Heimatkunst

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Heimatkunst was the name for a völkisch - nationalist literary movement in German-speaking countries from around 1890 to the beginning of the 1930s. It was created following naturalism in the course of the Heimat movement , which is why it is also referred to as the “Heimatkunst movement”.

Self-image

“Heimatkunst” saw itself as a means of changing society in terms of program and action. She converted the ethnic worldview into an aesthetic concept and into an artistic practice that was aimed at people's education. The theorists and artists of Heimatkunst stood for a politicized art with their numerous manifestos and programs. They represented a “more or less strongly ideologically colored program” (Karlheinz Rossbacher).

The was home set as the antonym of the undesirable phenomena of modernity, combined with the racial categories tribe, national community, nationality and race, with a focus on rural or at most small-town life. A typical feature was the dichotomy of the biological metaphors healthy and sick . The village, the farmers, traditional customs and traditions were considered to be “healthy”. They were idyllized and taken as models. On the other hand, big cities, modern lifestyles and styles, intellectuals were considered “sick”. They were devalued and viewed as harmful to the “folk body” imagined as a biological organism, which, after successfully combating the causes of infection, would recover with the help of art.

The close reference to regions and their established inhabitants or - in the diction of the Heimat movement - "tribes" reduced the relation to nation and "Reich", i.e. to (Greater) German nationalism, and promoted the "odium of provincial narrow-mindedness" .

Heimatkunst cultivated the cult around great personalities. For example, Rembrandt played an important role as a (alleged) popular educator and leader. On the other hand, the “German Renaissance” - to which local art was assigned - begins at the most depraved point of the contemporary situation - “the influence of the Jews”, according to Julius Langbehn in 1890 in “Rembrandt als Erzieher”. The opponents of the Jewish minority now consistently described themselves as anti-Semites , gathered in anti-Semite parties and drafted an anti-Semite petition, whereby the Jews were also seen as representatives of capitalist “mammonism” and were exposed to criticism from the anti-capitalist labor movement . Since its emergence in Wilhelminism, the leading figures in local art have consistently been prominent anti-Semites, alongside Langbehn with Adolf Bartels , Friedrich Lienhard , Gustav Frenssen , Heinrich Sohnrey , Hermann Löns , Ernst Wachler and Wilhelm von Polenz . “Conservative and racist works provided the ideological justification for Heimatkunst.” The later National Socialist blood-and-soil art was based on the anti-modern, anti-rationalist and anti-intellectual attitude of Heimatkunst .

The writer and literary historian Adolf Bartels used the term Heimatkunst for the first time in an article in the magazine Der Kunstwart in 1898 , at the same time as the writer Friedrich Lienhard (Puschner: "the authoritative initiator" in all literary stories). Several literary magazines were used to convey the concept, such as the Berlin magazine “Die Heimat” (1900–1904, then “Deutsche Heimat”). Many of their authors later joined the National Socialists.

“ Heimatliteratur ” can be historically defined “as literature ... of the Heimatkunst movement”.

Home art movement

The “Heimatkunst Movement” worked on the implementation of ethnic worldview in art as part of the Heimatkunst concept. It shows itself as a restoration movement based on the historically past pre-industrial feudal society . As such, she was part of the Volkish network. "Lively contact" existed even with direct political appearances of the Völkische Movement, such as the Pan-German Association , the Federation of Farmers and the German National Trade Aid Association , who saw the support of the local art movement "as useful for the implementation of their own goals" .

She is considered to be the pioneer for those “folk and native” blood and soil concepts that later flourished in the Nazi aesthetic after the implementation of Alfred Rosenberg's ideas . Völkisch orientation and authoritarian forms of organization favor the integration of the Heimatkunst movement and its actors into the National Socialist cultural policy.

