Discourses of Heimat and of migration both negotiate questions of identity, belonging, and integration; moreover, despite the reemergence of right-wing, racist, and exclusionary uses of the term Heimat, there are in fact more recent German-language cultural texts that problematize and challenge a view of Heimat as a community that excludes the Other than there are promulgating it. This volume addresses the parallel proliferation of discourses of Heimat and of migration in contemporary German-language culture and demonstrates that the entanglement of migration and Heimat can be productive: it can help us to reframe what it means to have a home, to lose one, find one, or belong to one.

Discourses of Heimat and of migration both negotiate questions of identity, belonging, and integration; moreover, despite the reemergence of right-wing, racist, and exclusionary uses of the term Heimat, there are in fact more recent German-language cultural texts that problematize and challenge a view of Heimat as a community that excludes the Other than there are promulgating it. This volume addresses the parallel proliferation of discourses of Heimat and of migration in contemporary German-language culture and demonstrates that the entanglement of migration and Heimat can be productive: it can help us to reframe what it means to have a home, to lose one, find one, or belong to one.

The concept of Heimat with its seemingly pre- or anti-modern connotations of rootedness in a place of origin is central to a critical understanding of German history and culture. Over the course of the past fifteen years, scholars across a range of disciplines have found new ways to examine the changing notions of Heimat – its multifaceted cultural, literary, and visual history, its gendered connotations, and its national and ideological appropriations. This anthology is the first to examine cultural manifestations of Heimat by giving special consideration to issues of memory and space. The contributions to this volume challenge static notions of place often associated with Heimat. Instead, they explore the social and cultural production of places of belonging as they emerge in literary and visual narratives ranging from 1800 to 2000 and beyond. Although the anthology includes historical perspectives on Heimat, its overall objective is not to trace its cultural or literary history, but to place this complex term into new conceptual contexts. Drawing attention to manifestations of Heimat within German literary and cultural studies provides a rich ground for exploring the transformation of locality in trans/national contexts.

Screening the East considers German filmmakers’ responses to unification. In particular, it traces the representation of the East German community in films made since 1989 and considers whether these narratives challenge or reinforce the notion of a separate East German identity. The book identifies and analyses a large number of films, from internationally successful box-office hits, to lesser-known productions, many of which are discussed here for the first time. Providing an insight into the films’ historical and political context, it considers related issues such as stereotyping, racism, regional particularism and the Germans’ confrontation with the past.

The German notion of ‘Heimat’ is highly subjective, ambiguous and historically charged. Senses of belonging and identity associated with Heimat render the concept vulnerable to appropriation and instrumentalization by different political forces. Thereby, a static and exclusive understanding of Heimat is often depicted. This book drafts a counternarrative to demystify the contested concept. On the one hand, Heimat is conceptualized as spatial through emotional-geographical approaches to human-place relations. And on the other hand, the concept is placed in a global context through the perspective of international migration. The author contributes to the understanding of Heimat as an emotional map of self-location. This subjective map is neither purely static nor dynamic - it is characterized by simultaneities of opposing processes.

Germans have been one of the most mobile and dispersed populations on earth. Communities of German speakers, scattered around the globe, have long believed they could recreate their Heimat (homeland) wherever they moved, and that their enclaves could remain truly German. Furthermore, the history of Germany is inextricably tied to Germans outside the homeland who formed new communities that often retained their Germanness. Emigrants, including political, economic, and religious exiles such as Jewish Germans, fostered a nostalgia for home, which, along with longstanding mutual ties of family, trade, and culture, bound them to Germany. The Heimat Abroad is the first book to examine the problem of Germany's long and complex relationship to ethnic Germans outside its national borders. Beyond defining who is German and what makes them so, the book reconceives German identity and history in global terms and challenges the nation state and its borders as the sole basis of German nationalism. Krista O'Donnell is Associate Professor of History, William Paterson University. Nancy Reagin is Professor of History, Pace University. Renete Bridenthal is Emerita Professor of History, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Co-published with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies For centuries, large numbers of German-speaking people have emigrated from settlements in Europe to other countries and continents. In German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, more than forty international contributors describe and discuss aspects of the history, language, and culture of these migrant groups, individuals, and their descendants. Part I focuses on identity, with essays exploring the connections among language, politics, and the construction of histories—national, familial, and personal—in German-speaking diasporic communities around the world. Part II deals with migration, examining such issues as German migrants in postwar Britain, German refugees and forced migration, and the immigrant as a fictional character, among others. Part III examines the idea of loss in diasporic experience with essays on nationalization, language change or loss, and the reshaping of cultural identity. Essays are revised versions of papers presented at an international conference held at the University of Waterloo in August 2006, organized by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, and reflect the multidisciplinarity and the global perspective of this field of study.

Who, in 1945 and 1946, could have foreseen that the economic and social integration of the millions of Germans from the East expelled into West Germany after Wodd War II would largely be accomplished in a few years? And, who could have foreseen that many years after this accomplishment the political repercussions of the expulsions would go on? Yet, surprisingly enough, this is what has happened. In 1969, as usual, the major issues of the federal election campaign in West Germany hardly reflect any specific economic and social concerns of the expellees, not even those bruited about by the NPD (N ationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands). At the same time, how ever, all the political parties vying in the campaign, with the exception of the newly founded, less influentialDKP (the new German Commu nist Party), pay considerable deference to the political interests of the expellees in the German question. Whether these interests represent the opinion of most of the expellees and whether the expellee associ ations in fact speak for many voters is another matter. Why are these questions rarely posed? Why, despite the economic and social integration of the expellees, do the East German Home land Provincial Societies - the Landsmannschaften - retain much influence? The explanation of this phenomenon becomes increasingly clear if one reads the intelligent and superbly documented analysis by Hans Schoenberg.

A fifth of West Germany's post-1945 population consisted of ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe, a quarter of whom came from Silesia. As the richest territory lost inside Germany's interwar borders, Silesia was a leading objective for territorial revisionists, many of whom were themselves expellees. The Lost German East examines how and why millions of Silesian expellees came to terms with the loss of their homeland. Applying theories of memory and nostalgia, as well as recent studies on ethnic cleansing, Andrew Demshuk shows how, over time, most expellees came to recognize that the idealized world they mourned no longer existed. Revising the traditional view that most of those expelled sought a restoration of prewar borders so they could return to the east, Demshuk offers a new answer to the question of why, after decades of violent upheaval, peace and stability took root in West Germany during the tense early years of the Cold War.