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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 back to 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 , sometimes a , 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 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 and to the rule of Germans. This part of the migration had its main influence on the way , 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 (1695–1697), the (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 , 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 ‘’ 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 , 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 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.) : 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 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 and . (Transkulturelle Perspektiven 10.) Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2011; J. 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 3.) Washington DC: German Historical Institute, 2006, http://www.ghi-dc.org/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=199&Itemid=161 (accessed 1 June 2014). 7 J. Faehndrich, Eine endliche Geschichte. Die Heimatbücher der deutschen Vertriebenen. Cologne: Böhlau, 2011; C. L. Lieber, Representations of Heimat and Trauma in Selected German and Polish Poetry and Prose in Silesia, 1939–1949. PhD Dissertation, University of Utah, 2007; A. Ludewig, A German ‘Heimat’ Further East and in the Baltic Region? Contemporary German Film as a Provocation. – Journal of European Studies 2006, vol. 36 (2), pp. 157–179. ulrike plath 58

However, by the end of the 1990s, within the changed political framework of a re- united Germany, it again became part of academic political, historical and literary research.8 After the rise of German national thinking in public discourse during the football world championship in 2006, the term made an impressive comeback as a stylish counterpart to globalisation, stressing local urban communities and the urban life-style. Looking at these breaks both in the Baltic German history of mi- gration and in conceptual history, it becomes clear that Heimat has never been a timeless phenomenon, but has been affected by reactions to contemporary political and social breaks. Although Heimat as a term, with its counterparts ‘fatherland’ (Vaterland) and ‘motherland’ (Mutterland), was present in a wide variety of Baltic German sources throughout the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has only very recently started to be analysed, and has yet to be truly conceptualised.9 The construction and notion of Heimat, with all its semantic derivations (Heimatschutz, Heimatkunst, Heimweh, Heimatbuch, Heimat- und Sachkunde, etc.) and political implications, still needs to be carefully studied in a broader comparative context. It is no wonder that the first academic reflections on Baltic German Heimat occurred in post-war Germany, since Baltic Germans had to redefine their social identity. The ideolo- gical manifest Wir Balten (published in the series Heimat im Herzen), edited by Max Hildebert Boehm and Hellmuth Weiss in 1951, exemplifies the conceptual and per- sonal continuities with pre-war national Heimat thinking.10 Thirty per cent of this edited volume consists of reprints of historical texts from throughout the centuries, mixed with academic reflections on Baltic history and culture. The book was con- ceptualised by Boehm, from 1933 to 1945 a professor of national theory, sociology, and nationalities’ and borderland studies in Jena, and one of the main leaders of Baltic German national socialist Heimat theory.11 One of the very productive authors rep- resented in the volume was Lutz Mackensen (1901–1992), who worked as a professor of German philology at the Herder Institute in and became a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1933. Continuing his profess- orship at the Reich University of Posen (Reichsuniversität Posen) in the Wartheland, he was responsible for the ideological Germanification of this new model region

8 A. Goodbody, Heimat’s Environmental Turn. 9 J. Kivimäe, ‘Aus der Heimat ins Vaterland’. Die Umsiedlung der Deutschbalten aus dem Blickwinkel estnischer nationaler Gruppierungen. – Nordost-Archiv 1995, Neue Folge, vol. 4 (2), pp. 501–521; K. Jõekalda, Architectural Monuments as a Resource: Reworking Heritage and Ideologies in Nazi-Occupied Estonia. – Art and Artistic Life during the Two World Wars. (Dailės istorijos studijos / Art History Studies 5.) Eds. G. Jankevičiūtė, L. Laučkaitė. : Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, 2012, pp. 273–299; L. Lukas, as a Source of Baltic-German Poetry. – Journal of Baltic Studies 2011, vol. 42 (4), pp. 491–510; L. Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli 1890–1918 [Baltic German literary field, 1890–1918]. (Collegium litterarum 20.) Tallinn: Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus; : Tartu Ülikooli kirjanduse ja rahvaluule osakond, 2006. 10 Wir Balten. Eds. M. H. Boehm, H. Weiss, K. Gehrmann. (Heimat im Herzen.) Salzburg, Munich: Akademischer Gemeinschaftsverlag, 1951 (reprint 1986). Continuities between pre- and post-war ideology in Baltic German construction of Heimat can also be found in Kurt Stavenhagen’s book and its reworked version: K. Stavenhagen, Heimat als Grundlage menschlicher Existenz. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939; K. Stavenhagen, Heimat als Lebenssinn. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948. 11 U. Prehn, ‘Volk’ und ‘Raum’ in zwei Nachkriegszeiten. Kontinuitäten und Wandlungen in der Arbeit des Volkstumsforschers Max Hildebert Boehm. – Das Erbe der Provinz. Heimatkultur und Geschichtspolitik nach 1945. Ed. H. Knoch. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001, pp. 50–72; U. Prehn, Max Hildebert Boehm. Radikales Ordnungsdenken vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in die Bundesrepublik. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 59 of pure Germanness in terms of folkloristics and language.12 In one of his contri- butions to the volume, he claims that Heimat was a key concept in Baltic German literature much earlier than it was in Germany. As early as 1861 it developed as a motif in Heimatdichtung (regional poetry) and in the Heimatroman, a special form of historical novel that stressed regional belonging: ‘Long before ‘Heimatkunst’ was known in Germany, ‘Heimatkunst’ was the leading form of literature in the coun- try of the [Baltenland].’13 Referring to the writings of Johanna Conradi (1814– 1892)14, Mackensen stressed the deep historical roots of Baltic German Heimat. The problem of Baltic German conception of Heimat was, in his interpretation, the di- lemma of ‘being home and abroad, a tension between persistence, preservation and disclaiming, and migration, conquering and disclaiming’.15 In this conceptualisa- tion of Heimat as an ancient struggle, there was no room for changes.16 Considering this ahistorical notion of Heimat, we need to take a closer look at how Heimat was constructed in the nineteenth century.

The birth of Baltic German Heimat in the second half of the nineteenth century In the ground-breaking work of Ea Jansen, the rise of a Baltic German Heimat as a regionalised space of belonging that united the Baltic provinces in a single space was traced back to the mid-nineteenth century, when for the first time a territory called Baltikum was invented in public discourse. Basing her research on newspa- pers and journals, she argued that a common Baltic German identity was created through and within public communication in such journals as Inländische Blätter (1813–1817), Das Inland (1836–1863) and Baltische Monatsschrift (1859–1934).17 Jansen was without a doubt right in drawing attention to the main change in the form of spatial belonging in the mid-nineteenth century: between the Russian ‘fatherland’ and the German ‘motherland’, Baltic Germans started to define and create a new regional space of belonging called Heimat. This process of building a regional home was, however, not at all linear and is worth studying more carefully. Implementing the old concept of ‘fathership’ as a Christian model of good reign that should be mirrored by every single kingdom or household18, the ‘fatherland’

12 H. Henne, Schlag nach bei Mackensen! Er führt Dich, wohin Du nicht willst... – Sprachreport 2010, vol. 26 (4), pp. 2–6, http://pub.ids-mannheim.de/laufend/sprachreport/pdf/sr10-4a.pdf (accessed 3 July 2014); B. Herrmann, Mackensen, Lutz. – Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Vol. 2, H–Q. Ed. C. König. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003, pp. 1136–1138. 13 L. Mackensen, Baltische Wortkunst. Heimat und Mutterland. – Wir Balten, p. 216; K. Rossbacher, Heimatkunstbewegung und Heimatroman. Zu einer Literatursoziologie der Jahrhundertwende. Stuttgart: Klett, 1975; L. Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli, pp. 244–267, 383–410. 14 J. Conradi, Lebensbilder aus der baltischen Heimat. Mitau: Lucas, 1861. 15 L. Mackensen, Baltische Wortkunst, pp. 217–219. 16 P. Blickle, Heimat, p. 157. 17 E. Jansen, ‘Baltlus’, baltisakslased, eestlased [‘Being Baltic’, Baltic-Germans, Estonians] [I]. – Tuna 2005, no. 2, p. 38. 18 U. Plath, Stille im ‘Haus’. Hausvater, Verwalter und transnationale Gesellung auf dem baltischen Gutshof zwischen 1750 und 1850. – Ehe – Haus – Familie. Soziale Institutionen im Wandel 1750–1850. Ed. I. Schmidt-Voges. Cologne: Böhlau, 2010, pp. 179–207. ulrike plath 60

was imagined in the early nineteenth century as a territory that included the re- gional space of belonging (Estonia, Livonia and ) within the political framework of the Russian Empire19. This definition of an integrative double-fa- ceted fatherland – on the one hand, stressing the history of the German forefath- ers in local Baltic history and, on the other, placing it clearly within the broader context of the Empire – continued until the middle of the nineteenth century and was propagated mainly in pedagogical books. The youth was to grow up within the imagined space of patriotic belonging to the imperial fatherland.20 How far Russia was accepted by the Baltic Germans as a ‘real’ fatherland de- pended mainly on who was the tsar and what his politics were. In the eighteenth century the empresses Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine II did not permit the development of a clear political concept of ideological fathership in Russia,21 and the tsars from to Alexander I were too weak to promote this concept. It was only after the victory of Alexander I over in the Patriotic War of 1812 that a new understanding of Russia as a fatherland was able to spread and gain popularity in the western borderlands of the Empire.22 Even in 1803, two years after the coronation of Alexander I, and about a century before the rise of Russian fatherland thinking, Superintendent Karl Gottlob Sonntag (1765–1827), one of the brightest figures of the Livonian enlightenment, stated in his - sermon (Landtagspredigt) that it was Germany that was the real fatherland of the Baltic Germans.23 The Russian fatherland that Alexander I represented after 1812 was heterogeneous, although united by the person of the tsar and by the borders of the . In Nikolay Karamzin’s account of the history of Russia, pub- lished in 1828, the fatherland was also claimed to have different spatial meanings for different ethnic groups living within the empire, who were held together by common love for and loyalty to the tsar.24 This concept of fatherland as a spatial belonging of ethnic groups had already appeared at the end of the eighteenth cen- tury. In the Baltic context, it was a way to name the ethnic territory of Estonians, Latvians and Livs – a territory that was split into different pieces and had no name or political importance.25 Estonians, like other ethnic groups in Russia, had historic- ally not been able to defend their ethnic Heimat, according to Garlieb Helwig Merkel

19 F. D. Lenz, Vaterländische Predigten über alle Sonn- und Festtags-Evangelien durchs ganze Jahr. Seinem Vaterlande zum häuslichen Gottesdienst und Erbauung gewidmet. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Dorpat: Grenzius, 1794, p. x. 20 [K. G. Sonntag], Das kleine Buch für kleine Kinder in Riga, welche lesen lernen. Riga: Müller, 1802 (Estonian edition in 1849); Livländische Schulblätter zum Besten einiger abgebrannten Schulen in den Vorstädten von Riga 1813, vol. 1, no. 32 (9 August). Ed. A. Albanus. Riga: Häcker, pp. 252–253; M. Thiel, Unterhaltungen aus der vaterländischen Geschichte für die Jugend. Riga: Müller, 1814 (new editions in 1828, 1838). 21 A. Kuxhausen, From the Womb to the Body Politic: Raising the Nation in Enlightenment Russia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013, p. 26. In her fascinating study, Anna Kuxhausen also shows how ambiguously gender stereotypes were constructed in eighteenth-century Russia. 22 U. Plath, Stille im ‘Haus’, pp. 179–207. 23 K. G. Sonntag, Livländische Landtagspredigten ganz und in Bruchstücken. Riga: Müller, 1821, p. 31. 24 N. M. Karamzin, A. W. Tappe, Geschichte Russlands. Nach Karamsin. Vol. 1, Vom Ursprunge des Staats, bis Dimitri Donskój, 1362. Dresden, Leipzig: Arnold, 1828, pp. 8, 132, 291. 25 G. H. Merkel, Die Letten vorzüglich in Liefland am Ende des philosophischen Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Völker- und Menschenkunde. Leipzig: Gräff, 1797, pp. 125, 137; G. H. Merkel, Die Vorzeit Lieflands. Ein Denkmal des Pfaffen- und Rittergeistes. Vol. 1. Berlin: Voss, 1807, p. 356; J. C. Petri, Neuestes Gemählde von Lief- und Ehstland, unter Katharina II. und Alexander I. in historischer, statistischer, politischer und merkantilischer Ansicht. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Dyk, 1809, p. 510. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 61

1. Covers of the second and third volume of Heimatstimmen (Eds. C. Hunnius, V. Wittrock. Reval: Kluge, 1906 and 1908). ulrike plath 62

2. Card game Baltisches Quartettspiel by Edgar von Pickardt, with pen drawings by Siegfried Bielenstein and annotations by Karl von Löwis of Menar. The cover depicts the ruins of the fourteenth-century in (Wesenberg), the playing cards feature those of the episcopal in Turaida (Treyden), (Kokenhusen), and (Hapsal). Baltisches Quartettspiel. Riga: Jonck und Poliewsky, 1925. Herder Institute, Marburg, DSHI 140 Balt 650. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 63

3. Cover of Wir harren des Tags! Lieder aus baltischer Not (Berlin: Ostland, 1915).

4. Wolf Willrich’s drawing to illustrate ’s slogan: ‘The Balts are losing a Heimat, but they are gaining their fatherland.’ Picture 8 in the series of propaganda posters, published by Kameradschaftsopfer der deutschen Jugend – Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland in November 1939. ulrike plath 64

(1769–1850).26 The ethnographic space was a weak one, and hard to protect from the political intentions of others. Baltic Germans had a similar need to define their Heimat, which was also split into different administrative pieces, although their Heimat was bigger, uniting the three provinces of Estonia, Livonia and Courland. After 1812 it was attractive to link the weak ethnic space of belonging to the victori- ous Russian fatherland. In this context, Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg (1806– 1868) declared around 1855, remembering a visit to St. Petersburg: Ich wandelte durch die Triumphbogen der kolossalen Stadt mit dem ganzen Stolz eines Provinzialen, der sich bei jedem Schritte sagt: Das alles gehört zu MEINEM Vaterlande.27 The positive notion of a Russian fatherland fractured with the first steps towards centralisation in the mid-nineteenth century and came into conflict with the model of Germany as the Baltic German ‘motherland’28, which replaced the emotionally ‘cold’ Russian fatherland step by step29 due to its warm motherliness. Because of the blood, language and culture relationship with Germany, Russia’s paternal role was altogether denied, degrading it to the position of a wet nurse: Versorgt uns Rußland als Amme mit leiblicher Speise, bleibt doch allezeit Deutschland die Mutter, die uns mit geistiger Nahrung erzieht.30 With the growing importance of German nationalism, Germany changed its gender and became a fatherland. Before the foundation of the in 1871, Germany was a fatherland only as a vague, deterritorialised cultural, or even spiritual, space. In this sense, the poem written by Jegór Julius von Sivers (1823–1879) in 1854 is pertinent:

Des Deutschen Heimathland

Von Eider, Rhein und Oder Hinauf zur Alpenwand Zerfiel in Schutt und Moder Das deutsche Vaterland.

Hinaus in alle Zonen Treibt Euch ein irrer Wahn, Wie Israel zu wohnen, Seid Ihr verflucht fortan.

[---]

Und was am eig’nen Herde Der Deutsche nimmer fand,

26 G. H. Merkel, Die Vorzeit Lieflands, p. 220. 27 A. von Sternberg, Erinnerungsblätter. Berlin: Schindler, 1855, pp. 41–42. 28 J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen oder Natur- und Völkerleben in Kur-, Liv- und Esthland. Vol. 1. Dresden, Leipzig: Arnold, 1841, p. iii; E. Osenbrüggen, Nordische Bilder. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1853; V. Hehn, Über den Charakter der Liv-, Est-, Kurländer. – Baltische Monatsschrift 1928, vol. 59, pp. 587–596. First print of Hehn’s essay was issued anonymously in Das Inland 1848, vol. 13 (1). 29 E. Osenbrüggen, Nordische Bilder, p. 79 30 J. von Sivers, Deutsche Dichter in Russland. Studien zur Literaturgeschichte. Berlin: Schroeder, 1855, p. xx. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 65

Beut nun die ganze Erde, Ein deutsches Vaterland.31

The weak Germany of the first half of the nineteenth century was a fatherland only as a model for a general humanistic cultural mission that could take place in every German household all over the world. After 1871 this changed and the boom in fatherland poems swept through the Baltics, being attractive mainly to the young. Leonhard Wächter’s (pseudonym Veit Weber, 1762–1837) poem Kennt ihr das Land, published in Tartu (Dorpat) in 1882 in a music book composed for girls is revealing:

Kennt ihr das Land, so wunderschön, In seiner Eichen grünem Kranz? Das Land, wo auf den sanften Höh’n Die Traube reift im Sonnenglanz? Das schöne Land ist uns bekannt, Es ist das deutsche Vaterland.32

Clearly, the German fatherland was able to gain popularity among the Baltic Germans only when the feeling of belonging to the Russian fatherland declined. This was the case around 1869, when selected writings by the Slavophile Yuri F. Samarin were published in German as Anklage gegen die Ostseeprovinzen Russlands.33 For Carl Schirren (1826–1910), this was a clear sign that there was no longer a place for the Baltic Germans within the concept of a Russian fatherland: ‘Russia does not want to be it, as long as we are what we are, and Germany can’t be it: so we don’t have one. We are helots.’34 Still it was only after 1914 – a time of revolution and war – that Russia finally lost its fatherland rights for the Baltic Germans, who felt that their political loyalty had been betrayed:

Des Balten Vaterland

Was ist des Balten Vaterland? Ist’s Rigas heller Ostseestrand? Ist’s wo der Lette Roggen mäht? Ist’s wo der Este fischen geht? O nein, o nein! Sein Vaterland muß größer sein!

Was ist des Balten Vaterland? Dem er gehört mit Herz und Hand?

31 J. von Sivers, Deutsche Dichter, pp. lxxix–lxxx. 32 Ein Duettenstrauß für Sopran und Alt. Ed. C. Fowelin. Dorpat: Laakmann, 1882, pp. 67–68. 33 Juri Samarins Anklage gegen die Ostseeprovinzen Russlands. Uebersetzung aus dem Russischen. Eingeleitet und commentirt von Julius Eckardt. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1869. 34 C. Schirren, Livländische Antwort an Herrn Juri Samarin. 3rd ed. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1869, p. 11. ulrike plath 66

Ist es das weite Russenreich, An Völkern und an Schätzen reich? O nein, o nein! Sein Vaterland muß besser sein!

Des Balten rechtes Vaterland Ist wohlbekannt und stammverwandt, O deutsche Reich, so hehr und groß, Komm, nimm uns auf in Deinem Schoß! Du mußt es sein, Du bist mein Vaterland allein.35

The shock of losing the old fatherland of Russia and the longing for Germany as a new place of belonging is one of the central motifs in several Baltic German poems written during (fig. 3):36

Wer in der Welt ist so arm als wir, So rechtlos und verlassen? Das eigene Reich zertritt uns schier In seinem blindwütigen Hassen. Gott sei’s geklagt, im Weltenbrand: Wir Balten haben kein Vaterland.

[---]

O, Deutschland komm’, wir fleh’n Dich an Wir warten freudige Mutes: Bau’ Du mit Deiner Eisenhand Uns Heimatlosen ein Vaterland.37

It is exactly this understanding of Baltic German Heimat as the historical-ethnic homeland, and of Germany as their real and true political fatherland that Alfred Rosenberg had in mind when he said, concerning the Baltic German resettlement in 1939 (fig. 4): ‘The Balts [Baltic Germans – U.P.] are losing a Heimat, but they are gain- ing their fatherland.’38 This slogan had a direct impact on the way the Umsiedlung was remembered in personal memoirs.39

35 Wir harren des Tags! Lieder aus baltischer Not. (Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland.) Berlin: Ostland, 1915, p. 22. The poem is an adaption of Ernst Moritz Arndt’s poem Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland from 1837. 36 W. von Samson-Himmelstjerna, Heimatlieder und Gelegenheits-Gedichte eines Balten. Reval: Kluge & Ströhm; Leipzig: Hartmann, 1918, pp. 75–76; Wir harren des Tags!, pp. 5, 26, 31–39. 37 Wir harren des Tags!, pp. 20–21. 38 A. Rosenberg, Tradition und Gegenwart. Reden und Aufsätze 1936–1940. Vol. 4, Blut und Ehre. 3rd ed. Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, F. Eher, 1941, p. 434. 39 Es schien so, dass wir endlich das heissersehntes Vaterland erhalten sollten, wir die wir bisher nur eine Heimat gehabt hatten. (A. Burchard, ‘...alle deine Wunder’. Der letzte deutsche Probst in Riga erinnert sich (1872–1955). Lüneburg: Carl Schirren Gesellschaft, 2009, p. 381.) Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 67

The clashing and shifting images of Russian and German fatherlands were problematic primarily for the Baltic German youth. This is revealed in the memoirs of the librarian Emil Alexander Lorenz Anders (1806–1887) from the first half of the nineteenth century:

Ich lernte russisch lesen und schreiben, schon bevor ich in die Schule kam, von meinem Onkel Jacob. Dazu war ich gern bereit, konnte es meinem guten Onkel aber doch nicht recht machen, da ich mir die Freiheit nahm, zwischen Nationalrussen und russischen Untertanen deutscher Nationalität zu entscheiden, wobei ich mich auf die Definition des Begriffs ‘Vaterland’ stützte, die mit Karamsins Worten in Tappes russischem Schulbuch gegeben war. Wider meinen eigenen Willen kränkte ich dadurch meinen guten Onkel, der mich mit Tränen in den Augen als einen vaterlandslosen Menschen bedauerte. Seit ich Gedichte von Schiller und Goethe las, fühlte ich mich so sehr als Deutschen, daß ich nicht begreifen konnte, wie mein Vater im Stande war, so kosmopolitisch zu denken; erst später ging mir ein Verständnis dafür auf.40

The split between Russia and Germany and the need for a personal space of re- gional belonging or Heimat was even more clearly expressed by Theodor Hermann Pantenius (1843–1915), one of the leading masters of Baltic Heimaterzählung,41 con- cerning his childhood in the 1840s:

Wir Balten führten damals ein ganz merkwürdiges Doppelleben, denn die Welt, in der wir tatsächlich unser Leben verbrachten, war eine ganz andere als die, in die uns unsere Lehrbücher und die von uns gelesenen Romane führten. Diese wie jene kamen aus Deutschland und waren für in Deutschland lebende Kinder oder Erwachsene bestimmt. Wir erhielten weder Unterricht in der Heimatkunde noch in der Geschichte der Heimat und wurden von Klein auf mit Begriffen gefüttert, für die uns jede Anschauung fehlte.42

To fill this gap created by the use of schoolbooks written for German children in Germany that described foreign natural and cultural environments, Heimatkunde (local history and geography) was introduced as a school subject in the late 1860s in the Baltic provinces. In 1869 the first book titled Heimathskunde was published by Gustav Blumberg (1834–1892), the director of the German gymnasium in Tartu and one of the central figures in the Estonian national movement.43 The book served as an example for others that followed, both in German44 and Estonian (several

40 Aus den Erinnerungen des Bibliothekars Emil Anders. (1812–1840) [1892]. – Altlivländische Erinnerungen. Ed. F. Bienemann. Reval: Kluge, 1911, p. 95. 41 A. Behrsing, Zwei Meister der Heimaterzählung. 1. Theodor Hermann Pantenius. 2. Eduard von Keyserling. Reval, 1914, pp. 5–12. 42 T. H. Pantenius, Aus meinen Jugendjahren. Leipzig: Voigtländer, 1907, p. 117. 43 G. Blumberg, Heimathskunde. Stofflich begrenzt und methodisch bearbeitet. Dorpat: Gläser, 1869. 44 H. von Winkler, Heimatkunde Estlands. Reval: Hoffmann, 1922; E. Girgensohn et al., Heimatkunde Estlands. Reval: Hoffmann, 1923 ulrike plath 68

Estonian-language editions of it were published45), and the term Heimatkunde was replaced by Landeskunde (applied geography) in the 1920s46. A series of volumes was edited also on Baltic German literature to define the very location of Heimat emotionally.47 Nevertheless, by the beginning of the twentieth century, knowledge about the local history and culture was still quite meagre, as schoolbooks focused only on some of the main in the Baltics. Even concerning the capital of Estonia, Tallinn (Reval), there was no sufficient reading material for the young,48 and the notion of Heimat was not defined homogeneously. For the Baltic Germans it could mean either a local place, a certain , all three Baltic provinces, or the whole empire. In a schoolbook of the German military school in St. Petersburg, published in 1912,49 Heimat clearly stood for the Russian Empire. The same held true for the weekly journal Heimats-Glocken published in Tartu from 1906 to 1915 for all Germans living in the Russian Empire. The context of the empire was also import- ant within the Baltic provinces. The above-mentioned journal Das Inland, despite being one of the triggers of Baltic German regional identity according to Ea Jansen, positioned itself within the framework of the Russian fatherland, being both patri- otic and local.50 At a time when the Russian pressure on Baltic German culture was growing, Harry Jannsen (1851–1913) edited the newspaper Die Heimath (from 1882 to 1885), a newspaper that changed from a pro-Russian organ that propagated the de- velopment of a regional Heimat within the framework of the Russian fatherland to a newspaper that supported a Heimat without Russia. By the beginning of the twen- tieth century the Baltic German Heimat as a new regional space, including not only the three provinces, but also Estonians and Latvians, was propagated in several volumes, for example Heimatstimmen (1904–1912; fig. 1) and Leopold von Schroeder’s Baltische Heimat-, Trutz- und Trostlieder.51 This is made clear also in Christoph von Mickwitz’s (1850–1924) poem Heimatlied, which was set to music several times52 and became the hymn of Baltic German identity:

O Heimatland, auf der Begeist’rung Schwingen, Schwebt unser Lied empor zu deiner Ehr’! Wie Sturmesrauschen soll es brausend klingen, Wie Glockenklang, so rein, so voll und hehr! Von Kurlands wald’gen Gauen

45 G. Blumberg, Juhataja kodu- ja isamaa tundmisele. Lastele õpetuseks [Guide to knowing Heimat and fatherland: For teaching children]. Tartu: Laakmann, 1871 (reprinted in 1874, 1878, 1881, 1885, 1891, 1907). 46 M. Haltenberger, Landeskunde von Eesti. (Publicationes Instituti Universitas Dorpatensis Geographici 6–10.) Tartu, 1926. 47 See L. Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli. 48 S. Dehio, Reval einst und jetzt. Ein Heimatbuch. Reval: Kluge, 1910, Vorwort. 49 Die Heimat. Deutsches Lesebuch für die mittleren und oberen Klassen der russischen Mittelschulen, insbesondere der Militär-Lehranstalten. Ed. P. Ney. St. Petersburg, Kiew, 1912. 50 Einleitendes Vorwort über den Zweck und Plan dieser Zeitschrift. – Das Inland 1836, vol. 1 (1), cols. 3–14. 51 Heimatstimmen. Ein baltisches Jahrbuch. 5 vols. (Vol. 4–5: Heimatstimmen. Ein baltisches Hausbuch.) Eds. C. Hunnius, V. Wittrock. Reval: Kluge; Leipzig: Hartmann, 1904–1912; L. von Schroeder, Baltische Heimat-, Trutz- und Trostlieder. Munich: Lehmann, 1906. See L. Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli, pp. 65–68, 119. 52 Heimatlied. Zur Centenarfeier der alma mater Dorpatensis (12. Dezember 1902) für 1 Singstimme oder allgemeinen Chor und Pianoforte. Reval: Locher Musikalienhandlung, 1902; Heimatlied. Für Männerchor a capella. Riga: Neldner; Unsere Heimat. Baltische Lieder. Riga: Jonck und Poliewsky, 1906. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 69

Durch Livlands Bergesauen, Hell tönt’s im Dreiklang bis zu Estlands Stand, Sei uns gegrüßt, o altes Heimatland!53

Heimat was a part of the unsuccessful Baltic German nation-building and – sim- ilar to the Estonian and Latvian nation-building processes – it functioned as a way to define the personal space between dominant Germany and Russia. The imagined Heimat, however, was far from homogeneous. It had to unite Baltic German culture, which varied in different parts of Estonia, Livonia and Courland. It also had to bring together different generations and alternating experiences of migration. German newcomers in the Baltic provinces, for example, had their own (slowly changing) understanding of Heimat and fatherland, at least in the first years of their stay in the Baltic provinces54, and the writings of Baltic German authors, who included mi- gration seriously in their understanding of Baltic German identity, reflected that55. When did the Baltics become Heimat for the German migrants? When did Germans living in the Baltics become Baltic Germans? Comparing the Baltic German and Estonian fatherlands, the general picture be- comes even more complicated. Since the age of enlightenment, the fatherland had often signified the ethnographic Heimat. On the one hand, this kind of Heimat was inclusive, as it created a space of belonging for the rising nations but, on the other, it was disintegrative, because it was not open to other nations and ethnic groups. The ‘fatherland dances’ signified ethnographic national dances56, while the ‘father­ land museum’ as a national museum (Heimatkundemuseum) combined all three provinces and their different nations57. The Estonian fatherland, however, as a new space of ethnographic or national borders, had been imagined at least since 1881, but became a reality only in 1918. In 1904, eleven years before the above-cited poem Des Balten Vaterland, this was written concerning Estonia:

Ehstonia muß größer sein!

Was ist des Ehsten Vaterland? Ist’s HARRIENS schöner Ostseestrand? Ist’s wo NAROWAS Donner hallt? Ist’s TUDOLINNS urewiger Wald? O nein! O nein! Ehstonia muß größer sein!

53 Heimatbuch für die baltische Jugend. Vol. 2. Eds. L. Goertz, A. Brosse. Riga: Löffler, 1912, p. 1. See also Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli, p. 108. 54 C. Böhm, Lebenswege eines schwäbischen Pädagogen. Tagebuchblätter aus dem Nachlaß. Reval: Kluge, 1893, pp. 49, 66. 55 [J. W. Krause], Bilder aus Altlivland. Aus den Aufzeichnungen eines livländischen Hofmeisters vom Ende des vorigen Jahrhunderts [I]. – Baltische Monatsschrift 1900, vol. 50, pp. 249–250; J. Eckhardt, Zur Charakteristik der Balten. Eine Analyse aus dem Jahre 1863. Hamburg-Rahlstedt: Hofmann, 1962, p. 2. 56 Provinzialblatt für Kur-, Liv- und Esthland 8 February 1824, no. 9, p. 38. 57 H. E. Hartmann, Das Vaterländische Museum zu Dorpat oder die Sammlung der gelehrten estnischen Gesellschaft und des Central-Museums vaterländischer Alterthümer der Kaiserlichen Universität zu Dorpat. – Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft. Vol. 6 (3/4). Dorpat, 1871, pp. v–vi. ulrike plath 70

[---]

Das ist des Ehsten Vaterland: Vom PEIPUS bis zum LIVENstrand; Wo ÖSEL weit vom Meer umwebt, Wo PERNAU und FELLIN sich hebt; Das soll es sein! Das ganze Ehstland soll es sein!58

As in the German discourse of the late nineteenth century, the concept of the Estonian fatherland was projected into history, as Carl Robert Jakobson (1841–1882) expressed it allusively in his Kolm isamaa kõnet (Three fatherland speeches) in 1870.59 Here he also cited ’s poem Mõtted Toomemäel (Thoughts on Toome Hill, 1867) where the historical loss of human rights and fatherland under the German rule was interpreted as the expulsion from paradise.60 Jakobson also propagated this understanding of the Estonian national father- land (isamaa) in his extremely popular Reading Book for Schools, issued in around twenty editions between 1867 and 1907, thus becoming one of the foundations of the Estonian national movement.61

Heimat as taskscape

In 1934 Bruno Brehm (pseud. Bruno Clemens, 1892–1974), a well-known writer of his time, published Heimat ist Arbeit. In its introduction, Brehm, born in Ljubljana (Laibach), explains that the following aspects of German colonists’ everyday lives on the eastern front of Russia should be understood as an active process of con- structing the German Heimat in the East: physically hard and sweaty work of farm- ing, getting to know the very place one lives in, continuing the old forms of handi- crafts, speaking a certain dialect and maintaining it.62 Heimat in this sense was not a place constructed and politicised from above, but it was created in everyday work by every single person of German birth. Although coming out of the Nazi ideology of the 1930s, this approach opens up a way to include different forms of active work of owning Heimat, and seems therefore to be helpful in understanding the different and sometimes even clashing forms of Heimat. It empowers actors and opens up a wide variety of possible ways to ‘do Heimat’ beyond writing it, including the neg- ativistic view of forgetting, forsaking and losing Heimat. It is integrative, including individual approaches that gain importance especially in unclear and unstable con- ditions, where the common notion of a space is changing or has been newly con- structed. Contemporary social theory and migrant studies can add to this concept

58 G. J. Schultz-Bertram, Baltische Skizzen. 4th ed. Reval: Kluge, 1904, pp. 115–116. 59 C. R. Jakobson, Kolm isamaa kõnet [Three fatherland speeches]. St. Petersburg, 1870, p. 5. 60 C. R. Jakobson, Kolm isamaa kõnet, p. 19. 61 C. R. Jakobson, Kooli lugemise raamat [Reading book for schools]. 3 vols. Tartu: Laakmann, 1867, 1875, 1876. 62 B. Brehm, Heimat ist Arbeit. Ein Hausbuch deutscher Geschichte. Karlsbad-Drahowitz: Kraft, 1934, pp. 11–12. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 71 the necessity of distinguishing between ‘ways of being (and doing)’ and ‘ways of belonging’, a differentiation which makes it possible to include strategies of doing something or being somewhere (as a member of a group) without giving import- ance to it, without belonging.63 Being undecided between different forms of belong- ing or not giving particular importance to them has to be considered seriously in research on Heimat.64 However, there still exists a Heimat as an imagined space one is willing to work for – a ‘taskspace’, defined by Tim Ingold as ‘an array of related activities’.65 Heimat in this sense is more than an uncertain emotion regarding a place: it provokes concrete action. One can demarcate the political border of Heimat by working, fighting, killing or even dying for it. One can change the natural en- vironment by planting a garden in order to create a private space of belonging that includes flowers, trees, vegetables and animals, or by making a profit from national resources through agriculture, manufacturing, industry, mining or forestry. The space of belonging can also be changed by building houses and , infrastruc- ture, monuments and memorials. Those changes in the political, rural or urban landscape can, in retrospect, become the most important elements of Heimat, but not all of them, obviously, achieve this importance. One can build a house and still not feel ‘at home’ in it, or construct a monument that nobody accepts. Heimat as a task might be typical for individuals and communities outside their original home- land in migration, exile and colonial situations. It has been of major importance for Baltic German representation, masterly described by the greatest Baltic German novelist, Eduard von Keyserling (1855–1918), who called it Pflichtenkreis (‘task circle’) or Wirkungskreis (‘sphere of influence’). In his conception, growing out of the late nineteenth century, the older generation of Baltic was inescapably bound in duty to Heimat66 – an understanding that thoroughly changed at the be- ginning of the twentieth century. Let us now try to analyse four different ways in which Heimat as a taskspace was constructed in the nineteenth century.

