| Aktuelle Kamera | |
|---|---|
Aktuelle Kamera logo from the late-1980s |
|
| Format | News program |
| Starring | See Hosts below |
| Country of origin | East Germany |
| No. of episodes | over 12,000 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 0:30 minutes (per episode) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Fernsehen der DDR |
| Original run | December 21, 1952 – December 14, 1990 |
Aktuelle Kamera (Current Camera) was the state television newscast of the former German Democratic Republic (German: Deutscher Fernsehfunk, known as "Fernsehen der DDR" between February 11, 1972 and March 14, 1990). On air from December 21, 1952 (daily broadcasts didn't take place until October 11, 1957) to December 14, 1990, Aktuelle Kamera was one of the main propaganda tools of the East German government.
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In the very early days of East German television Aktuelle Kamera was uncensored, and even critical. This situation changed after the television service reported accurately on the uprising in East Germany on 17 June 1953. The director was removed and news was then sourced from official outlets. The newsroom was directly linked to the Politbüro of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany's Central Committee. The programme presented reports that promoted socialism and portrayed the West in a negative manner. The programme also had a pro-government bias and typically didn't report on news that could potentially fuel anti-government sentiment.
Aktuelle Kamera's main edition was originally scheduled at 8pm before being moved to 7:30pm in the 1960s, so as not to coincide with the major West German newscasts, ZDF's Heute at 7pm and the ARD's Tagesschau at 8pm, both of which were widely watched in East Germany. The broadcast lasted 20 minutes until 1972 when it was expanded to a full half-hour.
Starting in the mid-1970s, another 30-minute edition was presented on DDR2 (launched in 1969) around 9:30pm. Prior to that, both channels aired Aktuelle Kamera simultaneously at 7:30pm, then repeated the next morning when DDR1 signed on around 9:30am (later 8:30am), before airing school-oriented programming, co-produced by the DDR-FS and the GDR Education Ministry.
News summaries were added as the transmissions increased during the day. There was a bulletin at the end of the morning programmes (i.e. between 12 noon and 1pm) and another, the afternoon news update, at 5pm on DDR1. DDR2's evening schedule always began with the news at 6:45pm (later 5:45pm and 6:55pm). Late newscasts didn't appear until the 1970s, when DDR1 screened a headline update following the magazine programmes, around 10pm. From the 1980s, Aktuelle Kamera's final round-up was the last scheduled programme at the end of the day.
In fact, television audiences largely ignored Aktuelle Kamera, as West German television was preferred (accounting for 10-15% of actual viewing). The East German authorities were well-aware of this, and went as far as adopting the French colour standard SECAM rather than the PAL encoding used in the Federal Republic of Germany. This move didn't hinder reception of West German TV as such, as the basic television standard remained the same. It did prevent reception in colour by native East German TV sets though the majority of them were monochrome (black and white) anyway.
East Germans responded by buying PAL decoders for their SECAM TV sets. Eventually the government in East Berlin stopped paying attention to so-called "Republikflucht via Fernsehen", or "defection via television" and from 1977 onwards permitted the sale of dual standard (PAL/SECAM) sets.
Aktuelle Kamera served as an example for the Estonian newscast Aktuaalne Kaamera that was first aired in Eesti Televisioon on March 11, 1956. Aktuaalne Kaamera, after several changes in format, still goes on air as daily newscast.
Almost a month before the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Aktuelle Kamera loosened its fidelity to the party line and began presenting fair reports about the events transforming East Germany at the time. On October 16, 1989, it showed its first pictures of the massive opposition rallies taking place every Monday in Leipzig.
Following Reunification, all editions of Aktuelle Kamera were rebranded according to the period of the day they aired. The 12:50pm newscast was from then known as AK am Mittag ("CC at Midday"), the main broadcast at 7:30pm became Aktuelle Kamera am Abend ("Current Camera Evening"), and the news on DDR2 was rebranded as AK-Zwo. News summaries received the generic name of AK-Nachrichten (simply "CC-News") or AK-Kurznachrichten.
The last newscast as Aktuelle Kamera was anchored by Petra Kusch-Lück on December 14, 1990 at 1am on DFF1 (the former DDR1). The following day, DFF's newscasts were re-titled Aktuell ("Current"). East German television was reduced to one channel, after DFF1 folded, its transmitters becoming part of the Das Erste network.
On January 1, 1992, the former DDR2 was regionalised and incorporated into the ARD as the regional channel ("Dritte Programme") for the "New Länder" under the names of MDR-Fernsehen (Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia), ORB-Fernsehen (Brandenburg, later merged with Sender Freies Berlin to form Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) and N3 (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).
The 2003 film Good Bye Lenin!, about a woman who falls into a coma before the Berlin Wall comes down and doesn't emerge until several months hence, features Aktuelle Kamera as a plot point. The film deals with how her children create a "DDR in her bedroom", doing such things as putting food in old jars, wearing old clothes—and showing AK tapes heavily. One of the first things protagonist Alex's friend Denis does is get tapes of old East German shows: "about 30 Aktuelle Kamera, 11 Der schwarze Kanal, six of Ein Kessel Buntes (shown in subtitles as "that variety show you mentioned"), and three or four of Everyday Life in the West." When Alex said that his mother would notice that the news was old, his friend replied that "they're all the same old crap, anyway." Denis, an amateur filmmaker, even goes as far to produce fake newscasts that say that West Germans were streaming into the DDR to avoid neo-Nazi groups and unemployment, not the other way round.
Aktuelle Kamera's principal presenters, 1952-90: