80 Jahre hörspiel. Die entwicklung des genres zu einer eigenständigen kunstform

Abstract

80 years ago radio drama was ‘invented’. Today there is widespread agreement among radio drama theorists and artists that radio drama is an art form in its own right. But a large number of literary scholars still see the genre as a literary one. This article seeks to illuminate the reasons for this holding-on to a rather old-fashioned idea in the field of literary studies by first describing the initial developments of the art form in different European countries and then looking more closely at the development of the “Hörspiel” in German speaking countries from 1924 until today. The aim of the article is to demonstrate that radio drama is an acoustic art form in its own right and to show how literary scholars can still integrate this art form into their research.