UMGEBUNGSENTDECKER
TRAVEL IMPRESSIONS OF AN ART AND HISTORY LOVER
and my experiences as a teacher in China
Hunsrück -
on the trail of the series "Heimat"
The Heimat series tells the stories of the inhabitants of the fictional Hunsrück village of Schabbach in the period from the end of World War I to the 1950s. The focus is on the life of the people in this remote area, their personal events, which are influenced by contemporary history, although the great events happen far away and only become noticeable slowly and weakened in the Hunsrück. The unpretentious becomes monumental, the proportions of what is important are different than in our time. For example, the introduction of telephone technology with the associated telegraph poles is just as much a topic as the construction of the Hunsrückhöhenstrasse. All of this was shot in black and white, the narration is slow, and one wonders why the series was so successful. 15 million people saw Heimat when it was first broadcast in Germany. In England it became a cult series, in general it was an international one Success.
The first time I saw it, I lost interest - I found it all too lengthy, too banal, but interestingly, what I had seen burned into my memory and the images stayed in my head, e.g. how Maria Simon and her sister-in-law watched the film " La Habanera "in the cinema and then spent the rest of the evening at home trying to recreate the hairstyle of Zarah Leander or how Martina from Berlin wants to visit her former boss Lucie and ends up in a construction site while driving to the Hunsrück because the Hunsrückhöhenstrasse is still is under construction, although it has long been marked as a finished road on the map from Berlin. "They are further ahead in Berlin than we are," one of the workers shouts with a laugh to his colleagues after looking at Martina's map. To thank the construction workers for freeing Martina from the construction site, she offers to bake Saxon quark pods for all men - details that stick in the memory - or when the young Paul comes back from WWI, he walks across the Hill goes until the village appears in the distance before him, when he finally, having arrived in the village, enters his father's forge without greeting takes the hammer and gets into work, until at some point after a few minutes the father drops the hammer, looks up and simply says: "Thank God", while the mother, who in the meantime had stepped outside the front door wearing an apron and a headscarf, says quietly and calmly to herself: "Paul is back."
It looks archaic, rough and brittle - like figures roughly carved out of wood, like the Hunsrück, which with its simple barreness demands a lot from people.
This roughness is already clear in the intro. The lettering Heimat stands monumentally in the landscape, the autumn clouds are gray and dark over them, driven quickly by the howling wind, plus the haunting music by Nikos Mamangakis, the rhythmically monotonous hammers. It seems hard and heavy. But in the end the series has no gloom at all, it rather triggers a melancholy that is difficult to grasp can. Maybe because a lot of it has irrevocably gone?
The characters become so familiar that you think you know them personally and their fates seem as if they were told by relatives, they are so commonplace and unpretentious. There are similar stories that you heard yourself as a child when the old people told of the past.
As I said, it took me two attempts. Decades later, on the second try, it grabbed me and the force of this effect led to it I decided to go to the places where the series was made.
Laufersweiler
We had booked our hotel here and let the evening fade away with a cozy beer. It is contemplative, almost village-like there. After a good night's sleep, the roosters woke us up.
The next morning we had a look at Lauferseiler before we went to Morbach, the place where Edgar Reitz, the creator of the series, grew up. Café Heimat has now been set up in his parents' house. Unfortunately it was closed due to the corona. The café is also a museum, with large-format photos from the series hanging on the walls. You can also buy illustrated books, books and souvenirs there.
Edgar Reitz und sein Co-Autor Peter Steinbach trugen die Geschehnisse der Serie aus eigenen Erinnerungen sowie Zeitungsartikeln zusammen und ergänzten sie durch Erzählungen der Dorfbewohner von Woppenroth, die sie im Gasthaus von Rudi und Marga Molz interviewten, wo Reitz und Steinbach während ihrer Recherchen logierten. Fiktionales und Dokumentarisches wurden auf diese Weise miteinander verwoben.
Die Figuren der Serie wurden teilweise von Laiendarstellern gespielt, die Reitz bewusst auswählte, um auch durch deren Mundart, das Hunsrückische, eine höhere Authentizität zu erreichen.
The Heimat series is marketed for tourism in the region, the tourists come from many countries, the signs at the locations are neat, multilingual and financed with funds from the European Union. The series is recorded in the Federal Archives. The visitors come as far as Brazil, which can be traced back to the part of the series "The Other Homeland", which takes place in the 19th century and deals with the emigration of the Hunsrückers to South America. Brazilian tourists are carted into the Hunsrück by bus and, as the residents proudly report, they are blown away with enthusiasm.
The Hunsrückers identify well with the series.
You feel a bit voyeuristic when you wander through the places, look at everything, take photos, etc. But the people of Hunsrück are used to it and don't just endure it, they react with openness and tell of the circumstances during the shooting.
Below is the house of Maria Schirmer, also Marie Goot called to see. It is one of the main locations of the first part of the series, in which Maria Simon, the daughter-in-law of Marie Goot, stays all her life and has to accept several strokes of fate.
In front of the house, on the picture on the right, you can see the forge under the red-brown beams.
After Edgar Reitz had shot three parts of the series and had come from the end of World War I to reunification, he decided to emigrate in the 19th century. The fourth and last project in this series therefore takes place before the three parts that take place later. The house of The Simon family has been redesigned for the series, as can be seen in the picture below.
The slowness of events in the 19th century is perhaps one of the main features of this part. People had to be patient during this time. Patience while waiting for a letter from South America that has been on its way for 13 months, patience while waiting for the end of a winter that does not want to end, so that you can finally start farming, etc.
Die Langsamkeit der Geschehnisse im 19. Jahrhundert ist vielleicht eines der Hauptmerkmale dieses Teils. Menschen mussten in dieser Zeit Geduld haben. Geduld beim Warten auf einen Brief aus Südamerika, der 13 Monate unterwegs ist, Geduld beim Warten auf das Ende eines langen, harten Winters, der kein Ende nehmen will, damit man endlich mit der Feldwirtschaft anfangen kann usw.
While we were driving through the country where the series was filmed, we suddenly passed this backdrop. It is the entrance to the old church Schabbach from the 19th century. This backdrop just stood there in a parking lot.
The Günderode House
The Middle Rhine near Oberwesel plays a role in the third season "Chronicle of a Turning Point", because Hermann and his partner fulfill a dream there above the Rhine Valley and completely renovate the Günderodehaus so that they can live there and find a haven in their lives takes place on the stages and in the concert halls of the world.
The third part of the Series looks a bit like a German "Dynasty". The calm of the first season "A German Chronicle" has disappeared. Presumably that reflects the development.
