Heimat

Heimat (pronounced [ˈhaɪmat]) is a German word that denotes the relationship of a human being toward a certain spatial social unit. The term forms a contrast to social alienation and usually carries positive connotations. It is often expressed with such terms as “home” or “homeland”, but it has been alleged that the word has no English equivalent.

Heimat is a German concept. People are bound to their Heimat by their birth and their childhood, their language, their earliest experiences or acquired affinity. For instance, Swiss citizens have their Heimatort (the municipality where the person or their ancestors became citizens) on their identification. Heimat as a trinity of descendance, community, and tradition—or even the examination of it—highly affects a person’s identity.

Heimat found strength as an instrument of self-assurance and orientation in an increasingly alienating world as Germany's, Austria's, and Switzerland's population from the days of the Industrial Revolution made a massive exodus from rural areas into more urbanised communities around the countries' major cities (Landflucht). Heimat was a reaction to the onset of modernity, loss of individuality and intimate community.Heimat began as an integral aspect of German, Austrian, and Swiss identity that was patriotic without being nationalistic. Regional identity (along with regional dialect) is an important foundation for a person's Heimat.

The state shall edge away where we love our Heimat—Kurt Tucholsky, 1929

The specific aspects of Heimat—love and attachment to homeland—left the idea vulnerable to easy assimilation into the fascist "blood and soil" literature of the National Socialists since it is relatively easy to add to the positive feelings for the Heimat a rejection of anything foreign, that is not necessarily there in the first place. It was conceived by the Nazis that the Volk community is deeply rooted in the land of their Heimat through their practice of agriculture and their ancestral lineage going back hundreds and thousands of years. The Third Reich was regarded at the deepest level as the sacred Heimat of the unified Volk community—the national slogan was One Reich, One Volk, One Führer. Those who were taken to Nazi concentration camps were those who were officially declared by the SS to be "enemies of the volk community" and thus a threat to the integrity and security of the heimat.

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