Dossier on Heimat

Abstract

The quotations printed below* are taken from reviews of Edgar Reitz's film Heimat, which was released as an eleven-part TV series in the summer of 1984 and subsequently screened in Munich and at film festivals in Venice and London; it reached the United States the following spring. We present these excerpts as contributions to a debate which has yet to take place. The conflicting positions the authors assume have implications beyond this particular film implications with regard to current political developments in the Federal Republic, especially on the left (or, rather, what used to be considered the left); implications for the discourse on German history; implications for the state of West German film and TV culture; implications for a more general debate in film studies revolving around issues of reception theory, discourse analysis, historical and cultural specificity and a critique of ideology. Heimat deserves attention, not just as yet another instance of German Cinema as canonized by international auteurists, not even as yet another film dealing with German history. The most significant aspect ofHeimat is its reception which includes the overwhelming success of both the TV series and the subsequent theatrical release of the film as well as the conflicting critical responses in part reprinted here. Unlike any other New German film, Heimat relates to crucial changes in the West German public sphere during the 1980s, ranging from the emergence of the Peace Movement, the Greens, a new regionalism and anti-Americanism to the effects of the Wende,' encapsulated in