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. 

Jacek Tyblewski, who was on the Polish editorial board right from the start, and who is now the coordinator of COSMO in Berlin, believes that the main reason why it became possible to set up a Polish station was that the Polish organisations were willing to abandon the usual methods of accessing media in the Polish-German dialogue that had been used to date. Instead, it emerged that the key to success lay in collaborating with journalists from other countries, and to win over supporters within the local Berlin administration.

On 18 September 1994, “SFB 4 MultiKulti” (later “Radio Multikulti”) went on air for the first time. It was the first multicultural, integrative radio station to be aired by a public service broadcaster in Germany. The programme schedule, which was funded from radio license fees, was put together in line with the legal requirements for public radio broadcasters. The target audience of “Radio Multikulti” were people with a migration background and anyone interested in foreign cultures, languages and music from all over the world. The programmes were aired in German and 16 other native languages of immigrants living in Berlin. A Polish editorial board was created which became an integral part of the Free Berlin (SFB) radio station (now: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, RBB). Since 1994, the board has produced a schedule of daily programmes in Polish in the SFB/RBB building. These programmes, which are still produced in Berlin, have also been aired in other regions since 1997. For several years, the station also used the ARD (joint organisation of public radio and TV broadcasters – translator’s note), which meant that they could be heard throughout Germany via regional radio stations. 

31 December 2008, the day of the final broadcast, became the bleakest new year event in the history of “Radio Multikulti”. Despite numerous protests, the Berlin-Brandenburg state broadcaster decided to close “Multikulti” due to a lack of funds. The Polish radio programmes were taken over by the transregional broadcaster WDR Funkhaus Europa, and from 1 January 2009, they were aired on the old frequency (96.3 FM) previously used by “Radio Multikulti”.

From 1 January 2017, Funkhaus Europa changed its name to COSMO, and from then on, the Polish editorial board operated under the name “COSMO Radio po polsku”. From the start, the programmes produced in Berlin were designed to provide news and information, with additional music by Polish artists. Since then, they have contained a range of different journalistic formats: news coverage, interviews, commentary, features, reports, a press digest and discussions. The programmes are broadcast from Monday to Friday. The broadcast times and programme lengths have changed over the years. Initially, the programmes lasted for 20 minutes, then 30 minutes. In the years that followed, they were extended to a full hour; since 2017, they have been reduced to half an hour again.

The subjects included cover all aspects of the lives of Poles in Germany and German-Polish relations over the past 25 years. The station reports on political, cultural and sports events as well as developments in science, and on the activities of Polish organisations and the Polish community in Germany. Studio guests include people who play an important role in German-Polish dialogue, politicians and experts from both countries, journalists, artists, activists, well-known personalities, and individuals who have an impact on Polish life between the Oder and Rhine rivers. 

“COSMO Radio po polsku” (later: “COSMO po polsku”) also creates a space for discussions by representing a broad spectrum of opinions held by Poles living in Germany. Programmes such as “standPUNKTwidzenia” (“As seen from this perspective”), “Damy radę” (“We can do it”), “Lepiej po polsku” (“Better in Polish”), “Encyclopaedia Polonica” (in collaboration with Porta Polonica), “Muzycy mają głos” (“Musicians have a voice”), “Prognoza kultury” (“Culture forecast”) or “Gaulojzes Golana” are a standard fixture in the schedule.

The Polish programmes on “Radio Multikulti” were initially produced by the team from “Radio 100”: Witold Kamiński, Kasia Pollok, Jacek Tyblewski and Adam Gusowski and others. They were soon joined by Dorota Danielewicz-Kerski, Paweł Adamski, Andrzej Stach, Joanna Wiórkiewicz, Wojciech Mróz and Ewa Maria Slaska. In 1997, Jacek Tyblewski took over as head of the rapidly changing editorial board. 

During its 25 years of existence, the Polish editorial board saw many journalists, reporters, columnists and radio enthusiasts come and go, such as Viktoria Korb, Krzysztof Visconti, Piotr Geise, Marek Jakubiec, Leszek Oświęcimski, Katarzyna Sobiegraj, Robert Mika, Elżbieta Stasik, Grażyna Kamień-Soeffker, Dorota Szymańska, Tadeusz Stolarczyk, Joanna Skibińska, Aleksandra Jarecka, Roman Polsakiewicz, Katarzyna Weintraub, Tadeusz Knade, Aneta Bachmann, Aureliusz Marek Pędziwol and Hermann Schmidtendorf. 

Today, the programmes in “COSMO po polsku” are presented by Monika Sędzierska, Tomasz Kycia, Adam Gusowski and Maciej Wiśniewski. Marta Przybylik, Marta Kupiec, Monika Stefanek, Andreas Hübsch, Dr. Piotr Olszówka, Grażyna Słomka, Andrzej Kuśpiel, Ewa Lewy and Piotr Mordel also work on the editorial board. The authors of the regular feature contributions include Professor Brygida Helbig, Ewa Wanat, Krzysztof Niewrzęda and Stanisław Strasburger.

“COSMO po polsku” is on air at 10 p.m. from Monday to Friday on the following public station frequencies: WDR (North Rhine-Westphalia 103.3 FM), RBB (Berlin and Brandenburg 96.3 FM), and Radio Bremen (95.6 FM in Bremen and 98.9 FM in Bremerhaven). The programmes can also be heard via cable network, Astra Satellite, DAB+, on the internet and via the WDR Radio app. An archive of previous shows, podcasts and selected programme excerpts are also available on www.cosmoradio.de. Nowadays, thanks to social media, “COSMO po polsku” also reaches a large number of listeners worldwide.

As Jacek Tyblewski stresses: “For 25 years, it has been our goal to firmly establish a programme in the German media that is tailored to a multicultural Germany. We should all demand that the public broadcasting companies here fund programmes in our native languages. We have more than enough important events, topics for discussion and fascinating personalities in our lives. We don’t want to give up our language, our different traditions or our culture. We believe that the public media in particular can provide the space for everything that makes us so wonderfully different in Germany.”

 

Monika Stefanek, February 2019

 

Links to “COSMO po polsku” radio:

https://www1.wdr.de/radio/cosmo/programm/sendungen/radio-po-polsku/index.html

https://www.facebook.com/cosmopopolsku