In this recording, the pioneering radio announcer and engineer Friedrich Georg Knöpfke reports on the May 1929 cornerstone-laying ceremony that began construction of the Haus des Rundfunks [Broadcasting House] in Berlin, a state-of-the-art facility to house the rapidly growing new medium of radio. The renowned architect Hans Poelzig designed the building specifically for the requirements of radio, including a curved exterior wall, for instance, to shield the studios from the street noise outside. Radio had, by 1929, found its way into around 3 million households, spurred by the falling cost of receivers and the rising diversity of programming. Knöpfke’s voice, and his iconic station identification “Achtung, Achtung! Hier ist die Sendestelle Berlin!,” had greeted listeners since the inauguration of regular German broadcasting in 1923, and so his coverage of this occasion was especially apt. Here, Knöpfke echoes the other officials present at the ceremony by underscoring the power of radio to bring people together, to educate, and to inspire the imagination. Such sentiments reflected the hopes and ambitions for the new medium in its infancy, and early programming catered to a range of tastes, from classical music to gymnastics instruction, to national and international news, to lectures on art and science. In keeping with these ambitions, the radio station even maintained its own symphony orchestra, which played the overture to Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger at the end of this 1929 ceremony.  Construction of the facility finished in 1931, and radio broadcasts directly from the Haus des Rundfunks began in January of that year.