Contested Homes

The German Heimat, so profoundly evocative of serenity and a sense of intimate belonging, could be said to come into its 'own' only when it threatens to become 'other,' that is, only when it is poised against the alienation, fragmentation, and deterritorialization brought by the rapid social changes of the last century. Referring at once to family, childhood, native place, as well as homeland, the word Heimat may not hold the same significance for any two Germans, or from one German home to another. A fiction whose reality can be measured in the emotionally and ideologically charged battles of recent German history, this ubiquitous but rarely perceived notion of Heimat will be closely examined from three different but interrelated perspectives on contemporary German film and literature. "Contested Homes" offers textual analyses of Edgar Reitz's film series "Heimat," Barbara Honigmann's "Roman von einem Kinde," and Aras Ören's "Bitte nix Polizei." It examines the issues of identity and alterity, belonging and alienation in contemporary German society while exposing the concept of Heimat as a construction openly contested and negotiable.