German Filmmakers and Movies

Heimat, wrote Ernst Bloch, is something "which shines into the childhood of all and in which no-one has yet been." Hence a place which does not exist: a yearning.

The heimat film of the fifties in Germany turned this yearning into a romantic-sentimental idyll. In the seventies, young film-makers tried to return the genre of the heimat film to historical reality - ("Critical heimat film", for example Matthias Kneissl about a legendary robber by Reinhard Hauff).

Edgar Reitz undertook a wide-ranging approach to what 'heimat' could be in the three parts of his Heimat. They comprise a total of 42 hours of film and were created over a period of about twenty years. The setting: Hunsrück, Edgar Reitz's own homeland, where he grew up. Following the failure of his last cinema film Der Schneider von Ulm (i.e. The Tailor of Ulm), he had retreated in disappointment to the place from where he had once set off into the world – just like the central figure in Heimat, Herrmann Simon, who leaves Hunsrück, only to return there in the end.

Miniature editions of German History

The village in Hunsrück is called Schabbach (this is its name in the film, in reality it has a different name). Reitz tells the story of its inhabitants in the first Heimat (1986). Its focal point is the Simon family. The film follows the story of this family over generations, from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the 1980s. These were private stories – yet ones which mirrored the events of their age. It was Edgar Reitz's great achievement to reflect on a small scale the reverberations of national politics and of the zeitgeist - in a miniature. This extended from the great events (the two world wars) to the imperceptible changes in everyday life – architecture, clothing. Thus the story of a village in Hunsrück became the chronicle of a century.

In the Second Heimat (1992) Edgar Reitz concentrated on the 1960s in Munich. Hermann Simon, whom we had met at the end of the first Heimat, comes to the big city to study music (just as Reitz came from Hunsrück to Munich to make films). He meets Clarissa. Here, too, the sixties in Munich are faithfully reconstructed, the political events (the "Schwabing riots" as the precursor of the student revolt in May 1968) are incorporated into the film. The Second Heimat became the chronicle of a generation of young artists who, in the 1960s, enthusiastically discovered life and the world as their oyster.

Heimat 3

And now the third part: Heimat 3 – Chronik einer Zeitenwende (i.e. Chronicle of a Turning Point in Time) (2004). The biographies of the characters are continued on into the 90s. Hermann Simon has become a famous musician, Clarissa has made a career as a singer. They are played by the same actors, Henry Arnold and Salome Kammer, who have aged together with their film characters. In Berlin, at the wall which is just falling, they meet again – and they still love each other. They are to spend the rest of the decade (and perhaps of their lives) together (interrupted only by a minor lapse into infidelity on the part of Clarissa). They buy a house in Hunsrück, in a beautiful location above the Loreley, where the writer Karoline von Günderode is said to have lived. Clarissa returns from an engagement in Leipzig bringing with her construction workers, who renovate the house. Their stories are also told: how the two German states slowly grow together.

Once again times have changed. The Americans leave, the Russians come, the immigrants from the East. The euphoria of reunification ("Das glücklichste Volk der Welt", i.e "The happiest people in the world", is the title of the first episode) fades perceptibly and transmutes into the gloomy atmosphere of an economic crisis, which also affects the provinces: the Simon optical instruments factory, the traditional enterprise, closes down. In the end, in the last episode "Abschied von Schabbach" (i.e. Farewell to Schabbach), once again a big celebration takes place, in which the extended family is reunited: Hermann and Clarissa, the old and young people of Schabbach, but also the people who have come from East Germany and the Eastern European countries, a mirror of the change to a multicultural society. Schabbach in 1900 and Schabbach in 2000 are worlds apart. The changes in society over the course of a century – Edger Reitz has captured them all with meticulous attention to detail.

Again Edgar Reitz portrays a number of diverse individual stories and lives, in the six episodes he switches to and fro with artistic flair, with a leisurely narrative pace, with patience, with curiosity, and with love for his characters. But – and here he continues the filmic concept of the previous films – he does not only present personal biographies. He relates contemporary history – seen not from the perspective of history books, but from the experience of ordinary people. He offers a sociology of everyday life.

Hermann Simon leaves Hunsrück, goes to Munich, has a successful career, which takes him around the world, and in the end he returns to Hunsrück. This is his heimat. But he brings with him the experience of other places, a taste of the world. This results in an estrangement from his homeland. And so, after 42 hours of film, heimat is still - a yearning.

Edgar Reitz shot another movie, this time only 146 minutes' in length: Heimat – Fragmente – Die Frauen (i. e. Heimat – Fragments – the Women). This film revolves around Lulu, daughter of the characters Hermann and Waltraud who are known from the trilogy. On 4 September 2006, Reitz will present Heimat - Fragmente - Die Frauen at the Biennale in Venice, the Germany premier is scheduled for October.