Teaching Heimat

One way to interpret Heimat is seeing it as a knowledge system that can be taught, learned and forgotten. Teaching Heimat rose in the Baltics as an important mo- tif in the age of enlightenment, in the course of the third wave of migration. A most prominent example is August Wilhelm Hupel’s (1737–1819) Topographische Nachrichten (1774–1789), written by a migrant and used as the first introduction to

63 P. Levitt, N. Glick Schiller, Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society. – International Migration Review 2013, vol. 38 (3), pp. 1002–1039. 64 T. Zahra, Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis. – Slavic Review 2010, vol. 69 (1), pp. 93–119. 65 T. Ingold, The Temporality of the Landscape. – World Archaeology 1993, vol. 25 (2), pp. 152–174. 66 E. von Keyserling. Abendliche Häuser [1914]. – E. von Keyserling, Gesammelte Erzählungen. Vol. 4. Berlin: Fischer, 1922, pp. 21, 28; E. von Keyserling, Feiertagskinder. Berlin: Fischer, 1919, p. 12. In the same way argues also E. von Dellingshausen, Im Dienste der Heimat! Erinnerungen. Stuttgart: Ausland und Heimat, 1930, p. 29. ulrike plath 72

the Baltic provinces by other migrants.67 But this is no exception: most of the books and the first periodicals in the age of enlightenment were published either to teach the local population international standards of culture, or to teach the outsiders the local habits and regional particularities. While Volksaufklärung dealt with the first,68 the necessity of teaching German migrants about the local conditions, about Baltic society and languages, flora and fauna, political and administrative structures were special features of Baltic enlightenment within the context of migration. Together with the growing importance assigned to the young beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, children’s books and schoolbooks published for Baltic German youth gained importance.69 Children had to be taught by walking with them in growing circles around their homes, explaining to them the nature, geography and history of the place in the context of the wider political structure. Although the main elements of teaching Heimat had already been elaborated around 1800, it took until the second half of the nineteenth century to develop Heimatkunde, combining geography, history, biology, literature, oral tradition and archaeology into a general transnational subject of education.70 Teaching and learning Heimat in most cases occurred prior to other forms of owning Heimat (such as walking and depicting Heimat), as the knowledge of the migrants about the new environment had been mostly pre-structured by information they had read or heard about earlier. In this phase of learning about the new place, migrants also made a commitment to stay and to accept the new surroundings as Heimat, or to find other ways of being and belonging.

Walking Heimat

In this form of action, the spatial dimension of Heimat was measured and owned by walking, riding or visiting it. As mentioned above, walking had been propagated as early as the German late enlightenment as a new method in pedagogy that linked abstract knowledge to concrete spaces and places; in around 1800 the reference framework of gaining knowledge was the notion of the fatherland.71 Walking Heimat as a way of creating national spatial belonging among the bourgeoisie gained atten-

67 U. Plath, Esten und Deutsche in den baltischen Provinzen Russlands: Fremdheitskonstruktionen, Lebenswelten, Kolonialphantasien 1750–1850. (Veröffentlichungen des Nordost-Instituts 11.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011, pp. 122–123. 68 T. Taterka, Aufgeklärte Volksaufklärung. Aufklärung und Volksaufklärung im Baltikum oder Garlieb Merkel und die Entstehung des deutsch-lettischen Lesebuchs Das Goldmacherdorf. – Aufklärer im Baltikum. Europäischer Kontext und regionale Besonderheiten. Ed. U. Kronauer. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011, pp. 17–56. 69 [K. G. Sonntag], Das kleine Buch...; M. Thiel, Unterhaltungen aus der vaterländischen Geschichte...; G. Blumberg, Heimathskunde; U. Plath, Baltisaksa laste- ja noorsookirjandusest kuni 1840. aastateni [On Baltic German children’s and adolescent literature until the 1840s]. – Keel ja Kirjandus 2011, no. 8/9, pp. 698–715. 70 Heimatstimmen. Vol. 1; Heimatbuch für die baltische Jugend. 2 vols. Eds. L. Goertz, A. Brosse. Riga: Löffler, 1909, 1912; W. Sahm, Heimatkunde von Kurland. Breslau: Hirt, 1917; H. Mitzlaff, Heimatkunde und Sachunterricht. Historische und systematische Studien zur Entwicklung des Sachunterrichts – zugleich eine kritische Entwicklungsgeschichte des Heimatideals im deutschen Sprachraum. 3 vols. Dissertation, Universität Dortmund, 1985. 71 C. C. André, J. M. Bechstein, Gemeinnützige Spaziergänge auf alle Tage im Jahr für Eltern, Hofmeister, Jugendlehrer und Erzieher. Zur Beförderung der anschauenden Erkenntnisse besonders aus dem Gebiete der Natur und Gewerbe der Haus- und Landwirthschaft. Vol. 1. Braunschweig: Schulbuchhandlung, 1790, p. lv. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 73 tion at the beginning of the nineteenth century all over Europe through roman- ticism and the walks of Johann Gottfried Seume (1763–1810)72, who emancipated walking from teaching aims and made it a new way of understanding and sensing the environment73. While it was migrant Germans who started to write about their trips throughout the Baltic provinces in the end of the eighteenth century, by the beginning of the nineteenth century members of the started to introduce ‘walking fatherland’ in the form of romantic trips, memorialising and creating Heimat for their compatriots.74 Pedagogical books for young children and adolescents were written by both Baltic Germans and German newcomers.75 Initially, walking Heimat might have meant just a mental journey but, with the introduction of Heimatkunde in the 1860s, walking as a pedagogical technique was introduced step by step as a practical means of education in schools.76 In 1904 the first walking tour throughout the Baltic Heimat was organised by Viktor Wittrock (1869–1944) and five other teachers for twenty-two pupils. Their aim was clear:

Die HEIMAT sollte die Jugend, und – zu eigner Beschämung sei’s gestanden – sollte ein Teil ihrer Führer kennen lernen. Oder ist es etwa nicht beschämend, daß viele, ja vielleicht die meisten von uns Balten das Ausland besser kennen als die eigne Heimat?77

The trip throughout Livonia went from Tartu to Võru (Werro), Rõuge (Rauge), Alūksne (Marienburg), Opekalns (Oppekaln), Staburadze (Stabburags) and back to Tartu. The group were invited to stay in different manors, pastorates and private quarters of salesmen, and were instructed by their hosts in local history and cul- ture. The trip included the most interesting nearby natural sites, such as the hills of Suur Munamägi and Gaiziņkalns (Gaising), as well as impressive ruins, and was ac- companied by the singing and reciting of patriotic songs and poems.78 In 1916 the or- ganisation of walking Heimat tours was taken over by the Wandervogel-movement.79 Besides walking Heimat, visiting Heimat was important for Baltic Germans throughout history. It involved returning to the places of one’s childhood, and visit- ing relatives or cultural places of national importance. This form of Heimat tourism could mean different things, depending on the actual definition of Heimat: going back to Germany, visiting certain places within the Baltic provinces, or within the

72 J. G. Seume, Mein Sommer 1805. Eine Reise ins Baltikum, nach Russland, Finnland und Schweden. Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig: Insel, 2002. 73 U. Plath, Esten und Deutsche..., pp. 90–91. 74 [E. A. I. Truhart], Der Reisegefährte auf den Wanderungen in die reizenden Gegenden Lieflands. Erste Wanderung, von Riga aus längs dem Ufer der Aa bis Wenden. Riga: Müller, 1804; U. von Schlippenbach, Malerische Wanderungen durch Kurland. Riga, Leipzig: Hartmann, 1809; K. J. A. von , Umrisse aus meinem Skizzenbuche. Vol. 1. Hanover: Hahn, 1827. 75 [K. G. Sonntag], Das kleine Buch...; M. Thiel, Unterhaltungen aus der vaterländischen Geschichte... 76 G. Blumberg, Heimathskunde, pp. 8–9. 77 V. Wittrock, Eine Fußwanderung mit Schülern durch Livland. Tagebuchblätter. – Heimatstimmen. Vol. 1, p. 57. 78 V. Wittrock, Eine Fußwanderung..., p. 91. 79 W. Hoheisel, Wandervogel und Jugendbewegung im Baltikum 1916–1934. Frankfurt am Main: Dipa, 1985; S. Gramm, ‘Vielleicht kriege ich mit der Zeit doch eine Baltenkolonie in Hartenstein zusammen’. Von deutschbaltischen Wandervögeln und ihrem Weg nach Sachsen (1916–1927). – Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtum 2012, vol. 59, pp. 32–64. ulrike plath 74

Russian Empire. Visiting Heimat was a form of giving social networks (relatives, friends and work) a spatial dimension and creating personal mental maps.

