Germany's Alarm Over One Word

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

A rising tide of nationalism in Germany has seen the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) vault into third place in the German parliament after last year’s federal election. 

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats have formed a coalition with the Social Democrats to run the country, after both major parties lost seats. Her days as chancellor seem numbered. 

One indicator of the resurgence of national feeling is the increased visibility of the word “heimat,” a word with no English equivalent.

It’s interesting to note the differentiation in German between heimat and staat. The latter is a legal definition that identifies the political state, whereas the former refers to homeland, and is an emotional term.

The AfD harnessed the notion of home during its election campaign, under the banner “our country, our homeland.”

Perhaps in response, the new German coalition government is adding a “Heimatministerium” or homeland ministry -- it will be known as the Ministry of the Interior, Homeland, and Construction – to the cabinet. 

Horst Seehofer, leader of Bavaria’s Christian Socialist Union, the sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, will be the new federal minister. He is known for his outspoken views on immigration, and forced Merkel into agreeing to cap refugee numbers at 200,000 per year in 2017.

This has caused some pushback from those who worry that it will bring back the kind of ethnic nationalism that reached its pinnacle under the Nazis. 

Paul Nolte, a history professor at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, considers the word as being at “the intersection” of nostalgia and xenophobia. “In this case, heimat is a euphemism for border control and immigration policy,” he maintains.

Yet, long considered toxic, it is gaining traction, and now Germans of all stripes have begun to use the term in a positive light. Robert Habeck, a Green Party politician, has said that politics “must formulate an idea, an idea of heimat, an idea of identity.”

Jochen Bittner, a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, published in Hamburg, describes heimat as not just a geographical place, but a state of belonging. It’s the opposite of feeling alien. 

“Heimat is about the landscape that left its mark on you, the culture that informed you and the people that inspired you when you were growing up,” he wrote recently in an op-ed in the New York Times.

Last Oct. 3, the anniversary of the official reunification of Germany, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a speech remarked that many people cannot understand today’s world and yearn for “heimat.” 

It is, he added, “where we find meaning.” Most Germans associate the term with family, intimacy and a feeling of security.

Edoardo Costadura, a professor of romance languages at the University of Jena, explained to Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster, that individuals develop a longing for heimat when “they have gotten the impression that the world has become a village, but they don't want to live in that village.”

The German word has become part of a larger conflict in the world, that of identity versus diversity. In some ways, globalization has made many people yearn for that which we may call “local.”