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Audiovision(s)! “TV makes History“

Audiovision(en)! “Fernsehen macht Geschichte“

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Abstract: It is a well-known fact that from the second half of the 20th century mass media have been influencing our perception of past and present. However, what consequences does this manipulative capacity of the media have for the construction of teaching material? In fact, audiovisual sources have turned into an economic good of media society. This means that history teaching at school often sticks to textbooks and worksheets whereas public service broadcasters are able to present fascinating multimedia history portals.
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2014-2437.
Languages: English, Deutsch


It is a well-known fact that from the second half of the 20th century mass media have been influencing our perception of past and present. However, what consequences does this manipulative capacity of the media have for the construction of teaching material? In fact, audiovisual sources have turned into an economic good of media society. This means that history teaching at school often sticks to textbooks and worksheets whereas public service broadcasters are able to present fascinating multimedia history portals.

Watching and experiencing history

Audiovisual storytelling on TV makes use of various means of interacting with (historical) reality by utilizing different modes of cinematic narration. For example, the TV station “Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk” made the “Battle of Leipzig” (1813) come alive in 2013 with the help of ticker and live broadcast.[1] The “ARD”, on the other hand, released a brilliant docudrama on the First World War this year, depicting transnational war experiences from various perspectives on the basis of diary entries and private letters in “14 Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs”[2]. It is neither the completely new production nor the reconstruction of history on TV but the televisual repetition of the experienced past which characterizes the Approach of TV stations to contemporary history. They compile pictures of historical news reports drawn from their own archives to create collective albums of memory[3] and thereby satisfy the audience’s desire for a memory influenced, sometimes even created by TV.[4] In the digital age, prime time documentaries are not only shown once just to vanish in the stations’ archives ever after. Instead, they remain publicly available in the medium term. Thus, TV stations present themselves at once as audiovisual archives and as producers of multimedia history textbooks when they offer texts with historical background information, personal documents, interviews with contemporary witnesses and making-of videos of their documentaries on the Internet. It goes without saying that these portals are produced within the conventions of topic selection and the mode of presentation of the mass media. However, a change in trend can be perceived. The “WDR” has just started to archive the audiovisual heritage of its audience – not least hoping to get its hands on new pictures for the station’s use. One can watch the growth of this so-called “archive of the analog everyday life” online and thereby observe its representation of audiovisual components of everyday and cultural history and of a history of mentality beyond the usual mass media conventions.[5]

Euphoria – towards a multimedia learning environment

Along with this trend towards visualization and medialization, the ways history is archived, represented, and taught probably change as well. Therefore, the effects of this trend on the production of teaching material and on teaching and learning history in general should be discussed. At first glance, euphoric reactions seem more appropriate than a scholarly disapproval of a new media trend. Gone are the days when teachers had to compensate the lack of audiovisual sources in the history classroom with the help of self-made recordings of TV programs. Instead, an inexhaustible reservoir of historical sources is at hand on the Internet and seems to mark the starting point towards the creation of multimedia learning environments as envisioned by Waldemar Grosch and others.[6] However, these audiovisual sources often fulfill merely illustrating functions, thereby blurring the boundaries between historical past and history constructed by the media. An analytical approach towards these media histories is therefore hard to achieve and an eclectic usage of the film material might be promoted. Surprisingly, didactically well-planned learning portals, which invite the user to make an interactive analysis and interpretation of these audiovisual narrations, are almost inexistent…[7]

Disillusion – the hardships of producing multimedia learning environments

There are various (audio)visions for the creation of multimedia learning portals, which praise the inexhaustible opportunities of the Internet for research, learning, and presentation on historical topics. Theoretical approaches are available as well: historic(al) pictures can be analyzed through the eyes of “Visual History”,[8] and media history can be reconstructed with the help of pictures of historical news reports. It is also quite easy to imagine strategies of film analysis when sitting in front of the TV: deconstructing film narratives by adding new sound-tracks to the film; producing new interpretations of history with the help of drag and drop of film clips – with a certain amount of time and knowhow at hand, virtually everything seems to be possible. From a legal and a financial point of view, however, the possibilities are limited dramatically. At least, these are the experiences one has to make when trying to produce a multimedia learning environment.[9] What is didactically desirable and technically feasible is in fact put into strict boundaries by copyright law. Thus, the value of a film source is determined by the TV stations or the production companies. The temporarily limited usage rights for a DVD still seem to be affordable, but for an Internet application prices already reduplicate. Copyright law does not allow for didactically changing a film source by adding a new sound-track or new film clips to the original material. As a consequence, the medialization of public history turns into a didactic problem and audiovisual sources become a highly competitive resource within media society.

