Square-eyed Farmers and Gloomy Ethnographers: The Advent of Television in the West German Village

Abstract

During the 1950s and 1960s, television arrived in the West German countryside. All across Westphalia, elderly villagers recorded how their lives changed because of it. Their reports, solicited by ethnographers at a Münster folklore archive, allow unprecedented insight into TV’s impact on daily schedules, family routines, living rooms, neighbourly networks, local associations and church activities. This rare body of sources allows us to test the claims of media researchers about television’s early phase. It confirms that television accelerated the ongoing modernization, nationalization and politicization of rural society, rapidly reshaping village life. Only the patriarchal family – the decline of which contemporary ethnographers were most worried about – emerged unscathed.