Before there was a Berlin studio or a "Deutschlands Hit-Radio" branding, there was a transmitter in Luxembourg doing something German state radio would not. On July 15, 1957, the German language service of Radio Luxembourg went on air, and according to the station's own history on Wikipedia, it introduced listeners on both sides of the postwar German divide to rock and roll, bebop, cool jazz, and other American popular music that West and East German state broadcasters simply refused to play. Operating from outside German borders let it sidestep the non-commercial monopoly the German states had imposed on domestic radio, a workaround it shared with a rival broadcaster, Europe 1, transmitting from Saarland.
That outsider positioning defined the station for decades. It became RTL Hörfunk in 1988, then relaunched in 1990 as RTL Radio, chasing the 25 to 45 demographic with a format modeled on American hit radio. Two years later it swung hard into nostalgia, rebranding as "RTL - Der Oldiesender" and defining "oldie" status as anything 14 years or older, a rolling definition that kept adding a new decade of music as the calendar moved on, as detailed on the German Wikipedia entry for the station.
The move from Luxembourg to Berlin
The most significant shift in the station's modern history came on July 1, 2015, when RTL Radio rebranded once more as "RTL - Deutschlands Hit-Radio" and physically relocated its studios from Luxembourg City to Berlin, joining a cluster of sister stations including 104.6 RTL and 105'5 Spreeradio inside the RTL Audio Center Berlin. Yet the Luxembourg connection never fully disappeared. A regional editorial team based in Luxembourg still produces dedicated weather and traffic updates for the station's original FM frequencies, a small but deliberate nod to where the whole project started.
What makes this regional stream worth tuning into is that continuity. It carries the current Berlin produced hit radio format while still threading in the Luxembourg service that made the station relevant in the first place, back when playing an American rock and roll record on the radio was itself a small act of rebellion.