Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland
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, 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.
Peter Blickle is associate professor of German at Western Michigan University.
1004865224
Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland
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, 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.
Peter Blickle is associate professor of German at Western Michigan University.
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Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland

Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland

by Peter Blickle
Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland

Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland

by Peter Blickle

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$36.95 
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Overview

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, 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.
Peter Blickle is associate professor of German at Western Michigan University.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781571133038
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer, Limited
Publication date: 08/02/2004
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture , #1
Pages: 198
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Prefaceix
1Introduction1
Heimat in Other Languages2
Difficulties in Defining Heimat3
Identity, Geography, the Need for Heimat, and Innocence6
Goals and What Is at Stake9
Space, Alienation, Provincialism, Nature, Gender, and Self-Healings15
2Heimat, Modernity, and Nation25
Anthony Giddens's Modernity and Heimat29
Jurgen Habermas's Modernity and Heimat33
Heimat: A Space Free from Irony40
Heimat: A Mythicized Sense of Time42
Heimat, the German Nation-State, and Herder's Cultural Nationalism46
3Heimat and Concepts of Identity60
Heimat and the Self64
Heimat, Loss, and Heimweh67
Heimat and Regression71
4Heimat and the Feminine81
Heimat as the Ideal Woman (Imagined by Men)83
Heimat, Freud, and the Uncanny92
Women's Voices on Heimat96
5Heimat, Nature, Landscape, and Ground112
Fichte, Schelling, and Heimat: Reenchanting a Disenchanted World115
Heimat, Adorno, and the Subject's Imagined Reunion with Nature120
The German Affinity for Grounding122
6Heimat and Innocence (in Childhood, in Religion, in Language, and in Antiheimat)130
Heimat and Morality131
Heimat: Growing Up without Growing Up137
Language as Heimat139
Antiheimat as Heimat142
7Conclusion151
Works Cited161
Index175
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