‘Heimat’ of memory, imagination and choice: An appreciation of Edgar Reitz’ Heimat films Angela Skrimshire Revised version Feb 2012 Copyright © Angela Skrimshire 2009, 2012 Skrimshire / 'Heimat' of memory ......... 2 Acknowledgements and explanation This is a thoroughly revised version of a text published on the same websites in 2009. I am very grateful to webmasters Reinder Rustema (http://www.heimat123.net/) and Thomas Hönemann (http://www.heimat123.de/) for their dedicated support and provison of information to English-speaking followers of Edgar Reitz’ Heimat films, and for opening their websites to our discussions and contributions. I am also greatly indebted to the participants in the English online discussions of the films, hosted by Reinder Rustema and led by Ivan Mansley, discussions from which I learned so much. It will be obvious that I have no professional background in commenting on literature, music or film. I know little about the art of film, and have come late to enjoying its products. I am just a spectator. My observations have no other value than that. I would prefer others not to read much of my commentary unless thay have already seen the films and formed their own understandings. Angela Skrimshire February 2012 a.skrimshire123 (at) btinternet.com Skrimshire / 'Heimat' of memory ......... 3 Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 5 How ‘Heimat’ is told – memory, image and sound ...................................... 12 The “Prologue” – Geschichten aus den Hunsrückdörfern ............................ 18 The First Heimat ............................................................................................ 22 1.0 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................22 1.1 Films 1-4: Memories of a recreated time. Light and colour. ................................................. 26 1.2 Films 5-8: Memories of wartime and its aftermath. ............................................................. 30 1.3 Films 9-11: The brothers – memories of a living generation ................................................. 34 The Second Heimat ........................................................................................ 40 2.0 Introduction......................................................................................................................... 40 2.1 Films 1 – 2: The “secret metropolis”; its memorable inhabitants; ‘Sehnsucht’ for a new ‘Heimat’; “the mixture of passion and fear”; a troubled generation .............................. 45 2.2 Films 3 – 4: A ‘Heimat’ lost, recreated and destroyed again; and the Fuchsbau, a house of dangerous memories...................................................................................................... 50 2.3 Film 5: “Playing with freedom”, by-ways .............................................................................. 55 2.4 Films 6 - 7: Change of cameraman; laughter and pain, song of the wolves ........................ 58 2.5 Film 8: A wedding where nothing is as it seems, and the second ‘Heimat’is invaded by the first, followed by exile. .................................................................................................. 63 2.6 Film 9: The eternal daughter: guilty memories destroy the house, a guardian deity cannot protect it. ....................................................................................................................... 67 2.7 Film 10: The house is a memory, but older memories claim victims; “Your story is my story now”; the lens a “glass eye”? The Ammersee ............................................................... 72 Skrimshire / 'Heimat' of memory ......... 4 2.8 Films 11 – 12: Silences; ‘Heimweh’ for the lost ‘Second Heimat’, ‘Fernweh’ for the future; the many loud words of 1968 ............................................................................................... 77 2.9 Film 13. Taking leave of ten years of life; return to the beginning? ..................................... 83 Heimat 3 .........................................................................................................89 3.0 Introduction......................................................................................................................... 89 3.1 Film 1: Turning point: to a new-built dream? Or family and place refound? ..................... 94 3.2 Film 2: East and West, euphoria and dejection as fortunes rise and fall. ............................ 97 3.3 Film 3: Power and rivalry in a changing world; brothers divided, cousins bound .............. 101 3.4 Film 4: Collapse of the ideal ‘Heimat’, but “a brother is still a brother”. ............................ 106 3.5 Film 5: Death of the last older brother ends an era; greed destroys the family and claims an innocent victim; illness and a fragile homecoming ....................................................... 112 3.6 Film 6: In Munich, eclipse and tragi-comedy; the refound ‘Heimat’ is just a story; the Millennium party is not what it seems. Realism?......................................................... 119 The “Epilogue”: Heimat-Fragmente: die Frauen ........................................ 127 ‘Chance’ and ‘magic’ in the telling of Heimat ..............................................131 Imagined lives: The telling of life-long stories .......................................... 134 Maria ...................................................................................................................................... 134 Anton and Ernst ........................................................................................................................ 137 Paul ...................................................................................................................................... 140 Hermann and Clarissa ............................................................................................................... 141 Sources........................................................................................................... 145 Skrimshire / 'Heimat' of memory ......... 5 Introduction This text began as an extended online essay1, continuing a conversation with other members of a general audience already familiar with the Heimat Trilogy. It records only my own personal reflections. It is a kind of guided commentary to the Trilogy from one individual lay spectator’s point of view, but in discussion it contains many “spoilers” and is addressed preferably to those who are watching or have already watched the films. It is not meant to be a source of comprehensive factual information on the Heimat Trilogy and its Director, as such information is already available from the websites, the booklets accompanying the DVDs, and many other other publications of which a selection are referenced in my Bibliography. However in online form people might come across it who know little about the films, so here is a brief factual introduction for them. All the same, I would strongly encourage any readers to watch at least some of the films themselves and form their own impressions first, before engaging further with the commentary. I would hate my reflections to interfere with the process whereby, as Edgar Reitz often says, following Truffaut, “a film puts itself together in the head of the viewer. The film exists in as many individual variants as there are viewers...”2 Edgar Reitz’ Heimat Trilogy is a cinematic masterwork of huge proportions, which has grown over the years since 1980, when production began, into a body of 30 feature-length parts, amounting to around 54 hours of film. The parts form three main cycles, Heimat – eine Deutsche Chronik (1984), Die Zweite Heimat – Chronik einer Jugend (1992), and Heimat 3 – Chronik einer Zeitenwende (2004). In the latest German DVD edition3 these are bookended by two further feature-length films, a “Prologue”, Geschichten aus den Hunsrückdörfern (1981) and “Epilogue” , Heimat-Fragmente: die Frauen (2006), of which only the latter is yet released with English subtitles. For simplicity in this book I have adopted the journalistic convention of calling the three cycles Heimat 1, Heimat 2 and Heimat 3, though in the case of the first two these are not the correct titles. The films of the Trilogy were created by film crews and casts made up of many gifted individuals, some now widely renowned, some otherwise little known, under the inspired leadership of the Director and auteur film-maker Edgar Reitz. Reitz, son of a clockmaker and 1 Originally published on the websites http://www.heimat123.net/ and http://www.heimat123.de/ 2 DIE ZEIT 16.12.2004 Nr.52 “Ich bewundere Treue, die auf nichts spekuliert“ 3 Die Heimat Trilogie/Gesamtedition Kinowelt DVD edition 2010 Skrimshire / 'Heimat' of memory ......... 6 dedicated craftsman, was born and brought up in the Hunsrück, a very rural region of Germany to the west of the Rhine. It was traditionally a relatively isolated area with its own dialect, culture and industries, though traversed and occupied by armies through the centuries, not least in the twentieth. As a student in the 1950s Reitz left the region to study in Munich and became immersed in the world of avant-garde arts – music, literature, theatre, and film, eventually helping to found and teach in an Institute of Film Design in Ulm. He was a founder member of the group of New German auteur Film-makers who signed the “Oberhausener