About radio hsf

radio hsf

radio hsf is the campus radio of the Technische Universität Ilmenau in Thuringia, Germany, and the oldest student radio station in the country. Founded in May 1950 as the works radio of the Ilmenau engineering school, it has been run by students for more than 75 years, through the GDR era, reunification and the digital age. Operated by the non-profit association hsf studentenradio e. V., it has held a permanent institutional broadcasting licence since 1999 and transmits on FM 98.1 MHz in Ilmenau, via cable into the student dormitories and as a worldwide livestream. The studios are located in the basement of the "Haus L" dormitory on the university campus.

Overview

radio hsf broadcasts on 98.1 MHz FM in the Ilmenau city area, from the 50-metre transmission tower at the Vogelherd since 26 October 2010, together with the student television iSTUFF. The programme is fed into the cable networks of the student dormitories and various local cable operators, and a livestream carries it worldwide. The station's regular programme is built around magazine shows covering university life and the city of Ilmenau: university politics, cultural life, the "infominutes" news format and the "universum" magazine with current events from Ilmenau.

The music programming is curated by the station's music editorial team: the weekly "music" show presents new releases across genres, selected and jointly previewed and rated by the team at the start of each week, with the best songs cut into a "rotation shuffle" that plays in the afternoons. The station also participates in the nationwide "Campuscharts" initiative, presenting the current charts of Germany's campus radios every Monday. From 8 to 11 am the station carries Campusradio Jena; midday brings repeats of the previous day, afternoons the hsf shuffle until 7 pm, and after the evening live shows the programmes of other citizen stations run until midnight. From midnight to 8 am, the BBC World Service is on the frequency.

History

In spring 1950, students of the engineering school built a makeshift works radio station and began daily broadcasts of five to ten minutes during the big break, transmitted into the classrooms. The editorial team was already divided into politics, culture, economy, technology and sports. As the school expanded to 800 students in autumn 1951, the station moved into the Alte Technikum, today's Curie building, and in 1952 and 1953 the students built the so-called Innendienststudio in room 319. After the founding of the Hochschule für Elektrotechnik Ilmenau, the station, renamed Hochschulfunk, passed fully to the university in 1955.

The GDR decades left their mark on the station's story. The school radio also operated the city's public address system, used for announcements by the city administration, parties and organizations; in 1954 an old car was converted into a transmission van for public events, commissioned by the SED district leadership. From 1955, thematic midday programmes were broadcast to the canteen: sports on Mondays, culture and science on Tuesdays, politics on Wednesdays, current affairs on Thursdays, satire on Fridays and dance music on Saturdays. The satire show proved the most difficult: its editor was disciplined for critical contributions and sent to "probation" in production for two years. After 1956, the university party leadership and the FDJ tried to gain greater influence, subordinating the station directly to the party leadership, though the broadcasters always considered themselves a relatively independent group subject to no regular control or censorship.

After reunification, the station reinvented itself as a free student radio. Starting with the International Student Week Ilmenau (ISWI) in 1993, radio hsf began accompanying major Ilmenau events with specially produced programmes: the ISWIradio has covered the student gathering every two years since with a ten-day, 24-hour live programme, and a three-day full programme marked the Thuringia Day 1998 in Ilmenau. These special broadcasts ran as event radio until the permanent institutional broadcasting licence was granted in 1999, putting the station on FM 98.1 for good.

Programming

The regular programme combines magazine journalism with music and open formats: any programme maker can submit their own broadcast concept, so alongside the music and magazine shows there are formats serving specific target groups, supervised by fixed presenters for at least a semester. Recent seasons have included music shows like "mixtape" and "history maker", and knowledge programmes like "techilog" and "ScienceCom", presenting the world of technology and research at the TU Ilmenau; "ScienceCom" is moderated in English, as is the talk show "international", in which international students introduce themselves and their countries.

The ISWIradio is the station's signature event: every two years, a ten-day round-the-clock live programme accompanying the International Student Week, with interviews of the gathering's high-profile guests. Over the decades the microphones have captured Joseph Weizenbaum, Johan Galtung, Robert Jungk, Nobel laureate Klaus von Klitzing, computer pioneer Konrad Zuse, CCC spokesman Wau Holland, author Tschingis Aitmatow, Nobel laureate Jack Steinberger, Amory Lovins, media critic Danny Schechter and Andy Müller-Maguhn, among many others; for the 1993 ISWI the station recorded a greeting from Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Radio workshops let international ISWI participants prepare and produce a daily ISWIradio show under guidance. In 2024 the station hosted two well-attended election talk shows, with the mayoral candidates for Ilmenau and the regional candidates for the Thuringian state election, streamed live and published on YouTube.

Organization and Ownership

radio hsf is operated by the non-profit association hsf studentenradio e. V., based at Max-Planck-Ring 8b in Ilmenau. The board consists of chairwoman Jana Heß, first deputy Simon Magin, second deputy Jessica Franke and treasurer Jakob Streitferdt; Simon Magin is also the programme responsible. The studios and offices are in the basement of the "Haus L" student dormitory on the TU Ilmenau campus, with two studios for production and broadcasting; Studio 1 was fundamentally modernized in 2020 with a dhd.audio mixing desk, and Studio 2 was redesigned at the end of 2024 with a new interview corner and video-capable room design.

Beyond the radio programme, the association runs further projects: STRIPE, the Students Radio Internet Program Exchange, an online platform for exchanging contributions, interviews and whole programmes between student radios in Germany and Europe; the radio hsf BigBand, founded in December 1999 for the station's 50th birthday and still performing after its intended single concert; and the sound and moderation of events at the university and in Ilmenau.

Digital Presence

The livestream at web.radio-hsf.de carries the programme worldwide, the digital successor to the classroom broadcasts of 1950, and the station's website radiohsf.de is the hub for programme information and the association's activities. The cable feed into the student dormitories keeps the traditional campus distribution alive, while the stream reaches alumni and interested listeners everywhere.

For Germany's oldest student radio, the digital presence closes a 75-year circle: from five-minute break-time broadcasts in 1950s classrooms, through the GDR's Innendienststudio and the event radio of the nineties, to a modern FM, cable and streaming operation run entirely by students. The 2024 election talk shows, streamed live and published on YouTube in cooperation with the student network association, show a station that has never stopped reinventing its distribution while keeping its mission: radio made by students, for the university and the city of Ilmenau, now in its 76th year on air and still student-run.