Hans Bredow

Hans Bredow (26 November 1879 – 9 January 1959) was a German radio broadcasting pioneer and the first chairman of Weimar Germany's National broadcasting service. He is regarded as the "father of German broadcasting". He began to study electrical engineering in Köthen in 1900 and started to work for AEG in Riga after completing his studies.

In 1904 he began to work for the "Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie m.b.H." (Company for Wireless Telegraphy Ltd.), the later Telefunken, and was sent to Saint Petersburg. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War he acquired a contract for the radio equipment of the Russian Pacific squadron. He was involved in the planning of a Telefunken worldwide transmitting system and the construction of the Nauen Transmitter Station, which provided wireless communication with the United States via the Sayville Transmitter station and with the German colonies like the Kamina Transmitter in Togo.

In 1919 he became the department head and director of the newly founded Department for Wireless Telegraphy in the Reichspostministerium (Ministry of Posts), the central authority for the entire German radio communications in the Weimar Republic. On 1 April 1921 Bredow was appointed State Secretary for telecommunications. Bredow was arrested on 25 October and kept in pretrial detention for 15 months. In a show trial he was accused of corruption; the initial sentence was revoked by the Reichsgericht in 1938. Bredow retired in 1939 and established a historical radio archive in Wiesbaden, which would become the predecessor of the German Broadcasting Archive.

After World War II, the Allies appointed him as the Regierungspräsident of the Wiesbaden region (May–September 1945). From 1945 to 1953 Bredow was chairman of the supervisory board of the ironworks and the "Edelstahlwerke Röchling-Buderus" and a member of the supervisory board of Philipp Holzmann AG. Bredow made several proposals for the restructuring of broadcasting in Germany and was chairman of the administrative board of the Hessian Broadcasting Company from 1949 to 1951.

Bredow died on 9 January 1959 in Wiesbaden.

Awards

Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany