In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

WIRELESS COMMUNICATION 245
strategy. Simply by virtue of its cost, and the condensed language it
suggests (Kittler, 358-370), the telegram underscores the urgency and
irreversibility of certain decisions and actions. Gerhart Hauptmann
makes use of this effect in his play Dorothea Angermann. When Herbert
pfannschmidt, a young university professor with particularly high moral
standards, wants to leave a family reunion without giving the impression
that he dislikes his relatives, he has his wife send him a telegram: "Unfortunately
I have to take the night train to Breslau tonight, since my
wife telegraphed that there is a meeting at the university president's office
tomorrow afternoon" (Hauptmann, 139). The telegram-specific, personal
form of delivery adds an element of privacy. In Marcel Jouhandeau's
novel Monsieur Codeau In tim e, Veronique invites the herowhom
she adores-to her home by telegram: "Veronique telegraphed
M. Godeau, asking him to come that very evening to the rue du Sentier"
(Jouhandeau, 45-46). Paradoxically, this blend of urgency and privacy
often causes the recipients of telegrams to hesitate before they read them.
As a child, the narrator of Rene Schickele's Maria Capponi spends a
vacation in Venice with his eccentric, good-looking, unmarried Aunt
Sidonia. Whenever a telegram is handed to her at the hotel's reception
desk, Sidonia comes up with an infinite number of reasons to make her
nephew, instead of herself, open the envelope: "The doorman handed
Aunt Sidonia a telegram. Alas! The red strip bespoke urgency ... 'You
open it!' she commanded ... I opened it as my father would open
telegrams: slowly, fold by fold, with a sullen face, looking for the sender's
address" (Schickele, 100). Hours later, the opened telegram still lies
unread on a table, and each time her nephew wants to read it to her,
Sidonia makes desperate efforts to prevent him from doing so: "'Claus,
it is certainly a very, very bad message. Why don't you read it first-then
it won't hurt me. Claus, you have to read it,' she begged. But when I
extended my hand to pick up the telegram, she threw herself over the
table with arms outstretched and buried it underneath her" (101).
Frequently, the privacy, urgency, and fear that surround telegrams are
projected onto the radio. The West German Broadcasting Company
(WDR) cannot establish a studio in Cologne until the end of the
Rhineland occupation, because the French military authorities are persuaded
that the radio encourages espionage (Chronik, 182). As soon as
economic and political circumstances allow the radio to develop its
potential, however, it takes over those functions of immediacy which