Heimat : a critical theory of the German idea of homeland
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Heimat : a critical theory of the German idea of homeland
（Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture / edited by James Hardin）
Camden House, 2004
- : pbk
Available at / 3 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Originally published: 2002
Includes bibliographical references (p. [161]-174) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A new analysis of one of the most loaded terms in the German language: Heimat, or Homeland.
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, Hoelderlin, 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.
Peter Blickle is associate professor of German at Western Michigan University.
by "Nielsen BookData"
