New publication: Idealisierte Heimaten [Idealised Homelands]

Ralf Grabuschnig Discussion

Idealisierte Heimaten

[Idealised Homelands]

 

Spiegelungen. Zeitschrift für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas

[„Spiegelungen“. Journal for German Culture and History of Southeastern Europe]

 

Heft 2/2017, Jg. 12 (66), Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg

[Volume 12 (66), Issue 2 (2017), published by Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg]

 

What forms of idealising the homeland exist amongst those living outside their countries of origin –fleeing, in the diaspora, in the context of migration? Where is this homeland anyway? Does it always have to be one homeland? Is it possible to clearly localise it or can it also evade geographical definition? This volume explores such idealisations within the context of countries of origin, receiving countries, and Germany as an imagined motherland or historical homeland, drawing upon the reflexions by German speaking migrants from South-Eastern Europe since the 19th century. The contributions to this volume examine the multiple discourses on lost and idealised homeland amongst Germans from Russia, uprootedness and idealised homeland among Mennonites, constructions of the idea of homeland among exiles in New Zealand, concepts of homeland in Hungarian German literature, and transnational media consumption and its repercussions on feelings of belonging among German-speaking migrants in Israel.

The literature section presents poems awarded through this year’s Spiegelungen-Award for Poetry, as well as “literary interventions” accompanying an exhibition at the Hungarian German Museum in Tata, poetic miniatures by Dana Ranga, and a newly edited fragment of Paul Schuster’s novel Todor Todoroff. Sieglinde Bottesch contributed illustrations to the volume. The language of the publication is German.

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