Situates the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) Studio for Electronic Music that was in Cologne, West Germany, in the regionally specific political, economic and aesthetic contexts of West German nation building.

The WDR studio existed for 50 years, roughly lining up with the existence of West Germany. The Politics of Electronic Music in West Germany examines the evolution of electronic music in Cologne, including how broader discourses and power structures were mediated by local composers, musicians, technicians, scientists and radio directors, challenging the notion that the studio was an isolated or uncollaborative environment.

With deep dives on studio co-founder Herbert Eimert and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as extensive, exclusive interviews with longtime WDR sound engineer Volker Müller, this work upends stereotypes and misconceptions about electronic music in general, as well as about the specifics of renowned studios like WDR. Such stereotypes advanced a political and academic agenda that sought to portray West Germany as a paragon of cultural advancement and electronic music as an "objective" art and therefore an example of an ideology-free musical genre.

This book illustrates how diverse discourses, practices and networks were mobilized and how they converged, juxtaposed or contradicted each other in multiple configurations within the WDR studio from 1951-2001. To do so, the book incorporates a series of case studies, original interviews, and previously overlooked archival materials from a range of personal, state, and federal archives from the Rhine-Ruhr region.