defilmtv1-8, Exercise 2: Heimat

Model answer:

Heimat follows families in a fictional village in a rural region of western Germany from 1919 to 1982, through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi years, the war, the postwar recovery and the arrival of modern life. The central character is Maria, who ages through the series. The great events of the century are seen through ordinary life.

"Heimat" means "home" or "homeland". The word had been damaged by its use under the Nazis and by the sentimental films of the 1950s, and the series asked what it could mean again.

Reitz is reported to have written it in reaction to the American series on the Holocaust shown in West Germany in 1979, feeling that Germans needed to tell their own history of the period in their own way (check what he said).