Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 55 Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging ULRIKE Plath The paper aims to start a discussion of the notion of the Baltic German Heimat in the long nineteenth century, from the end of the eighteenth century up to 1918. In this period of time, Baltic German cultural domination reached its peak, but also started to decline due to the constant growth of nationalism, followed by the final migration of Baltic Germans back to Germany between 1905 and 1941. Baltic German history interpreted as a part of the German history of migration developed special features and layers of imagined spatial belonging. After highlighting the main steps in the development of the Baltic German notion of Heimat, ‘fatherland’ and ‘motherland’ in nineteenth-century literature, journalism and politics, the paper proposes an action- based approach towards understanding spatial belonging. In this sense, Heimat is not only constructed from above, but also as an individually and socially constructed space created by different and sometimes clashing ‘ways of being’ and ‘ways of belonging’. In the conclusion, there is a discussion of whether the Baltic German Heimat was a national, a transnational or an indifferent, de-territorialised space of ‘being between’. Heimat and the Baltic German history of migration The German term Heimat, meaning home, homeland, the land or private place of birth, is an emotional space of belonging1 with unclear contours, sometimes mean- ing the territory of a nation or an empire, sometimes a region, and sometimes just a private memory that gains, in every form, importance with growing spatial and temporal distance.2 As Heimat is often constructed in retrospect, or in opposition to other concepts, different historical layers have to be taken into account. The Baltic German notion of Heimat in the long nineteenth century is complicated due to the many political breaks and waves of migration, starting with the first wave of German immigrants in the Middle Ages, when Old Livonia was constructed 1 Concerning the ongoing discussion about spaces of belonging see E. H. Jones, Spaces of Belonging: Home, Culture and Identity in 20th-Century French Autobiography. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 2 P. Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland. (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture.) Rochester: Camden House, 2002. ULRIKE PLATH 56 in the bloody crusades that subjugated local Estonians and Latvians to the rule of Germans. This part of the migration had its main influence on the way Baltic Germans, Estonians and Latvians constructed and reflected on the historical rights of being at home. Baltic German migration continued steadily from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries (second wave), and there was a third wave of massive immigration after 1710, when German craftsmen and academics came to the Baltic provinces to rebuild the infrastructure after the dramatic losses of population in connection with the Great Famine of Estonia (1695–1697), the Great Northern War (1700–1710/1721) and the plague (1710–1713). This layer of migration triggered the founding myth of the Baltic German literati, the estate of the academically edu- cated Germans in the Baltic region, and of Baltic German enlightenment. While the first three waves mainly brought Germans to the Baltics, in the fourth wave the Baltic Germans left their homes for Germany. This fourth wave started with the ‘Russification’ of the 1880s, continued with the revolution of 1905 and the land re- form of 1919, and culminated in the resettlement (Umsiedlung) of Germans in 1939 and the Nachumsiedlung in 1941, finally ending in 1944. After the short intermezzo of a new never-to-be Heimat in the Wartheland, which deserves to be discussed in detail separately, we can define a fifth wave of Baltic German migration: the in- tegration into post-war Germany after 1945. The loss of the Baltic ‘Old Heimat’ and the establishing of a ‘New Heimat’ changed the notions of Heimat, in terms of how the spaces of belonging in the long nineteenth century were viewed in retrospect (fig. 4). As a sixth and last wave, one could name the conception of Heimat after 1991, when direct contacts with Estonia and Livonia were easy to establish. All these phases provoked different forms and notions of Baltic German Heimat. For the members of the Baltic nobility, their long history dating back to the medi- eval times and the possession of land and estates were fundamental aspects of the notion of Heimat. For single academic male migrants moving to the Baltics through- out early modern times, sensing the new environment was the first and domin- ant way of getting information about the place. Heimat as a sensescape3 changed, however, when