The Fundamental Changes in world politics in the early 1990s — the breakup of the Soviet bloc and the subsequent reconfiguration of eastern Europe as new constellations of power emerged — dominated television programming internationally for many months. Live news coverage shaped the way people perceived these events. Television as a medium was an important part of these processes and has determined how they are remembered today. West German television played a particularly crucial role during the weeks of political turmoil in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the fall of 1989. There was complex interaction between the political protagonists, television reporting, and political developments. News coverage responded to the stimuli provided by the GDR protest movement and the political leadership of the Federal Republic (FRG). It created a public forum and was widely considered to have overcome the taboos surrounding public protest and demonstrations as valid forms of behavior, allowing information about them to be disseminated in a dynamic way.

Over and above this, television’s re-productions introduced and popularized specific interpretations of these political developments, raising expectations and opening up possibilities for the future. The television images and narratives created as part of the production of actuality in 1989 were then transferred into various documentary and fictional formats, newly contextualized in each case. The production of meaning that went hand in hand with this process is closely related to the way television works and makes its impact. In this chapter I will provide some examples of the significant role played by television images in constituting and historicizing political events — in other words, in negotiating and inscribing the way they are interpreted.

Television as an “Events” Medium

Television as a medium relies heavily on the re-production of events. In general it can be said that social, political, and cultural aspects of everyday life are turned by television into condensed sequences of related events. Less importance is attached to circumstances and longer-term processes. Television provides a possible stage for everything that occurs, turning every occurrence into a potential event and presenting it as a piece of history either at the moment when it is broadcast or very shortly afterwards. However, if they are not placed in context, the events themselves do not convey any message; they remain, as Niklas Luhmann argues, “unconnectable” and “incommunicable.