The question of Heimat: Identity and alterity in contemporary German literature and film.

The German Heimat, so profoundly evocative of serenity and a sense of intimate belonging, could be said to come into its 'own' only when it threatens to become 'other,' that is, only when it is poised in opposition to the unprecedented threat of alienation and fragmentation brought by rapid social changes. Referring at once to family, childhood, native place, and/or homeland, the word Heimat may not hold the same significance for any two Germans, or from one German home to another. Nor has its meaning remained the same over time. A 'fiction' whose reality can be measured in the emotionally and ideologically charged battles of recent German cultural history, this ubiquitous idea of Heimat will be closely examined in the present dissertation from three different but interrelated perspectives on contemporary German film and literature.After an introduction which offers an overview of the concept and history of Heimat, the first chapter examines the (re)emergence of the Heimatfilme in postwar Germany and its counter-reaction with the rise of New German Cinema, focusing on Edgar Reitz's sixteen-hour film called, appropriately enough, Heimat. The second chapter examines the issues of identity and alienation in contemporary German-Jewish literature with a focus on Roman von einem Kinde of Barbara Honigmann, a German Jewish writer who makes her home in Strasbourg, France today, at the very border of Germany in both space and time, a fact that figures not incidentally in her work. Finally, the third chapter examines the so-called migrant literature that emerged with the influx of guest workers into the Federal Republic. With Bitte nix Polizei, Turkish born writer Aras Oren suggests how what was once called Germany's Gastarbeiterliteratur belongs essentially and simply to German literature itself. In all three works the question of Heimat presents a network of identity and alterity, belonging and alienation, as one negotiates present realities and future possibilities, while exposing the Heimat as a construction that is openly contested.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2005.School code: 0265