From “Multikulti” to “COSMO”

“Monday, 19 September 1994. It’s 7.20 p.m. After a two-and-a-half-year absence from the Berlin airwaves, I am delighted to welcome Polish-speaking listeners on 106.8 FM and digital radio.” With these words, Witold Kamiński opened the first programme in Polish on the newly founded Radio station “SFB 4 Multikulti” in Berlin. It was a historic moment for immigrants in Germany. As the voice on the airwaves explained: “It’s the first time that a public radio broadcaster is offering a daily multilingual programme aired on the radio and via cable”. It was also a historic moment for Poles living in Berlin: they could listen to Polish radio in the public media for the first time. The multicultural radio station was established after many years of lobbying by alternative groups in West Berlin.

The unexpected influx of nearly a million people from Poland to Germany during the 1980s led to the sudden formation of a new group of migrants. The West German authorities were caught unawares, and there was a lack of information in Polish. Poles were offered support by the Polish Social Council (Polska Rada Społeczna) in Berlin, as well as other organisations. Thanks to the Social Council’s efforts, it was possible to set up a radio programme for Poles in Berlin, called “Radio 100”. The group of people who ran the alternative radio station, which made popular programmes for the opposition in the GDR, feminists and LGBT communities, for example, decided to also broadcast shows in the native languages of immigrants: in Polish, Greek, Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic.

The “Radio 100 po polsku” programme was first aired on 3 September 1989. “The idea was to create a radio station for people who were having difficulty adjusting to life in Berlin. We wanted it to be a station that was shaped not by journalists, but by amateurs, by people who were in the same situation as our listeners,” explains Witold Kamiński from the Polish Social Council. The hour-long Polish-language show was broadcast once a week, and was mainly of an informative nature. The editorial team was made up of young, highly committed people from Poland, who worked in cooperation with the Polish Social Council and the Polish Failures Club (Club der Polnischen Versager), which was founded a few years later. The project lasted for two years, with the involvement of around 100 people.

In 1991, “Radio 100” filed for bankruptcy. The tender for the 103.4 FM frequency was won by the French radio group NRJ. For several months, foreign-language programmes continued to be broadcast from the “Radio Viva Berlin / Energy” station. However, when the contract expired, the programmes for immigrants disappeared from the airwaves. The fact that “Radio 100” came into being at all shows that minorities can create a media product for a broad audience with a measurable listenership. This gave the people from Poland, Turkey, Arab countries, Vietnam and Greece who were involved in the project the idea to work together. They founded an association, “Intermedia e.V.”, and began to look for a fixed slot among the programmes aired by the German public broadcasters.

During the early 1990s, the number of refugees seeking asylum in Germany increased. This led in turn to an increase in xenophobia. From 1991–1993, there were arson attacks on hostels for asylum seekers in Hoyerswerda, Rostock and Solingen. The atmosphere was tense, and the number of foreign nationals living in Germany was estimated at over 10 million. After years of negotiations, it was finally possible to convince the Berlin administration of the need for a radio station for immigrants. A clause was added to the federal state media laws obliging the Free Berlin radio station (Sender Freies Berlin; SFB) to air programmes in the languages of the local minorities. For the immigrants, the creation of the first “wave” of this kind in public media was a sign that their presence was being acknowledged among the German population, that they were allowed to speak their native language, and that their cultural differences were being respected.