Deutsche Welle: Sixty years

Sixty years marks the end of the Greek Program of Deutsche Welle, which is main partner of the SKAI group in Athens since 1990.

The story began in mid-April 1964, when Deutsche Welle broadcast the first short-lived Greek program as part of the expansion of its programs in foreign languages. Many will remember the catchphrase “Here Deutsche Welle. Here Deutsche Welle” the time of the dictatorship (1967-1974). This very “voice” still resonates for those who lived through it and has been etched into the collective subconscious of many Greeks.

DW is done the bridge to free democratic Europe, the support in the age of oppressiontheir “voice” in the struggle for the restoration of democracy.

The show gained a huge audience. About three million Greeks gathered every night, 21:40 – 22:40 in the short band because of its consistent anti-dictatorial character. Deutsche Welle’s Greek program is under a censorship regime became a voice of freedomwriting a positive chapter in post-war Greek-German relations.

Spyros Moskovou, permanent editor in the Greek service since 1989 and its director since 2000, spoke to APE-MPE with obvious emotion and pride: “It happens that even today it is said one of the many in the public debate ‘Deutsche Welle said it’, as if it is a guarantee of reliability and validity. This means thatthe historical past, the conscious imprint left by ‘the voice of freedom from Germany’ during the dictatorship, it still functions as a loudspeaker, adding special weight to our words. Of course, this creates special responsibilities. You somehow have to live up to expectations that were created before you for you, a creative challenge. In any case, today’s editorial team is aware of this responsibility, which is in any case in line with the station’s current journalistic principles.”

“The Hellenic Syntax is a mosaic of Deutsche Welle, which currently produces programs in over 30 languages. The station has prepared systematic instructions and guidelines for today’s challenges, such as the war against Ukraine, anti-Semitism, fake news. These are binding on everyone. From here on, each editorial has freedom in choosing the topics, beyond the one or two obvious ones of each day. This is how we create our own mix every day on our website, in the radio quarter, on social media“, explains Spyros Moskovou, who has been identified with the Hellenic Syntax for years. At the same time, as a philologist and translator of literature, he always maintains his relationship with the culture and letters of the two countries. “I think that the multifaceted exchanges between Greek and German artists and writers they were never interrupted, I discern a mutual and lasting respect. After all, these interactions have a long history, as early as the 18th century the Germans imagined themselves to be the spiritual descendants of the ancient Greeks! Once when I visited the author Peter Handke (he has translated at least eight of his books) at his home, I found him devotedly studying a text. It was the New Testament in ancient Greek. And he said to me: “I feel Greek very close to me”, recalls Spyros Moskovou, himself a “bridge” between the two countries all these years.

A few years ago, when Germany was the honored country at the Thessaloniki International Book Fair, the director of the organization mentioned his presence as a representative of the “voice of Deutsche Welle” at the opening. And then the audience burst into applause. “The applause was not for me personally, but for Deutsche Welle who had done what was just in a difficult time. I will always be unimaginably moved by this unexpected reappearance of the past, as if it is always alive in the present,” says the director of the Hellenic Syntax

A constant pursuit of DW all these decades has been and remains the reliable information of the Greek public, a different look at international developments.