Voicing Propaganda to Nazi Germany: Annemarie Hase, a German-Jewish Refugee at the BBC

During the Second World War, the BBC employed dozens of German-speaking refugees – the vast majority of whom were Jews – to author, edit, compose and perform German-language propaganda broadcasts to listeners in Nazi Germany. One of these improbable psychological warriors was Annemarie Hase, a seasoned stage actor who became the unnamed voice of one of the most successful characters created for the BBC German Service in the war years – Frau Wernicke. This lecture will tell the story of Hase’s life as a refugee in London, focusing especially on her work at the BBC. It will explore what made Hase’s propaganda broadcasts so effective and how the German public responded to her return to Germany shortly after the war had ended.

Sheer Ganor is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is a historian of German-speaking Jewry and modern Germany, and her work focuses on the nexus of forced migration, memory and cultural identities. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled In Scattered Formation: German-speaking Jewry in Displacement. This study traces the emergence of a transnational diasporic network of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany and its annexed territories. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota and upon completing her doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Sheer held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the German Historical Institute. 

Cosponsors: Center for Austrian Studies, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch, and the Department of History