Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow

The Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" Berlin (TV Station Paul Nipkow) was one of the first public television stations in the world. It was on the air from March 22, 1935 until it was shut down in 1944. Its headquarters were in Berlin, Germany. It was named after Paul Nipkow, the inventor of the Nipkow disk. Before 1935 there had been experimental television transmissions in Germany since 1928 from the transmitters Döberitz, Königs Wusterhausen and Witzleben, all around Berlin.

The first test transmission was introduced to the public on April 18, 1934. The station was only receivable in and around Berlin. It became very popular when it covered the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. About 160,000 viewers saw the Olympic games on a few private TV-sets and in many public TV chambers. The Station was rarely used for propaganda issues, as Goebbels preferred radio as a mass-medium, but Nazi Indoctrination nevertheless was always present. The heavy and slow equipment made it difficult to report and almost all programming was broadcast live. From 1942 to 1944 the Germans also restarted the TV station in Paris to broadcast programs in German and French. In 1944 the station was shut down, as were most other cultural events, as a consequence of the approach of the Allied Armies in the Normandy Campaign.

After the collapse of East Germany in 1990 about 280 rolls of 35mm film was discovered that contained programming of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow. In recent years much of that material has been aired on German and international channels, mostly by The History Channel. The rediscovered footage was used in Michael Kloft's 1999 documentary Das Fernsehen unter dem Hakenkreuz (Television Under the Swastika).