KARL CHRISTIAN FUHRER is Professor of History at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He has published widely on the history of social policy, media history, and the cultural history of twentieth-century Germany. COREY ROSS is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has published widely on the history of the German Democratic Republic, and is currently writing a social history of the mass media in Germany from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War.