348
THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRV AND RADIO
ture with a massive capital C)l and grasped it instead as a means to explore daily life, to undertake the analysis of current events-in short, to assume the challenge posed by being political. Radio, Benjamin insisted, should take up the mantle from earlier political stage cabarets, such as Le Chat Noir in Paris and Die Elf Scharfrichter in Munich, but in a manner specific to the new medium. It was just this challenge that Hans Flesch effectively attempted to translate into reality when he took over the direction of Radio Berlin, instituting a department for current events, broadcasting important trials) parliamentary debates, and local from new mobile radio studios, and producing the very first on-air political debates. While Benjamin's comparatively modest innovations were not on the order of such fundamental institutional interventions~ his broadcasts-with titles like "Postage Stamp Scams," "The Tenements," "True Stories about Dogs," and "Visit to a Brass Factory/' to take just a few examples-did push the boundaries of his ostensibly literary rubric in the direction of what today we would call "cultural criticism." He also coauthored with Wolf Zucker a new type of nonliterary radio play called a Hormodell ("listening model))} which, unlike the traditional Horspiel ("listening play"), focused on practical problems of contemporary life presented in a "casuistic" fashion. One of the first of these was "Gehaltserhohung?! Wo denken Sie hin?" (A Raise?! Where Did You Get That Idea?), which explores techniques for negotiating an increase in pay and does so by staging two contrasting versions of the same situation. In a typescript that refers to this listening model and two others-"Der Junge sagt einem kein wahres Wort" (The Boy Tells Nothing But Lies) and "Kannst du mir bis Donnerstag aushelfen?" (Can You Help Me Out Till Thursday?)-and that may have served as an introduction to the broadcast by Radio Frankfurt of all three pieces in 1931-1932, Benjamin explains their common structural logic as follows: The fundamental purpose of these models is didactic. The focus of instruction consists in the confrontation of an example and a counter-example. In each of the listening models, the speaker appears three times: at the outset he introduces the listeners to the subject that will be explored, then introduces to the audience the two dialogue partners who appear in the first part of the H6rmodell. This initial section presents the counter-example: this is not the way to do it. Following the conclusion of the first part, the speaker returns and points out the mistakes that were made. He then introduces the listeners to a new character who will appear in the second part and will demonstrate the right way to deal with the same situation. At