Golm transmitter

Sender Golm stands on the site of a former Reichsarbeitsdienst officer training school in Golm, a district of Potsdam. The medium-wave broadcasting facility began operations in 1948 to serve Brandenburg state. Its first antenna was a 98-metre wooden lattice tower topped with a horizontal wooden cross whose ends were linked by wires. Four T-antennas hung from these wires down to a tuner building beneath the tower, forming an omnidirectional array with a natural wavelength of 528 metres. The structure was assembled from parts taken from two masts built in 1936 at Rehmate for Zehlendorf transmitter. After the war, materials were scarce in the Soviet zone, so the masts were moved to Golm even though wood was no longer the latest technology. The wooden tower became the tallest wooden structure in the GDR after the Wiederau mast was demolished in 1953. It remained a familiar landmark around Potsdam until October 1979, when explosives brought it down because of decay. Two 51-metre steel lattice masts replaced it, one as the main antenna and the other as backup. Deutsche Post ran the site, broadcasting programmes such as Landessender Potsdam, Radio Wolga, Berliner Rundfunk, Berliner Welle, and Radio DDR 1 and 2. In 1991 Berliner Rundfunk used 693 kHz before transmissions stopped on 20 August 1992. Today the area is covered in vegetation. Only fragments of one mast’s foundations remain above ground. The site’s wartime origins as a training school and its later role as a broadcasting centre are now hard to read in the landscape. A few concrete bases mark where the steel masts once stood, while young trees and grasses grow over the rest. The demolition of 1979 and the dismantling of 1993/94 removed every trace of the transmitter’s technical presence, leaving only the memory of a once important radio facility.