Narrating “Home”: Experiences of German Expellees after the Second World War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40381Keywords:
Germany, World War II, forced displacement, expellees, home, homeland, heimat, narrativesAbstract
This article explores the experiences of forced displacement through the narratives of expellees in Germany after the Second World War. It considers how disruptions of “home” over time and space have led to constant deconstructing and reconstructing of home. Based on autobiographical interviews, this article argues that home is multidimensional and contradictory, changing over time and through experiences, becoming simultaneously connected to a specific place and time while transcending this rootedness. This continuous contestation of home has led expellees to form an imagined, idealized, and romanticized notion of their Heimat that exists in memory and is combined with their current home, Zuhause.
Metrics
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Vanessa Hughes
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Refuge authors retain the copyright over their work, and license it to the general public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows for non-commercial use, reproduction and adaption of the material in any medium or format, with proper attribution. For general information on Creative Commons licences, visit the Creative Commons site. For the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, review the human readable summary.