The 5th Channel
Uwe Johnson and the GDR Television
Ever since Mutmassungen über Jakob (Speculations About Jakob), his first published novel in 1959, Uwe Johnson (1934-1984) has been recognized as a writer who, as an alert contemporary, integrates his characters into the historical and social events of their time, such as the division of Germany. Even in his shorter texts, the German-German situation is relevant to Johnson, who had left the GDR in 1959. Between June and December 1964, for example, he reviewed GDR television for the West Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel - the only time the author wrote regularly for a daily newspaper over a longer period of time. These reviews were published posthumously in 1987 under the title Der 5. Kanal (The 5th Channel). As part of the Uwe Johnson work edition, they were republished in 2024 with a comprehensive commentary by literary scholars Yvonne Dudzik and Denise Naue and media scholar Andy Räder.
The 99 reviews that Johnson wrote in the second half of 1964 represent a cross-section of GDR television in the early 1960s. They are devoted to political magazines, the news program Aktuelle Kamera, sports programs, business and women's guides, documentaries and television programs for children. In addition, there are feature film productions from GDR television and DEFA as well as international films. The film program The 5th Channel presents selected television programs and films that Johnson wrote about in the Tagesspiegel and explains how the writer commented on these productions. The political magazines Prisma and Der schwarze Kanal, with which Johnson was most frequently involved, form the starting point. Johnson also repeatedly wrote about “scenic documentaries”, such as the documentary Die Oswald-Story (1964), directed by Lutz Köhlert. Johnson strongly recommended the 1961 DEFA film Der Fall Gleiwitz (The Gleiwitz Case), which was broadcast on GDR television in 1964, to his West Berlin readers, and in his adaptation of the play Prozess Richard Waverly (The Richard Waverly Trial, 1964), he questioned how television dealt with verifiable facts. Two independent films round off the series. Saskia Walker's documentary Uwe Johnson sieht fern (2006) juxtaposes footage from GDR television with Johnson's text, while researchers and contemporaries also have their say. Finally, Johnson himself was involved in a film production a few years after his work as a television reviewer; he wrote the commentary for the documentary Summer in the City (1969). (Yvonne Dudzik)