Important works

Magazines

literature

  • Klaus Bergmann, Agrarian Romanticism and Urban Enmity, Meisenheim am Glan 1970
  • Hildegard Châttelier, Friedrich Lienhard, in: Uwe Puschner / Walter Schmitz / Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.), Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918, Munich 1999, pp. 114–130
  • Kay Dohnke, Völkische Literatur and Heimatliteratur 1870–1918, in: Uwe Puschner / Walter Schmitz / Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.), Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918, Munich 1999, pp. 651–686
  • Erika Jenny, The local art movement. A contribution to recent German literary history, Basel 1934
  • Dieter Kramer, the political and economic functionalization of “home” in German imperialism and fascism, in: Diskurs 3 (1973), pp. 3–22
  • Karlheinz Rossbacher, program and novel of the local art movement. Possibilities of socio-historical and sociological analysis, in: Sprachkunst 5 (1974), pp. 310–326
  • Ders., Local art movement and homeland novel. On a literary sociology of the turn of the century (= literary studies - social science, vol. 13), Stuttgart 1975
  • Karl Zuhorn, 50 years of the German Heimatbund. German Homeland Security, ed. vom Deutscher Heimatbund, Nauß o. J., pp. 13–58
  • Serena Grazzini, Il progetto culturale 'Heimatkunst'. Programma, movimento, produione letteraria, Roma 2010

Web links

  • Karlheinz Rossbacher, The literature of the local art movement around 1900, see: [3]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See e.g. E.g .: Ruprecht, Erich / Dieter Bänsch (eds.), Turn of the century. Manifestos and documents on German literature 1890–1910, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 321–363.
  2. ↑ See: Karlheinz Rossbacher, Die Literatur der Heimatkunstbewegung around 1900, see: [1] .
  3. ↑ On both aspects: Hildegard Châttelier, Friedrich Lienhard, in: Uwe Puschner / Walter Schmitz / Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.), Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918, Munich 1999, pp. 114–130, here: p 122ff.
  4. ↑ Quotation from: Uwe Puschner, Antisemitism and German Voelkish Ideology, in: Hubert Cancik / Uwe Puschner, Antisemitismus, Paganismus, Völkische Religion, Munich 2004, pp. 55-64, here: p. 58.
  5. ↑ Lienhard represented a non-biological anti-Semitism, which is why it is assigned to an "ideal" direction of local art. For Lienhard see an overview: Uwe Puschner, Antisemitism and German Voelkish Ideology, in: Hubert Cancik / Uwe Puschner, Antisemitismus, Paganismus, Völkische Religion, Munich 2004, pp. 55–64, here: p. 58.
  6. ↑ Both information from: Ingo Roland Stoehr, German Literature of the Twentieth Century. From Aestheticism to postmodernism, Rochester 2001, p. 17.
  7. ↑ Puschner, p. 120.
  8. ↑ Both titles in the Heimatverlag Georg Heinrich Meyer in Berlin, there also the pamphlets of the homeland , see: Rossbacher, Karlheinz, Heimatkunstbewegung and Heimatroman. On a literary sociology of the turn of the century (= literary studies - social science, vol. 13), Stuttgart 1975, p. 16f.
  9. ↑ Willy Knoppe, Un bey alles is wuat - a search for orientation in a regional form of language. A literary pedagogical study of the values ​​in Low German poetry by Christine Koch, Göttingen 2005, p. 37.
  10. ^ Karlheinz Rossbacher, The literature of the local art movement around 1900, see: [2] .
  11. ↑ Kay Dohnke, Völkische Literatur and Heimatliteratur 1870–1918, in: Uwe Puschner / Walter Schmitz / Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.), Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918, Munich 1999, pp. 651–686, here: P. 676.
  12. ↑ Georg Braungart / Harald Fricke / Klaus Grubmüller / Jan-Dirk Müller / Friedrich Vollhardt / Klaus Weimar (eds.), Real Lexicon of German Literary Studies. Revised version of the Real Lexicon of German Literary History, Berlin 2007, Vol. 1, p. 436.