AFN Bremerhaven
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AFN Bremerhaven was originally an " Armed Forces Radio and Television Service" (AFRTS) station. (AFRTS, worldwide, is now also known as "
American Forces Network The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the United States Armed Forces provides to soldiers stationed or assigned overseas, and is headquartered at Fort Meade in Maryland. AFN comprises two sub ...
" or "AFN"). The Bremerhaven affiliate station was located in northern Germany. At the time, it was part of the "American Forces Network - Europe." AFN Bremerhaven began broadcasting in 1945, originally as AFN Bremen. The station began operating just after World War II ended in Europe. It was originally established in the north German city of Bremen in
allied-occupied Germany The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Nazi Germany was stripped of its sov ...
as a small AM radio station with an AM repeater transmitter also broadcasting the station's signal in
Bremerhaven Bremerhaven (; ) is a city on the east bank of the Weser estuary in northern Germany. It forms an exclave of the Bremen (state), city-state of Bremen. The Geeste (river), River Geeste flows through the city before emptying into the Weser. Brem ...
, Germany, a port city on the Weser River near the entrance to the North Sea located just north of
Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (, ), is the capital of the States of Germany, German state of the Bremen (state), Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (), a two-city-state consisting of the c ...
.


Military mission

The radio station's mission was to provide information and entertainment to members of the American forces who were based in that part of northern Germany. After World War II, the small north German US occupied area was originally known as the "Bremen Enclave", and it was an "American island" located in the portion of the newly formed West Germany that was originally occupied and controlled by British forces, (The British Occupation Zone of West Germany).


History

Just after World War II, the port city of Bremerhaven was one of the major ports from where American forces embarked for return to the United States after fighting in the Second World War; later, the port brought US military personnel, their families, military equipment, as well as food and goods for the rebuilding of Europe to Germany via ships from the US. Many of these shipments were, in part, in support of the
Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion (equivalent to $ in ) in economic recovery pr ...
designed to assist and re-build war-torn Europe. Later, in the 1960s, and thereafter, most personnel movement was done via air travel. AFN Bremerhaven entertained the troops and their families based in that area, providing "a touch of home" to them through the station's radio broadcasts and later with the addition of TV broadcasts. The station could also be heard in
Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (), abbreviated ''Lincs'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber regions of England. It is bordered by the East Riding of Yorkshire across the Humber estuary to th ...
and East Yorkshire 24 hours a day. On medium wave radio, AFN Bremen's very first radio broadcast occurred on Saturday, 28 July 1945. In 1949, the station moved from the city of Bremen north to the port city of Bremerhaven and was one of many American units based on Bremerhaven Army Airfield, renamed
Carl Schurz Carl Christian Schurz (; March 2, 1829 – May 14, 1906) was a German-American revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He migrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and became a prominent ...
Kaserne in 1973, and went from being radio-only "AFN Bremen" to becoming "AFN Bremerhaven" with AM and later with FM radio and TV operations."History of AFRTS, the First 50 Years." Publisher: American Forces Information Service and Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. The University of Michigan Press. Digitized Aug 13, 2009. Length 126 pages. For nearly 48 years the station broadcast to US personnel; it also entertained many German and other listeners in nearby nations who were also able to hear the station's radio signal from one of its half-dozen repeater transmitters located throughout northern Germany. In addition to AM and FM frequencies in Bremerhaven, the signal was repeated via transmitters located in Garlstedt (Bremen) (FM), Soegel-Ahlhorn (FM), Hessisch Oldendorf (FM),
Flensburg Flensburg (; Danish language, Danish and ; ; ) is an independent city, independent town in the far north of the Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. After Kiel and Lübeck, it is the third-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg's ...
(FM), Schleswig-Neuberend (AM), and Kellinghusen (AM). AFN Bremerhaven served US military personnel and their family members assigned to various American military units in and around these transmitter locations. Earlier in its history, along with US Army and US Air Force units, US Marine and US Navy units were also served by, and members of the US Navy served alongside US Army and US Air Force personnel at AFN Bremerhaven; however, during the last several decades of the station's operation, the affiliate was staffed by just Army and Air Force military personnel and served mostly US Army and US Air Force units throughout northern Germany. However, throughout its entire 48 years of operation, many German employees worked with the US station staff members and were a vital part of AFN Bremerhaven's long and distinguished history. Many of these German AFN members served far longer than any US military member and, in some cases, were part of AFN Bremerhaven for decades. AFN Bremerhaven was the first AFN television station in Europe to broadcast its programming in color. The U.S. European Edition of " Stars and Stripes" (S&S) reported in its Thursday, August 21, 1975, edition that the AFN-Europe Commander, Lt. Col. Floyd A. McBride, announced that AFN's first color TV broadcast would begin in Bremerhaven on Monday, August 25, 1975. As S&S reported, because Bremerhaven's TV operation was so small, only a "Class C" operation, and, at the time, served only one geographical area (the Bremerhaven housing areas and near-by Carl Schurz Kaserne) with TV programming, it was easy to establish the color TV broadcast operation without extensive expense or expansion. That next year, S&S reported in its Wednesday, June 23, 1976, edition that "the long-awaited switch to color by AFN-TV could come by the end of the year for viewers in most of West Germany; hose TV viewers in Berlin would have to wait even longer. The S&S article continued saying, "the only viewers enjoying color right now are those watching the pilot color TV station in Bremerhaven, which went on the air in 1975." Beginning in July 1978, the largest single AFN Bremerhaven target audience were members of the US Army's 2nd Armored Division (Forward) based on the newly constructed Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Garlstedt, Germany. Most of the 2nd Armored Division's family members resided in and around the nearby city of
Osterholz-Scharmbeck Osterholz-Scharmbeck (; Northern Low Saxon: ''Oosterholt-Scharmbeek'') is a town and the capital of the district of Osterholz, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Osterholz-Scharmbeck is situated between the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. Geography N ...
. All of these Americans were served by the AFN Bremerhaven FM transmitter located in Garlstedt. The division had approximately 3,500 soldiers and another approximately 2,500 family members as well as hundreds of US and German civilian employees. (The division newspaper, "The 2nd AD Dispatch," in its final edition of June 12, 1992, reported that, at its peak, the division had "4,400 soldiers and 4,200 family members.") No doubt, the addition of this unit in 1978 greatly increased the mission of AFN Bremerhaven until 1993 when both the 2nd Armored Division (Forward) and AFN Bremerhaven's deactivations occurred.


