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ESCAPING FROM HEIMAT AND LONGING FOR HEIMAT IN WILHELMINE VON HILLERN'S DIE GEIER‐WALLY
Author(s) -
Scharnowski Susanne
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12216
Subject(s) - wilderness , perspective (graphical) , independence (probability theory) , sublime , art history , history , aesthetics , sociology , art , visual arts , ecology , statistics , mathematics , biology
While Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel and its film adaptations still figure amongst the best‐known examples of the genres ‘Heimatroman’ and ‘Heimatfilm’ respectively, so far no detailed study has been done of the portrayal of Heimat in the novel, even though Heimat is frequently and explicitly thematised. An analysis of the novel reveals a surprisingly bleak image of the village and the village community, of the paternal household and the father. The heroine of the novel, Wally, courageous and with a great desire for independence, experiences both the village and the paternal home solely as restrictions, as a suppression of her determination and individuality. This unrelievedly gloomy portrayal of village life is in fact more reminiscent of the anti‐Heimat literature of the 1970s than of the Heimat literature of the late nineteenth century. Here, high mountains and glaciers serve as a counter‐world to the strangely unhomely Heimat and as a place to escape to. The novel resists the notion of Heimat as a bond to village origins with a more modern, urbanised perspective, in which Heimat is presented as an indeterminate and ultimately unfulfillable yearning rather than as a bond to place and traditions. In this perspective – clearly depicted as modern and urban – the focus is not on rural life and the village community, but rather on the sublime Alpine wilderness.