Hidden paths towards multimedia learning environments

Thus, despite these sea changes in the media landscape, learning about contemporary history is still dominated by written sources and worksheets. Nevertheless, there are some hidden paths to avoid the predicaments of multimedia learning environments. For example, the “Geschichtslehrerverband” (Germany’s national association of history teachers) supports the TV station “ZDF” with the preparation of its history documentaries for school usage by developing worksheets for the station’s media portal. Another approach is to navigate through various media libraries via WebQuest. Secretly, one can encourage teachers to move within legal grey areas and motivate their students to use their media skills for the creation of new historical film material with the help of remixes. In everyday School life, however, these efforts are met with a limited amount of time available for history teachers as for history lessons in general. There hardly seems to be an alternative to going to law for the free usage of the audiovisual heritage for the purpose of teaching and learning history at school. Otherwise, Christoph Classen’s dystopia of a “contemporary history without picture and sound”[10] seems to turn into reality not only for the science of history but also for the history classroom.

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Further Reading

  • Leif Kramp, Gedächtnismaschine Fernsehen. 2 vols. Berlin 2011.
  • Saskia Handro, “Fernsehen. Plädoyer für die Neuentdeckung einer Institution der Geschichtskultur,” in Michele Barricelli, Axel Becker, and Christian Heuer (eds.), Jede Gegenwart hat ihre Gründe. Geschichtsbewusstsein, historische Lebenswelt und Zukunftserwartung im frühen 21. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Hans-Jürgen Pandel (Schwalbach/Ts: 2011), pp. 88–105.

Web Resources

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[1] See “Völkerschlacht erleben. Geschichte live im MDR,” http://www.mdr.de/voelkerschlacht/index.html (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[2] “14. Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs,” http://www.14-tagebuecher.de/ (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[3] See, among others, “Momente der Geschichte,” http://momente.zdf.de/#/videos/all/timeline (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[4] See Thomas Lindenberger, “Vergangenes Hören und Sehen. Zeitgeschichte und ihre Herausforderung durch die audiovisuellen Medien,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Edition, 1 (2004), No.1, http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Lindenberger-1-2004 (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[5]“Digit. Archiv des analogen Alltags,” http://digit.wdr.de/ (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[6] See Waldemar Grosch, “Das Schulbuch der Zukunft,” in Hans-Jürgen Pandel and Gerhard Schneider (eds.), Wie weiter? Zur Zukunft des Geschichtsunterrichts (Schwalbach/Ts: 2001), pp. 136–155.
[7] The best-known example is a project of the “MDR” and the “Geschichtslehrerverband” called “Damals im Osten. Eure Geschichte,“ http://www.mdr.de/damals/eure-geschichte/index.html(last accessed 18.08.2014).
[8] See, among others, Gerhard Paul, “Visual History und Geschichtsdidaktik. Grundsätzliche Überlegungen,” in Markus Bernhardt (ed.), Visual History (= Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 12/2013), pp. 9–26; Ibid.., “Visual History, Version: 2.0,” http://docupedia.de/zg/Visual_History_Version_2.0_Gerhard_Paul?oldid=88772 (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[9] Here I refer to my own experiences with the production of the multimedia learning environment “Fernsehen macht Geschichte. 60XDeutschland. Die Jahresschau” (available August 2014) in cooperation with the “Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung” and the “Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg.” Further information online: http://werkstatt.bpb.de/2013/07/ausprobiert-60x-deutschland/ (last accessed 18.08.2014).
[10] Christoph Classen, Thomas Großmann, and Leif Kramp, “Zeitgeschichte ohne Bild und Ton? Probleme der Rundfunk-Überlieferung und die Initiative ‘Audiovisuelles Erbe,’” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Edition, 8 (2011), No. 1.  http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Classen-Grossmann-Kramp-1-2011 (last accessed 18.08.2014).

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Image Credits

© Saskia Handro, 2014.

Recommended Citation

Handro, Saskia: Audiovision(s)! „TV makes History“. In: Public History Weekly 2 (2014) 29, DOI:  dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2014-2437.

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Categories: 2 (2014) 29
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2014-2437

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