German reunification

In 1989, with major changes underway in Europe linked to the
fall of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of Nationalities, Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. :s: ...
, the end of the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, the
German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...
of East and West Germany, and with a major drawdown of US military forces in Germany, the AFN Europe network underwent major changes in its mission. The need for many long-running AFN affiliate radio and TV stations in various German cities to serve American military members and their families diminished and many AFN stations were closed.


End of station

With fewer US military personnel and their family members still stationed in northern Germany, the mission of AFN Bremerhaven gradually diminished, and, in the early 1990s, one-by-one, the six outlying AM and FM repeater radio transmitters were taken off-the-air as the various American military communities closed, and the once-US bases were returned to the host nation. Finally, after 48 years of broadcasting, on 31 March 1993, with only radio service from the Bremerhaven AM and FM transmitters still being provided, AFN Bremerhaven made its last live broadcasts with a local morning show followed by an American Forces Network - Europe, network-wide radio show, and at noon, the AFN Bremerhaven affiliate officially went off the air forever after playing the national anthem of the United States of America by the late
Whitney Houston Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, film producer, model, and philanthropist. Commonly referred to as "Honorific nicknames in popular music, the Voice", she is List of awards and no ...
&
The Florida Orchestra The Florida Orchestra is an American orchestra based in the tri-city area of Tampa, Clearwater, Florida, Clearwater and St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida. It was founded as the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony upon the 1968 merger of th ...
followed by the
German national anthem The "", officially titled "", is a German poem written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben . A popular song which was made for the cause of creating a unified German state, it was adopted in its entirety in 1922 by the Weimar Republi ...
at the end.


See also

* AFN Berlin * AFN Frankfurt * AFN Munich * AFN Europe


References

{{reflist American Forces Network English-language radio stations Radio stations established in 1945 Radio stations disestablished in 1993 1945 establishments in Germany 1993 disestablishments in Germany