After the end of the
Second
World War only few Jewish men and women returned from exile to
Germany. The
same is true for the media sector which was to be newly organized under the
supervision of the respective Allied occupation forces after the collapse of the
“
Third Reich.”
Walter Albert Eberstadt (1921–2014), son of Jewish parents and a
former student at
Hamburg's
Johanneum school, was one of the few Jewish returnees who
participated in the rebuilding of German radio broadcasting.
Eberstadt's access pass issued on February 23, 1946 illustrates that he was a
so-called “returnee in uniform,” i. e. a refugee who came back to
Germany as
an employee of the British occupation authorities. His pass was issued by the
Broadcasting Control Unit, the military
authority in charge of regulating broadcasting in the
British occupation zone. It
authorized its bearer, “Major
Everitt” –
Eberstadt's name during his time in military service – to access
the premises of
Radio
Hamburg on
Rothenbaumchaussee. In 2000,
Eberstadt made this document available as a loan to
the author for an exhibition project titled “
Rückkehr in
die Fremde?”
. Initiated by the
study group of independent cultural
institutes , the
Foundation German
Broadcasting Archive
, and the
Foundation Archive of the Academy of
the Arts
, this project presented the
first systematic study of the role remigrants played in rebuilding broadcasting
in the four Allied occupation zones.
Access Authorization to the Broadcasting Studio Hamburg for Major Everitt, issued by the Broadcasting Control Unit Hamburg 1946, edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History,
<https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-145.en.v1> [February 01, 2025].