Heimat: A recovery of the past from the past!
Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung is a term that describes Nora Krug’s book Belonging or Heimat in German. This term is used to describe coming to terms with one’s political past, especially about the holocaust. For Nora Krug, she tackles this idea of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung by uncovering her family’s history and recovering the word “Heimat” with proper German meaning.
As a little girl, Nora Krug found it difficult to connect with her heritage as much of her family’s history went unspoken. She made efforts as a kid to hide her German identity while studying abroad and felt ashamed that as she grew up, she couldn’t feel pride for her country like the generations after hers. Eventually, she had enough. Nora Krug set out to overcome this Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung through the concept of “Heimat” and connect/discover the hidden history of her family’s past, primarily focusing on her uncle and grandfather on her father’s side and eventually the family still living in Karlsruhe on her mother’s side.
During Nora Krug’s research, she discovers that her uncle Franz-Karl (also the name of her father) was an SS soldier who died at war and her grandfather Willi was a part of the Nazi party. These discoveries only fueled her research further as she had to discover “why?”.
Through reading the book we are exposed to the old German feeling of Heimat as belonging to a homeland, this is different from patriotism or nationalism as it gives more of a localized pride of the natural surroundings and feelings you grow up around rather than the larger unity of huge sections of land/people you don’t know but are connected through shared territory. “Heimat” is more personal to the individual and varies from person to person even those that live under the same roof sometimes. We learn that this sense of Heimat has altered throughout by the nazis throughout the book and spread through radios and newspapers to hold a different connotation. This new meaning of the term Heimat was now expanded to exclude and outcast those that didn’t share this German Heimat, it took out the individual and turned it into a large filter of those that are German and those that are bad.
To combat this association of Heimat with negative memories that have tainted the past Parul Sehgal, an award-winning book critic with the New York Times, writes.
“In light of the resurgence of the far right in Germany, her measure of the process known as Vergangenheitsbewältigung — the nation coming to terms with complicity and guilt — has the air of both progress report and challenge. The memoir will be published in Germany as “Heimat” — “Homeland” — in an effort to reclaim the word from extreme right-wing and Nazi groups”.
Perhaps Nora’s uncle who died young, eighteen years old, was swept in the movement and confused his pride of the country with what was right? Was her grandfather Willi any better? Nora Krug dives deeper into her family history to uncover the truth of Willi so that she can fully complete her Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung. In an interview with Frank Meyer a radiopresenter, Nora Krug herself talks about why it is so important to learn more about Willi, she says
“Wie kann man so eine Geschichte, praktisch die Geschichte der Mitläufer erzählen?… Das ist genau das, was mich interessiert: Wie geht man mit sowas um? Es ist sehr leicht als in Deutschland lebender Deutscher oder lebende Deutsche zu sagen, die meisten haben mitgemacht, die meisten waren Mitläufer, mehr ist dazu nicht zu sagen, aber es ist mehr dazu zu sagen, weil jeder Mensch, jeder Mitläufer auch Entscheidungen getroffen hat, die er oder sie vielleicht nicht hätten treffen müssen oder Dinge getan hat oder auch Dinge nicht getan hat, die sie oder er hätte tun können, die vielleicht geholfen hätten”.
Heimat is important because when you lose sense of the meaning, you will lose your other values as well. Perhaps had Willi chosen to stand for his true Heimat he wouldn’t have fallen into the class of Mitlaufer.
As show above with Sehgals review, the need for this book is important as we are seeing a rise in similar right-wing parties rising in today’s German society. To prevent another collapse of the of what is German it is important to remember what being German is originally about. These ideas such as “Heimat” are important to remember and take back from the negative associations they are associated with. Nora Krug finishes her interview by stating
“Zuerst haben wir uns gegen Heimat entschieden, weil der Begriff so vorbelastet ist, und ganz am Ende haben wir aber uns dann doch dafür entschieden, weil wir einfach gesagt haben, dass man als Deutscher oder Deutsche, der das nicht als Widerspruch empfindet, die Heimat zu lieben und trotzdem ihn immer wieder kritisch zu hinterfragen, dass man den Begriff genauso beanspruchen darf, wie jemand, der vielleicht gar nicht mehr über unsere Kriegsgeschichte sprechen möchte.”
The ideas of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung und Heimat are important to the Germans that have trouble accepting their identities with their culture. It should never be taken so far to the extreme like the nazi’s used to mean that pride in homeland means everything else is bad, but that young Germans can grow up without guilt and instead be productive and contribute to the places that mean so much to them.
