Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging
Heimat: Rethinking Baltic German Spaces of Belonging

Summary/Abstract: 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’.

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