.’ ¹⁵⁸ It was felt that television had enriched, rather than undermined, a family life which had never been the idyll imagined by ethnographers.

Television’s impact on gender roles, too, did not conform to the ethnographers’ expectations. One of the main changes induced by TV was that the men now took a night out at the pub or with mates significantly less often. ¹⁵⁹ But domesticated fathers, even if they edged closer to the new ideal of softer, emotional fatherhood, ¹⁶⁰ were by no means giving up patriarchal privileges. In the everyday practices of rural families, patriarchal structures were mirrored in the ways that air time was consumed. Frequently, after supper, the housewife was still working in the kitchen, while the other family members watched in the living room. ¹⁶¹ Each member took a designated seat, with the father often laying claim to the most comfortable recliner. ¹⁶² A teacher who surveyed a class of 33 sixteen-year-olds in Laasphe reported that:

often, the father has a privileged place, namely the sofa or armchair. The children come second, and the mother only third! Maybe that is because the family already sits down to watch while the mother is still busy in the kitchen. ¹⁶³

Thus, the spread of television sets affected rural society in different ways. While it altered daily rhythms and contributed to the erosion of the churches’ authority, it reinforced domesticity and reinscribed patriarchal routines in families. And whereas TV crowded out neighbourly and club meetings, this was less a decline than a reshaping of social life in the village. The leisure activities of the pre-television decades had been limited in scope, constrained by geographical proximity (as in the case of neighbourly networks) and regimented by the village notables and pastors (as in the case of club and church activities). About a fifth of people complained of boredom on Sundays and holidays, ¹⁶⁶ and many more rural than urban viewers admitted they tuned in ‘to overcome the feeling of loneliness'. ¹⁶⁷ Television simply offered an alternative: a choice of whether to engage with the local culture or with the national or regional programming. Given the choice, most people chose to broaden their horizon beyond the village.

III

To what extent, then, did television act as a ‘window to the world’ ¹⁶⁸ and manage to de-localize and politicize rural viewers? Was the village vet right that TV had led to ‘a higher level of general knowledge and to a stronger participation in cultural and political life’? ¹⁶⁹ Was the medium a motor of politicization, nationalization and mass consumerism?

In the Westphalian countryside, the most popular genres by far were light entertainment – the comic folk theatre of Millowitsch and Ohnsorg, crime series and sports shows. ¹⁷⁰ In this, the villagers differed little from urban viewers. ¹⁷¹ But the rural audience also sought out documentaries on nature, wildlife and animal shows. ¹⁷² National as well as international media events – ‘the Olympics, the World Cup, coronations of royals’ – were keenly received. ¹⁷³ Football games were a huge draw to the men. The World Cups in 1954, 1958, 1962 and 1966 prompted quite a few to purchase a receiver, ¹⁷⁴ with almost everyone in the village cheering on the national team. ¹⁷⁵

The two West German networks beamed national and international perspectives into rural homes. ¹⁷⁶ Willi Buhren, a 65-year-old farmhand, found his fellow countrymen even ‘on the most remote farms … addicted’ to the new concepts TV brought, and always ‘willing to take in the new'. He quoted a retired shoemaker as saying, ‘TV is great, now we get to see things from this world that we not even knew existed'. ¹⁷⁷ A 77-year-old farmer from Hemmerde related how ‘particularly exciting’ it was ‘to see, on screen, leading people from the economy and cultural life’ about whom he had only read before. ¹⁷⁸ An 82-year-old farmer welcomed broadcasts ‘about national issues, regional particularities, landscapes, buildings and churches’ ¹⁷⁹ and an 85-year-old farmer’s wife loved ‘foreign landscapes … Scottish sheep … Nordic reindeer … Oriental towns, far-away continents'. ¹⁸⁰

The early evening news had a privileged place in the daily rhythm. For a large majority of viewers, supper was followed by the national news. ¹⁸¹ The families of the polled sixteen-year-olds in Laasphe tuned in at 8 p.m. for Tagesschau (11 out of 27) or at 7 p.m. (nine out of 27) for Heute, the second channel’s news. ¹⁸² Thus rural people followed the national news much more extensively than before TV, ¹⁸³ a strong effect that included those uninterested in politics. ¹⁸⁴ By the mid-1960s, villagers were just as well informed about current political affairs as their urban counterparts. They trusted television more than any other media when it came to coverage of political events. ¹⁸⁵ Moreover, they attested to tuning in ‘because I can learn something from it’ to a greater extent than town and city dwellers. ¹⁸⁶ Willi Buhren was impressed by acquaintances who ‘eagerly followed the Bundestag [parliamentary] debates on screen’ and ‘could recite all the details’ from particular sessions. ¹⁸⁷ Many older men enjoyed watching such debates; Wilhelm Holtrup, for example, ‘always’ saw ‘broadcasts from the Bundestag from beginning to end'. He also liked ‘the Sunday Frühschoppen with Werner Höfer', a weekly political talk show with journalists from several countries. ¹⁸⁸ ‘Drawn-out discussions’ at home and at work about ‘the politically coloured themes’ on TV were typical of the older male villagers. ¹⁸⁹