Depicting Heimat

Depicting certain motifs of Heimat in art, writing or songs, or speaking about it in the oral tradition, increased significantly during the romantic period, and it is hard to decide which came first: walking through places, painting them or talking about them in local legends. Nevertheless, it is clear that all of these phenomena gained great importance at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- teenth century, integrating Estonian and Latvian oral heritage into a transnational Baltic (German) space of belonging.80 In romantic literature, important places were named, combining picturesque scenes of ruins, local legends, factories, interest- ing buildings and parks, beautiful nature sites and local people together with their habits. This process of codifying the most important places within the concept of Heimat was not easy. One of the main problems was how to deal with local ruins. Without a doubt, ruins were an essential part of the romanticist programme and were an important element in the German romantic landscape.81 Due to the spe- cial history of crusades in the Baltics, feelings about ruins were mixed among the German migrants. Karl Feyerabend (ca. 1775–1829), a German traveller who walked through Livonia and Estonia around 1792, distinguished between the picturesque Estonian and Latvian archaeological sites from the time before the crusades as Vormauern der Nationalfreiheit, and the horrible ruins of the German crusaders82:

Welcher Menschenfreund geht nicht mit verachtendem Blicke über diese Ruinen hin? Unter ihnen modern die Henker der Menschlichkeit.... Schaudernd geht der Landmann dieser Stätte vorüber, und spricht: ‘die hier schlafen, waren die ersten Verderber unsers Vaterlandes, und brachten uns ein Elend, das nie aufhört!’ – So sind sie noch nach Jahrhunderten verflucht.83

This negative attitude towards the early history of Livonia occurred not only among the critical German literati, but also among the Baltic German nobility. In 1827 Karl Jakob Alexander von Rennenkampff (1783–1854) stated that the ruins of Livonia fell short of being beautiful because nature did not cover them mildly and so they did not inspire positive reflection on history:

80 L. Lukas, Estonian Folklore as a Source of Baltic-German Poetry, pp. 491–510. 81 A. Siegmund, Die romantische Ruine im Landschaftsgarten. Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis der Romantik zu Barock und Klassik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. 82 C. B. Feyerabend, Kosmopolitische Wanderungen durch Preußen, Liefland, Kurland, Litthauen, Vollhynien, Podolien, Gallizien und Schlesien in den Jahren 1795 bis 1797. In Briefen an einen Freund. Vol. 1. Germanien [Danzig], 1798, p. 606. 83 C. B. Feyerabend, Kosmopolitische Wanderungen..., p. 607. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 75

Wie zurückschreckend ist ... jede Erinnerung an die Vorzeit Lieflands! [---] Schaudern wendet sich das Gefühl von diesen blutigen Blättern im Buche des Schicksals ab; schaudernd wenden wir den Blick von der zertrümmerten Zwingburg unserer Väter ab.84

With the end of , this negative image of the ruins changed and they were incorporated into the normal canon of important places in Heimat. In the Heimatkunde von Kurland, published in 1917, for example, twenty-four photos were used to illustrate the special regional features of Courland as ‘pleasant additions’:85 five of them depict ruins, five show different towns in Courland, four are of castles, three of archaeological sites, and another three of harbours and fishing customs. Only two are dedicated to nature and another two to rural architecture. Although much was said about the beauty of Baltic nature in the genre of Heimatbuch,86 this was not often revealed in the photographs, which were dedicated mainly to cre- ating a particular Baltic German Heimat. In the 1951 volume Wir Balten, there is an appendix titled Die Heimat im Bilde (Homeland in pictures), revealing the same tendency. Of twenty-four black-and-white photos, only three depict Baltic nature, whereas seventeen depict buildings of great importance, accompanied by two pho- tos of ruins, a pastorate and a manor-like palace.87 In the first half of the twentieth century, photography very clearly stressed the power of German culture in cities, whereas the countryside, with its nature, manors and ruins, was no longer con- sidered an important part of Baltic German culture.

Suffering and playing Heimat

Heimat often gained importance with spatial and temporal distance, and can be seen in these situations as Heimweh (‘homesickness’), a notion of physical illness constructed hand in hand with the new notion of Heimat.88 Although it has never quite been part of Baltic German self-perception, some traces of Heimweh occur in Baltic German literature. Theodor von Bernhardi (1802–1885) felt homesick for Germany after moving to the Baltic provinces: he remained a foreigner, communic- ating only with his neighbour, the introverted sailor Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770–1846), who never really adjusted to his homeland. Staying a foreigner, as if in exile in one’s own Heimat, might be one of the hardest forms of homesickness, turning the cosy homeland into an ‘exile we had to bare’.89 Wilhelm von Kügelgen (1802–1867) wrote about his Estonian maidservant Leno, who felt homesick when she was with the family in Germany. As an explanation, Kügelgen added that this

84 K. J. A. von Rennenkampff, Umrisse aus meinem Skizzenbuche. Hanover: Hahn, 1827, pp. 48–49. 85 W. Sahm, Heimatkunde von Kurland, Vorwort. 86 About the fascinating genre of Heimbatücher see J. Faehndrich, Eine endliche Geschichte. 87 Wir Balten, pp. i–xxiv. 88 S. Bunke, Heimweh. Studien zur Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte einer tödlichen Krankheit. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2009. 89 T. von Bernhardi, Aus dem Leben Theodor von Bernhardis. Vol. 1, Jugenderinnerungen. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1893, pp. 145–157, 187. ulrike plath 76

illness was typical of Swiss, Estonian and Finnish national characters, but not at all a part of German culture, which per se was said to be highly adaptable.90 Although not in this pathogenic form, there are still traces of holding on to the ‘Old Heimat’ in Baltic German migrant culture outside the Baltic provinces. Instances of migrating back to Germany constantly took place during the first three phases. In the eighteenth century we know of Baltic German students in Germany presenting a new form of Baltic regional identity by speaking the local languages.91 Constructing Baltic German Heimat always involved decisions about how to deal with the local languages spoken in the Baltic provinces – Latvian, Estonian, Russian and Swedish – and how to maintain one’s own language. Learning local languages was the first step to owning Baltic Heimat linguistically and in terms of communica- tion. The use of Estonian and Latvian in churches, in teaching, poetry and everyday conversation grew significantly in the seventeenth century. To know local idioms also meant to have more direct possibilities of teaching, but this can also be ex- plained as a special form of dominant owning of Heimat. At the same time, local Baltic German idioms included a considerable number of Estonian and Latvian words, which definitely was a way of becoming native,92 and speaking Estonian or Latvian was common, especially for Baltic Germans living in Germany, who were the focus of identity building throughout the early modern and modern times. Victor Hehn (1813–1890) noted how important they were by the end of the nine- teenth century: Es scheint etwas sonderbar, gereicht aber Livland meines Bedenkens zu Ehren, daß ich in Deutschland ein livländischer Patriot werde.93 As the Estonian liter- ary scholar Liina Lukas has pointed out, ‘suffering Heimat’ has been a constant ele- ment in the works of Baltic Germans living abroad since the end of the nineteenth century.94 In this context Heimweh was even felt as a deadly disease: Ich sterbe ohne Heimatluft / Das Heimweh bringt mich in die Gruft!95 In Baltic German communities after 1945, Latvian and and songs were important cornerstones of belonging to ‘Old Heimat’. Speaking or singing in Estonian, Latvian or sometimes even Russian was a common aspect of Baltic ex- ile communities. Playing Heimat was also important as it had a clear transnational dimension grounded in childhood, as Baltic Germans had grown up with Estonians and Latvians, speaking their languages, singing their songs and playing common games.96 Additionally, there existed specific fatherland games. Lisa von Engelhardt (1842–1926) remembered her mother telling her how she had played with her broth- ers, defending their ‘fatherland’, which was the area around the corner of the oven

