Funkerberg, Technical monument in Königs Wusterhausen, Germany.
Funkerberg is a partly wooded hill up to 67.5 metres high in the northwest of Königs Wusterhausen, Brandenburg, covering about 130 hectares. From 1911 the German army's telegraph troops built transmission installations and a radio barracks here; Senderhaus 1, Germany's oldest transmitter building, entered service in 1916. The preserved buildings and technical installations are listed monuments, and Senderhaus 1 has housed the broadcasting technology museum since 1996.
In 1911 the German army's telegraph troops began radio experiments on the hill, then called Windmühlenberg, and between 1913 and 1916 built large antenna installations and a radio barracks. Senderhaus 1, Germany's oldest transmitter building, opened in 1916 as the army's central radio station; the Reichspost took it over in September 1919. On 22 December 1920 a Christmas concert was broadcast from here, the first German radio transmission, earning the hill the title "cradle of radio".
The Radio and Broadcasting Technology Museum on the grounds documents early radio technology through exhibitions and preserved equipment. Visitors can see how people once shared information through radio and what role this technology played in daily life.
The hill lies northwest of Königs Wusterhausen's centre; the museum occupies the decommissioned Senderhaus 1, opened there between 1993 and 1996. The preserved buildings and technical installations are protected monuments, and the former crew quarters and riding hall have been converted into the "Am Funkerberg" housing estate since 2014, so parts of the grounds are residential.
The site's 243-metre central tower, the Mittelturm, marked the limit of the Funkerberg's capacity: once it and the surrounding antennas were built, further expansion moved to Zeesen, a few kilometres away. The transmitter 21, a 100-kilowatt Telefunken medium-wave unit, was dismantled in Berlin-Tegel in three days in December 1948 and rebuilt here, staying on air until 1992.
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