Re: [ARSCLIST] Telefunken & DGG

["Copeland, Peter" <Peter.Copeland@xxxxx>]

Dear All,
    I should like to contribute a few addenda to this discussion.
    The British Library Sound Archive has a large collection of
twelve-inch 78s of material known as "The German Radio Collection." But
my personal belief (which I cannot prove) is that it may be something
rather different.
    The discs were undoubtedly pressed in the DGG factory (in Hanover, I
think), and each side has a plain white label three inches in diameter.
Just occasionally, one can see that the physical label comprises a
Polydor label upside-down, because ink has leached from another label in
the pile before it dried.
    When I was working for the BBC, their archive had transferred
historically-significant items from these discs, which then came to the
British Library Sound Archive.
    I think that these pressings were made at the Polydor factory
essentially as shellac one-offs, before the metal was recycled. One has
fantasies about the forces invading Germany on their way to Berlin,
using their arms to force DGG/Polydor workers to press off one copy of
each matrix, in anticipation of the Nuremburg Trials.
    My experience with pre-war Polydor discs suggests the disc mastering
was done at the DGG-Polydor studios. The groove-pitches, the
groove-to-land ratio, and the shape of the grooves themselves are all
consistent with that theory. I therefore fantasise that the Third Reich
wished to immortalise itself by using the best archival techniques
available before the Second World War broke out.
Peter Copeland
Former Conservation Manager,
British Library Sound Archive

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of George Brock-Nannestad
Sent: 30 December 2005 16:08
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Telefunken & DGG

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad

Hello,

without checking my sources I can contribute the following general 
information on the German radio records:

- from Steve Smolian's earlier mail -
> For years I thought Tele was the Nazi record label, making the
official 
discs for their radio station libraries.  Recently I got some white
label
Polydor (I think- could be Grammophon- can't check at the moment) which
were also from radio, posibly for radio use. The latter was 3.5 Serious
Songs of
Brahms sung by Louise Willer, an alto whom I like.  Side 5, which I
lack,
finished the cycle, s. 6 probably being blank.
> 
These records are among the great discographic mysteries. The German
radio
published catalogs of this stuff for their own internal use.  The disccs
almost never turn up. 

----- the German radio co-operation in the so-called Reichs-Rundfunk-
Gesellschaft did record and press records for non-synchronous
transmission. 
These records were white-label and marked RRG or fully written as above.

There exist printed catalogues from the 1930s - they are rare but not 
impossible to find. The print run of the records was not large. It had 
nothing to do with Nazism as such, any more than other post 1933 life
was 
permeated by it.

The German radio was not the only to have records pressed for such
purposes: 
both BBC and e.g. the Swedish radio did the same. BBC was very special;
in 
the beginning they used 60 rpm (a nice engineer's choice of one per
second).

----- incidentally, the Swedish Telefunken subsidiary Telestar published
dyed-in-the-wool offensive 10" Nazi records, originally Telefunken, as
late as 1952, for the Swedish Nazi market. They are not spoken about.
Some of this material is available to order from certain US websites. In
Germany, such records can only be legally sold when the seller states
that it is 
exclusively for informational purposes.

 I remeber seing listed a Beethoven 9 with Rehkemper
singing the bass part. Apparently they made 12 copies of each selected
broadcast for later use, distributing one to each of the 12 (I think)
regional stations.  This goes back to 1928 or so, pre Hitler.  I have
what I believe to be one of them, an "Un bel di" or the like with
Reining, incomplete on one side,
> 
Someone abroad with better German than mine might consider this as a 
research project.

----- I am quite convinced that German colleague collectors have this 
completely covered.

Kind regards and happy new year,

George

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