The extent to which television accelerated the politicization of the rural population was highly gendered. Men were significantly more interested in political programmes, while rural women were the social group least keen on them, most likely to trust them and ‘particularly insecure’ when asked to judge TV’s political party bias. But overall, both rural women and men were now better informed than before TV. ¹⁹⁰ This sea change is mirrored in the complaints of non-viewers who felt left behind. Buhren, who did not own a set, was surprised how the regulars ‘knew the ministers and the parliamentary rules of procedure; it was completely foreign to me'. ¹⁹¹ Mr and Mrs Strohschneider, a middle-aged couple from Werl, were embarrassed when ‘frequently asked by other people about all kinds of things which had been seen on television … also political and social topics … we could not join in the conversation. Sometimes we were not really very well informed.’ ¹⁹² In the mid-1960s, it became impossible to keep up with colleagues at work, with friends and at school if one did not have a television. ¹⁹³ This was true for the children, too. All the teachers and classes surveyed testified that recent programmes were a regular, major topic of schoolyard conversation. ¹⁹⁴

Television therefore widened the outlook of rural audiences. But was it also a motor of cultural homogenization and mass consumerism? We only have scattered evidence about the ways people reacted to lifestyles and consumer products presented on air. Few villagers remarked on their fascination with televised advertisements or luxury items. ¹⁹⁵ Sybille Tenberg was advised by the men in her family that she should have her hair done like a female presenter. ¹⁹⁶ Beyond these isolated findings, our sources offer only one way of probing the hypothesis: a glance at living room furnishings. The survey asked whether the purchase of a set led to spatial rearrangements in the home – and brought to light some interesting developments.

Traditionally, in Westphalian farmhouses as well as rural workers’ dwellings, family life revolved around a large eat-in kitchen (Wohnküche). The more expensively furnished living room was called gute Stube (parlour); it was ‘a cold pomp, only used on holidays, at most once on Sundays'. The decline of the showcase rural parlour began with the post-1945 construction wave, as new flats often had small kitchens. ¹⁹⁷ Television accelerated this process of modernization. The ratio of boxes in living rooms to boxes in kitchens is a good indicator of how modernized the village was, as our Hessian examples show. Mardorf, where the city was far away and most families were still involved with farming, counted 56 TV sets in kitchens and 118 in living rooms. Nieder-Erlenbach, in commuting distance to Frankfurt and morphing into a dormitory town, recorded a ratio of three to 261. ¹⁹⁸

Once the set had arrived in the gute Stube, the pricey sofas and armchairs began to be used every day, with the children lying on the rug while the family was watching. ¹⁹⁹ Often, the room lacked heating, so an oil heater or stove was brought in. ²⁰⁰ Seating had to be rearranged so that the screen could be seen by all. Of the 27 Laasphe families with a receiver surveyed in 1967, 22 had placed it in the living room. ²⁰¹ In 10 households, the furniture was repositioned, and 12 acquired additional furnishings or lighting. ²⁰² Ceiling lights were often replaced by small sconces or a special ‘TV light'. ²⁰³ A teacher who questioned 62 ten- to thirteen-year-olds in Papenburg in 1965 found that 44 families had placed the set in the living room, and only 12 in the kitchen. In 26 cases, new furniture had been bought, mostly tables or cupboards to put the set on. ²⁰⁴ Overall, TV prompted at least 40 per cent of households to make additional purchases. Given that most householders had already invested in new suites during the 1950s ‘furniture wave’, television now served to continue the consumerist trend. ²⁰⁵

Figure 2 shows drawings by the Westphalian respondents of their updated rural parlours. The set typically stood in a corner, on a low cupboard or table, with chairs and sofas about three to four metres away. As extended families could be large, there was plenty of seating provided. Heaters or armoires were placed in the other corners. The TV dominated the setting. Only rarely, objects such as the sewing machine, radio or audio equipment hinted at the room being used for other purposes. Television had taken over village parlours, and rural homes now resembled their urban counterparts more closely. ²⁰⁶

Judging from the transformation of village living rooms, TV indeed contributed to the cultural homogenization of the population. It possibly promoted mass consumerism as well, although our sources provide little evidence beyond furniture purchases. Television’s fostering of politicization and nationalization is more clearly established, with national news and political coverage keenly watched among elderly, rural audiences. To them, TV was both a forum of national politics and a window to the wider world.

IV

By the late 1960s, television had become the unquestionable leading medium in both urban and rural West Germany. ²⁰⁷ Initially, the villages had been slow to acquire receivers because they were less affluent. But they caught up quickly once the sets became more affordable. The rural mentality was by no means set against TV. On the contrary: many villagers valued a receiver more than a washer, and found communal viewing an unpleasant experience that had to be overcome as quickly as possible.

Indeed, TV acted as an agent of modernization in rural society. Wherever it spread, it rapidly changed people’s everyday habits. Daily schedules were not only reinforced but radically altered by television. Mealtimes and bedtimes were moved and the feeding rhythms of cattle adapted. Within only weeks or months, living rooms and leisure activities were transformed. New unwritten rules developed about when (not) to visit the neighbours and when (not) to schedule club meetings and church activities. Villagers now stayed at home in the evenings more often, and local institutions such as Vereine, neighbourly card game rotas, lecture series and youth clubs struggled to attract participants. Circuses, cinemas and fairs felt the impact of television (and motorization), too. Village life was redefined by the rise of TV. The old neighbourly networks and village associations were weakened, like the local clerics’ influence.

Clearly, television accelerated the levelling of religious milieus in the village. Catholics and Protestants alike now knew more about the other denomination and could compare their local parish to what happened in the national church. The pastors and teachers of denominational schools understood that they could not win a battle against TV and confined themselves to warning about its dangers to children. But parents overwhelmingly turned a deaf ear to clerical admonitions. After all, most parishioners welcomed television’s advantages. They wanted to escape the grip of local elites such as pastors, teachers and village notables, as the drop in the popularity of Verein and church activities, and the abandonment of church-organized communal viewing events shows. To quite a few villagers, the old forms of socializing were apparently less a cherished tradition than a combination of gossip, social control and boredom. To them, communal viewing was unpleasant, and rural communities were a far cry from the pastoral idyll that Heimat enthusiasts and conservative ethnographers cherished.

Such an attitude was inconceivable to the scholars investigating television’s effects. As the educated middle classes were the stratum most ambivalent towards the new medium, they were the most intent on highlighting the dangers television posed to an idealized, traditional, rural family. Therefore, contemporary social researchers argued unanimously that village families as well as children – both considered more vulnerable than the educated spokesmen – needed protection from broadcasting’s unfettered effects. The patronizing argument was the same, whether it came from conservatives sceptical of modernity or the 1970s neo-Marxists engaged in critique of ideology (who saw TV as a hegemonic instrument of the capitalist bourgeoisie). ²⁰⁸ Such arguments cut no ice with rural people. Our Westphalian reporters stubbornly declared that family togetherness had not suffered, and in any case had not been all that exciting before TV either. Despite the warnings by clergymen and teachers, village children were allowed to indulge daily in a rich television diet.

The openness with which the set was welcomed in the countryside was remarkable. The rural correspondents of the Münster archive, at least half of whom could reasonably be expected to long for the good old times of peasant Heimat, resisted the nostalgic bias of the ethnographers. Elderly men and women proved particularly keen on TV, even more so than young adults. The old villagers watched just as avidly as children and teenagers. This pattern lends additional force to the ‘transitional majority’ hypothesis: that television accelerated the value change of the 1960s as it reached rural, elderly, apolitical and under-age audiences faster and more effectively than earlier mass media. ²⁰⁹ There is evidence, too, that the rise of TV drove ‘cultural homogenization’ and a ‘decline of regional particularities'. ²¹⁰ In several ways, it flattened the differences between village and city. Living rooms now looked more alike, just as evening schedules became more similar. Rural peculiarities such as warm suppers, late cattle feedings, regular outdoor chats with the neighbours in the early evenings and very early bedtimes began to fade away. Villagers were now just as well informed about current affairs as their urban counterparts, and just as unlikely to heed the churches’ counsel.

As villagers were such regular viewers of the national news, and often keen on parliamentary coverage and political magazines, it is fair to label TV both a nationalizing force and a motor of ongoing politicization. Rural hamlets became part of national politics more than ever before. And even if men enjoyed political programmes more than women, and almost all preferred light entertainment over political information, the lack of alternatives on offer and the enforced situation of family viewing meant that apolitical viewers consumed a fair amount of television’s coverage of national politics. Regional contexts lost their dominance, as rural people witnessed both national and international media events.

The modernizing impact of television on rural society was limited, however. Patriarchal structures persisted, albeit in changed forms, and were reinforced by how the box was positioned and used in rural households. Where receivers were more of a priority than washers, where father and children occupied privileged seats and the mother joined once the dishes were done, and only female viewers combined watching with chores and needlework, gender inequality prevailed. The advent of television did have a dramatic impact on rural society, accelerating its modernization, secularization, nationalization and politicization. But precisely the element that contemporary elites were most worried about, the patriarchal family, emerged unscathed from these changes.