video: your homeland is our nightmare

This week we were happy to welcome the authors Mithu Sanyal, Fatma Aydemir and Max Czollek (via a live connection with Literaturhaus Berlin) in our literary salon at Passa Porta to discuss the problematic use of the concept “heimat” (homeland) in contemporary Germany. The Belgian author Marc Reugebrink moderated the discussion (in English).

The book Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum ("Your homeland is our nightmare") offers perspectives of 14 contemporary German-language authors on the current reemergence of Heimat discourse in Germany and the German-speaking world. In a time of ascendant populist nationalism across the globe, they critically examine the Heimat ideology from the perspective of different minority positions in Germany (grandchildren of migrants, LGBTIQ, Jews in Germany, and others). They hold up to us a mirror of a Germany, as a country that sees itself as a prime example of a democratic state, but that at the same time considers a part of its inhabitants as “different” and fails to protect or accept them.

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