Sender Köln-Raderthal
Cologne's medium-wave transmitter for WERAG, the WDR's predecessor, on air from 1927 to 1932. Its listed transmitter house in Köln-Raderthal still stands today.
Cologne had to beat out 93 other cities to win the transmitter. Konrad Adenauer, the city's mayor at the time, brought the facility to town.
Source: Wikipedia
At a Glance
- Type
- former medium-wave transmitter; the transmitter house survives
- Location
- Hitzelerstraße, at the western end of the Raderthaler Volkspark, Rodenkirchen district
- Frequency and power
- "Welle 283" (1,060 kHz), 4 kW
- Architect
- Theodor Willkens of Cologne
- Last broadcast day
- 14 March 1932
Konrad Adenauer, then mayor of Cologne, won the transmitter for the city from among 94 competing cities – and its two 80 m high masts were made of specially treated pine wood.
Why Cologne Needed Its Own Transmitter
During the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr, building German-language transmitters there was prohibited. Only after British troops withdrew from the Cologne area in January 1926 could the Rhineland get transmitters of its own. On 1 January 1927, Westdeutsche Funkstunde AG moved from Münster to Cologne and from then on operated as WERAG. Its new transmitter in Langenberg, however, was too weak to cover Cologne as well.
Transmitter House and Wooden Masts
Construction began in May 1927 on a single-storey transmitter house with a large machine hall, flanked by two civil servants' apartments. The Berlin firm Hein, Lehmann und Co. erected two 80 m masts of specially treated pine nearby, 140 m apart. A multi-wire T-antenna, 6 m wide and 40 m long, hung between their tops. A successful test broadcast on 1 September was followed by the official launch on 15 December 1927.
The End of Broadcasting
Once the Langenberg transmitter's output grew to 60 kW, it reached Cologne too, and the Raderthal facility became redundant. From July 1932, the equipment and masts were dismantled. Overhauled and improved, the equipment later went back into service at the Hannover-Hainholz transmitter, on a different wavelength and with higher power.
The Building After 1932
Unlike the equipment, the building and its apartments stayed put. Around 1950 it was requisitioned, incorporated into the newly built Volkspark housing estate for members of the British Army of the Rhine, and used for events. Afterwards the City of Cologne used it, most recently as emergency housing. The building has been a listed monument since 1997, as the Volkspark estate had been before. It has stood empty since 2018 and needs renovation; in December 2018, the Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz (Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection) presented it as its "Monument of the Month".
Plans for a Radio Museum
The "Radiomuseum ins Funkhaus" network, made up of the RadioMuseum Köln support association, the "Englische Siedlung" residents' initiative and public figures, is campaigning to move the RadioMuseum Köln into the former broadcasting house. Architecture students at TH Köln, led by Prof. Norbert Schöndeling and Prof. Eva-Maria Pape, developed concepts for it, published as a book and online. In September 2020, the FDP city council group and the Freie Wähler Köln proposed leasing the building rent-free for 25 years to a yet-to-be-founded sponsoring body, with three years' priority over private investors. The council formed after the 2020 local elections referred the proposal to the Cultural Committee, which rejected it by majority vote in April 2021.
Timeline
- 1926British occupation forces withdraw from the Cologne area (January)
- 1927Construction of the transmitter building and masts begins in Raderthal (May)
- 1927Official start of operation on wavelength 283 with 4 kW (15 December)
- 1932Broadcasting ceased (14 March)
- 1932Transmitter equipment dismantled, reused in Hannover-Hainholz (from July)
- um 1950Transmitter building requisitioned and integrated into the Volkspark housing estate
- 1997Transmitter building listed as a protected monument
- 2018Building vacant; named "Monument of the Month" in December
Map
Blue dots: other places nearby — tap to explore.
You might also like — related or nearby
Comments
- Loading comments…
Sources & links
Auto-generated, last verified: 2026-10-25
How this page is made
This page draws on open sources — Wikipedia, Wikidata, official websites and the city’s open data. Every statement is checked against the sources linked here, and pages are refreshed regularly.
Spotted a mistake anyway? Tell us below — we read every submission.