ABSTRACT
Backgrounds Radio Bremen’s Beat-Club was first broadcast in September 1965, and became one of the icons of German cultural history of the 60s: seen as an instrument of cultural liberalisation, and a pathway for British and American pop music into West Germany. The idea of the Beat-Club came from Ernest Borneman, a Berlin-born author, anthropologist and jazz expert – and later sexologist – who had, as a teenaged member of the Communist Party, left Germany for London in 1933. He had returned to Germany only in 1960, on the invitation of the government in order to help create a private national television station (cf. Siegfried, 2015). While the proposed Freies Fernsehen Gesellschaft (free television company) never got off the ground, for legal reasons, Borneman worked as a freelance author for other channels and wrote a proposal that would convey the atmosphere of a real Beat-Club as authentically as possible: entirely live performances, cameras moving among the dancers, unscripted and impromptu interviews, and a simple stage set – a ‘candid, natural show with nothing to hide’ (Beat-Klub). This idea found a home with Radio Bremen (radio and television company of the state Bremen), where Borneman worked on its production with Michael Leckebusch.
