Günther Schifter was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n journalist, radio presenter and record collector.

Born in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Schifter started collecting 78s

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 of the popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 of the interwar years already as a boy. After the war, he was instrumental in popularizing once again jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and Swing

Swing (genre)

Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...

 in occupied Austria, becoming, in 1949, one of the first disc jockey

Disc jockey

A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

s on Austrian radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

. From 1967 to 2000 Schifter had a weekly radio programme, Günther Schifters Schellacks, where he played 78s from his vast personal archives (including, for example, more than 100 cover version

Cover version

In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

s of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues") while always refusing to resort to reissues of older material on vinyl records, audiotape or, later, CDs

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

. In between songs Schifter developed his unique style of giving enjoyable miniature history lesson

Lesson

A lesson is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students being taught by a teacher or instructor...

s.

Ousted by the Austrian state radio (ORF

ORF

ORF may refer to:* ORF , the Austrian public service broadcaster.* Open reading frame, a portion of the genome.* The IATA airport code for Norfolk International Airport in Norfolk, Virginia.* ORF format , Olympus raw image file format....

) in 2000 due to a switch to the more commercial music radio

Music radio

Music radio is a radio format in which music is the main broadcast content. After television replaced old time radio's dramatic content, music formats became dominant in many countries...

 format, Schifter continued broadcasting for a while from Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. A trained actor, Günther Schifter was immediately recognizable by his distinct and sonorous voice. He died on 11 August 2008, aged 84, in Salzburg

Salzburg

-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

.

External links

• Günther Schifter: "Unterhaltung in den vierziger Jahren" ("Entertainment during the 1940s") (1998) (an essay very similar to his radio show; in German).
• Howdy! Günther Schifter, an Internet exhibition (2006) by the Österreichische Mediathek http://www.mediathek.at.