90 W. von Kügelgen, Jugenderinnerungen eines alten Mannes. 2nd ed. Berlin: Hertz, 1870, pp. 25–27. 91 R. Bender, Oskar Masing und die Geschichte des Deutschbaltischen Wörterbuchs. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2009; R. Bender, Die Deutschbalten und das baltische Deutsch anno 2006. – Germanistik als Kulturvermittler. Vergleichende Studien. Eds. T. Loogus, R. Liimets. (Humaniora: Germanistica 3.) Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2006, pp. 21–40. 92 U. Plath, Esten und Deutsche..., pp. 356–357. 93 Briefe aus dem Nachlasse Victor Hehns. Briefe vom Vater Victor Hehns, Gustav Hehn, an seine Mutter. – Baltische Monatsschrift 1893, vol. 40, p. 329. 94 L. Lukas, Baltisaksa kirjandusväli, pp. 122–143, 167–168, 177–186. 95 O. von Schilling, Lieder eines Kurländers (Tandaradei). Riga: Jonck und Poliewsky, 1907, p. 60. 96 U. Plath, Esten und Deutsche..., pp. 182–185. Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging 77

– obviously one of the games children played after the Napoleonic war of 1812.97 Playing Heimat was also popular among Baltic Germans who left for Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Soon after the revolution of 1905, the first ‘Baltic travel game’ was created for the Baltic German youth, so that they could learn about their Heimat by moving through it, at least in a game. In 1925 the first Baltic German quartet game (fig. 2) was created by Edgar von Pickardt (1876–1973), with historical information by Karl von Löwis of Menar (1855–1930) and pen drawings by Siegfried Bielenstein (1869–1949).98 In 1947 Otto Pirang composed another hand- painted ‘Baltic Heimat quartet’; it was re-issued in 1951/1952 and 1996.99

Conclusion: Fragmented Heimat

The notion of Heimat in the Baltics is a complicated one that needs to be approached by using a broad variety of different sources in order to avoid misinterpretations. By doing this, the paper has reached different conclusions than those of Armin von Ungern-Sternberg, who claimed that Baltic German literature was a Heimatliteratur ohne Heimat.100 In my view, Baltic German Heimat was a constant – and constantly changing – part of the Baltic German culture in the long nineteenth century. It was a politicised space constructed in the second part of the nineteenth century to give a name to – and to express positive emotions towards – belonging in the split ethnic and historical space where Baltic Germans lived. It sometimes balanced the grow- ing conflicts between the concepts of Russian and German fatherlands – as well as between Estonian, Latvian and Baltic German national and spatial belonging – but often deepened the conflicts. The main structure of politicised and nationalised Heimat constructed from above has been shown in this paper to be just one form of Heimat. I believe that Heimat was additionally constructed by knowledge trans- fer, by owning a space through teaching, walking, depicting, suffering and playing Heimat. These categories that include private ways of being and belonging are pre- liminary, and can be replaced and expanded as needed. They are, whatever final form they take, necessary to make Heimat a flexible and useful concept to account for the different forms of regional identity building, which experienced multiple changes during the examined time frame. How national or transnational was the Baltic German notion of Baltic Heimat? Looking at it from the political side, there was mostly no space for transnational

97 L. von Engelhardt, Aus Mutters Kindheit. Niesky: Hoberg, 1883, p. 18. 98 Baltisches Quartettspiel. Mit historischen Notizen von K. v. Löwis of Menar und Zeichnungen von S. Bielen-­ stein. Der baltischen Jugend gewidmet von Dr. Edgar v. Pickardt. Riga: Jonck und Poliewsky, 1925. It comprised 48 playing cards, 10 x 6 cm, depicting churches, castles, palaces, manor houses, halls, guildhalls, merchants’ houses, etc. 99 O. Pirang, Baltisches Heimatquartett. Essen, 1951/1952. A new edition of this hand-painted card game in offset print was issued in 1996. See D. Osteneck, Baltische Quartette. – Europäische Spielesammler Gilde 2007, Oktober, www.e-s-g.eu/sammelgebiete/themen/familienkartenspiele/quartettbaltische/ (accessed 20 June 2014). 100 A. von Ungern-Sternberg, Ein Überfall der Wirklichkeit? Erscheinungen der Revolution von 1905 in der ‘deutschbaltischen’ Literatur und die Ausformung des ‘baltischen’ Romans. – Berichte und Forschungen. Jahrbuch des Bundesinstituts für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa 2006, vol. 14, p. 115. ulrike plath 78

flirtations. In the personal construction of Heimat, however, transnational ele- ments gained extreme importance. Speaking Estonian or Latvian in Germany, singing their folk songs, using common local recipes, and playing common games were important ways of expressing Baltic German regional belonging. Beginning in the 1830s, the fatherlands constructed by the Estonians and Latvians through language and oral culture were understood to be almost unreachable, and closed to Germans, who became Sehnsuchtsort, a lost Heimat within the Baltic Heimat.101 Baltic German notions of Heimat in all three provinces differed from Estonian and Latvian ones – all of them focused on the national borders, but those borders varied. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, and even supported by the revolu- tion of 1905, these different notions co-existed in harmony, building a multi-layered Baltic space that was perceived by different ethnic groups as Heimat.102 During World War I these differences clashed when Baltic Germans tried to enlarge their Heimat in the context of the German fatherland, while Estonians and Latvians fought for their own national homelands and sovereignty. It was here that the transnational utopia of a common Baltic Heimat finally broke down. But it was still imagined in private memoirs and traditions, in literature and culture in the second half of the twentieth century.103 Beside these conflicting ways of constructing Heimat, we also have to take into account the ways of being that were indifferent concerning Heimat, living in transcultural and transnational local or global networks that did not fit within the ideological concept of Heimat. Although it is hard to find their traces, we have to acknowledge and deal with their existence.

101 F. R. Faehlmann, Esthnische Sagen. – Verhandlungen der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft. Vol. 1 (1). Dorpat, 1846, p. 38. 102 U. von Hirschhausen, Die Grenzen der Gemeinsamkeit. Deutsche, Letten, Russen und Juden in Riga 1860–1914. (Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 172.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, p. 326, footnote 194, p. 359. 103 U. von Hirschhausen, Die Grenzen der Gemeinsamkeit, pp. 359–360.