Journal article

Publication year: 2018

Pages: 103-124

Journal: Oxford German Studies

Volume number: 47

Issue number: 1

ISSN: 0078-7191

eISSN: 1745-9214

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2018.1409515

Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group

Abstract: 
Two television projects depicting ordinary people's everyday lives in twentieth-century Europe developed in parallel across the continent's geopolitical divide. Concepts of home' were central to the titles and on-screen action in Poland's Dom (1980-2000) and the (West) German Heimat trilogy (1984-2004). Multiple modes of memory (autobiographical, local, national, transnational) were instrumental in constructing these images of home and their relation to changing public discourses either side of 1989-90. This article argues that an analysis of Heimat and Dom can contribute to a comparative cultural history of memory in Poland, (West) Germany and Europe. It considers the complex local and transnational contexts from which Heimat and Dom emerged, tracing parallels and divergences between the two series' narratives, and conceptualizations of home and memory. The article suggests that turning to the archives of popular culture and popular memory could revise established images of Polish and German, East and West European memory cultures.

Harvard Citation style: Vickers, P. (2018) Moving Homes and Homelands on Television: (West) Germany's Heimat and Poland's Dom, Oxford German Studies, 47(1), pp. 103-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2018.1409515

APA Citation style: Vickers, P. (2018). Moving Homes and Homelands on Television: (West) Germany's Heimat and Poland's Dom. Oxford German Studies. 47(1), 103-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2018.1409515