Amy Alrich has developed an understanding of Heimat from her study of ethnic Germans who were forced out of countries east of the German border after World War II. She describes Heimat as “…a rich tapestry of meanings relating to one’s personal and deeply-rooted ties to the ancestral soil, heritage, customs, gastronomy, dialect, landscape, etc.”
Sebastian Sparwasser will elaborate through the study of ethnic Germans in Hungary. They were German-Hungarians and although loyal to the Hungarian state, they were expelled from Hungary after the war and forced into Germany. They came to think of themselves as Hungarian-Germans and wanted to return to their homeland—Hungary–immediately.
Axel Wolz will document how, after German reunification in 1990, the government in its urgency to establish a land-trust agency did not institute oversight and accountability practices. This failure has allowed GDR practices to be used by government agents reared in the GDR to withhold land. Temporary land-trust offices established over 25 years ago to dispose of land from the GDR continue to exist.
Joyce Bromley will draw on extensive interviews in 2011-2013 with German families who had returned to their ancestral homes in the former GDR. She documents the role of Heimat as the inescapable—inexplicable—hold that deeply-rooted ties to ancestral soil has on people, and discriminatory experience farmers have experienced with land-trust agents.
