Heimat (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)
Department
World Languages and Literatures
Document Type
Book
Files
Description
The idea of Heimat (home, homeland, native region) has been as important to German self-perceptions over the last two hundred years as the shifting notion of the German nation. While the idea of Heimat has been long neglected in English studies of German culture--among other reasons because the word Heimat has no exact equivalent in English--this book offers us the first cross-disciplinary and comprehensive analysis, in English or German, of this all-pervasive German idea. Blickle shows how the idea of Heimat interpenetrates German notions of modernity, identity, gender, nature, and innocence. Blickle reminds us of such commonplace expressions of Heimat sentimentality as Biedermeier landscapes of Alpine meadows and castles on the Rhine, but also finds the Heimat preoccupation in Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. Always aware of the many literary representations of Heimat (for instance in Schiller, Hölderlin, Heine, Kafka, and Thomas Mann), Blickle does not argue for the fundamental innocence of Heimat. Instead he shows again and again how the idealization of a home ground leads to borders of exclusion.
Call number in WMU's library
DD61.8 .B55 2002
ISBN
978-1571133038
Publication Date
1-1-2002
Publisher
Camden House
City
Rochester
Disciplines
German Language and Literature
Citation for published book
Blickle, Peter. Heimat : A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland / Peter Blickle. 2002. Print. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Unnumbered).
Recommended Citation
Blickle, Peter, "Heimat (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)" (2002). All Books and Monographs by WMU Authors. 447.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/books/447