There are few words that have made it from German into the English language register, unlike the other way around. Zeitgeist, Schadenfreude, Angst are some of the rare examples, words that are difficult, if not impossible to translate.
Heimat is another one of the German words, it is difficult to come up with a word or even a short phrase in English, yet it describes a universal concept. Heimat stands for one’s home, homeland, familiar surroundings where you grow up, that you understand and that understand you. Heimat is a place, it is a group of people and it is a feeling of belonging.
Homeland is the most likely offered translation in encyclopedias and dictionaries. Looking and listening to popular culture, hometown is probably most often mentioned, implying the same heaviness, longing and melancholy. Heimweh (homesickness) is the longing for home, kids experience it on their first holiday away from home and parents, expats feel it when they go to search for food shops with imported goods from their home region.
Heimat kann at times be made, Wahlheimat is the home of choice, the place you move to and which try to make your home. You can also lose your Heimat, heimatlos is a person who has been driven out of their home land, who is not allowed to live where they belong (but not homeless). Heimatlos can also be a state of mind, you do not have a Heimat if you are constantly moving around when growing up, never able to grow roots at a place.
Of course in our mobile society this is not as unusual and drastic as it used to be. When you leave the place you grew up at, Facebook and many other online tools help you stay in touch. You will be informed how your friends are going, what they had for dinner and how the local football team is progressing. You can video conference via Skype and be – virtually – at many events. That does not replace Heimatgefuehl, the feeling of being at home where you belong, but it does keep connections alive.
I left my country, (West) Germany, 20 years ago to live on the other end of the world. It took me many years to call Australia home, but there came a time when I felt that warm, comfortable feeling when flying in to Sydney, it had become my home, by choice and by gut feel. I know my way around, I love country and people, but I worry that it will never be mytrue home, my Heimat. I go back to the town I grew up in and I meet friends who have known and accepted me for 30 years. They were taught the same curriculum, they watched the same tv shows.
We grew up in a time in Germany when the word Heimat had been occupied, hijacked by conservatives, who just like the nazis in the thirties connected it with very traditional values we did not want to know about. We would not dare using the word. Heimatfilme were dorky movies, describing life in the country, nothing we aspired to. Heimat was used only by old people, possibly from Bavaria. This has changed, Heimat has re-gained its place in the German language, and looking at current advertising and slogans on t-shirts, it is even a trendy.