Heimat became a taskspace of daily work. Beside those who came and stayed in the Baltics, there were others who chose to leave again in order to become more or less integrated members of the German or Russian societies, or to stay related to different places of belonging at the same time. Baltic German Heimat has throughout the centuries been a place of ‘belonging between’, situated between Russia and Germany, between Estonians/Latvians and different forms of self-defin- ition, providing space for shifting, situative strategies of multiple belonging.4 Due to the impact of politics, migration and the experiences of the different generations living together, there never existed a single Baltic German Heimat, but many that 3 U. Plath, Sinneslandschaften. Die Bedeutung der Sinne bei der Beschreibung baltischer Landschaften und Kulturen (1750–1850). – Umweltphilosophie und Naturdenken im baltischen Kultuurraum / Environmental Philosophy and Landscape Thinking. Eds. L. Lukas, K. Tüür, U. Plath, J. Undusk. (Collegium litterarum 24.) Tallinn: Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus, 2011, pp. 74–110. 4 P. Mar, Accomodating Places: A Migrant Ethnography of Two Cities (Hong Kong and Sydney). PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2002, pp. 253–287. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 57 were sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting.5 To integrate all of them, I suggest an approach that differentiates between creatingHeimat from above – de- fining it in literature, journalism and politics – and from below, i.e. creating Heimat in private or social activities. How to approach the Baltic German Heimat? In the last twenty years, the special German notion of Heimat has developed into a vibrant and interdisciplinary area of research in historical cultural studies, from literature to film studies, from political and social to environmental history, and from geography to memory studies.6 Dealing with alternative forms of spatial be- longing involves critically questioning the importance of national belonging, which has been discussed intensely since the 1980s. Recently this has also included the former areas of German settlement in Eastern Europe and the cultural memory of the ‘lost Heimat’.7 How to explain the new boom of Heimat in German studies? It might be its im- portance in the construction of cultural memory and its power to counterbalance the predominating discourse of nationalities studies that makes it interesting not only for German researchers living and working abroad, as they reflect on their own feelings of belonging, but also for a broader group of non-German research- ers, opening up the methodological frames of Heimat from in-group research to a broader methodological approach. After the boom of Heimatfilm, Heimatlied and Heimatroman (i.e. homeland movies, songs, and novels) in post-war Germany, which created regional cosiness as a backlash to modernisation and the inexpressible na- tional feelings of the 1950s and 1960s, Heimat became a keyword in conservative political rhetoric throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which made the term unfashion- able and useless as an analytical tool for the following generations of researchers. 5 Concerning migration and the construction of spaces of belonging, see P. Levitt, Transnational Migrants: When ‘Home’ Means More Than One Country. – Migration Information Source 2004, 1 October, http://www. migrationpolicy.org/article/transnational-migrants-when-home-means-more-one-country (accessed 23 August 2014). 6 P. Blickle, Heimat; F. Eigler, J. Kugele, Heimat: At the Intersection of Memory and Space. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012; A. Goodbody, Heimat’s Environmental Turn. Draft for the paper delivered at the ASLE ninth biennial conference Species, Space, and the Imagination of the Global, 21–26 June 2011, Bloomington, Indiana, http://opus. bath.ac.uk/24676/1/Goodbody_Heimat_s_Environmental_Turn.pdf (accessed 6 February 2014); P. Maeder, Forging a New Heimat: Expellees in Post-War West Germany and Canada. (Transkulturelle Perspektiven 10.) Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011; J. von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005; B. M. W. Ratter, K. Gee, Heimat: A German Concept of Regional Perception and Identity as a Basis for Coastal Management in the Wadden Sea. – Ocean & Coastal Management 2012, vol. 68, pp. 127–137, http://www.waddenacademie.nl/fileadmin/inhoud/pdf/04-bibliotheek/ Themanummer_OCMA/12_Heimat_-_A_German_concept_of_regional_perception_and_identity_as_a_basis_ for_coastal_management_in_the_Wadden_Sea_OCMA.pdf (accessed 1 June 2014); From Heimat to Umwelt: New Perspectives on German Environmental History. Ed. F. Zelko. (German Historical Institute Bulletin. Supplement