Sender Stuttgart-Degerloch

The former radio transmitter site stands on the Hoffeld, a gentle rise south of Stuttgart-Degerloch. Built in 1926 by the Deutsche Reichspost for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG, it broadcast the company’s medium-wave programmes until 1930. Two steel lattice towers, each one hundred metres tall, carried a T-shaped aerial fed by a 1.5 kW transmitter. The new power improved reception across greater Stuttgart compared with the old Pragsattel mast, yet still left parts of Württemberg, northern Baden and Hohenzollern without reliable signals. A second transmitter in Freiburg was therefore opened at the same time to cover southern Baden. In December 1930 the site was shut down when the larger Mühlacker transmitter began service. After Mühlacker underwent rebuilding in 1933–34 the Degerloch towers briefly returned to use. They survived the Second World War intact, and in 1950 the Süddeutscher Rundfunk installed two FM transmitters on one of the towers. A second FM service followed in 1951. The arrival of the Stuttgart television tower in 1956 made the Hoffeld installation redundant, and the first mast was dismantled. The second came down soon afterwards. Maps continued to mark the spot until the 1980s, long after the towers had gone. Today the open ground is covered by a quiet housing estate of low flat-roofed houses. Three street names—Bei den Funktürmen, Nauener Straße and Norddeichweg—keep the memory alive. A local football club, SV Hoffeld, even places one of the old masts in its club crest. The precise spots where the two towers once stood are still recorded, a pair of coordinates on the southern slope of the Hoffeld ridge.