Heimat (DE)

[ˈhaimaːt]

Related terms: Attachment, Bodenlos (German), Global, Home, Motherland, Nostalgia, Patrie, Terrestrial

Heimat is a uniquely German word and concept, which renders a depiction of home as something very specific to the sensory experience of it. Heimat can be found in a taste, in music, in smell – just as one may find Heimat in a physical place that one associates as a home-base (»Home is where the heart is«). Currently, however, Heimat no longer describes an idealized description of belonging. The term has gone through a long history of appropriation and distortion, often being employed by far-right and conservative ideological groups to justify exclusion. Today, Heimat remains pointedly unheimlich (»uncanny«; the German root of Heim, meaning »home«). We instinctively understand that we can inhabit neither this idea of Heimat nor the nebulous promise of the utopian global. Heimat is no longer inherited or given, but created – a place made home for which one becomes responsible.