To her, "heimat" is an "idyllic world" and can only be found within the trinity of community, space and tradition; because only there human desires for identity, safety and an active designing of life can be pleased.
In terms of ethnology and anthropology, "heimat" reflects the need for spatial orientation and the first "territory" that can offer identity, stimulation and safety for one's own existence (Paul Leyhausen).
From an existentially philosophical perspective, home provides the individual with a spatiotemporal orientation for self-preparation, in opposition to the term of strangeness (Otto Friedrich Bollnow).
The feminine noun Heimat is attested around the 11th century (late OHG heimōti n., MGH heimōt(e) f., n.) by way of the suffix *-ōt(i)- expressing a state or condition[3] also found in Monat = month, which became somewhat productive in medieval German (c.f Heirat, Zierat, Kleinod, Einöde).
The word nevertheless retains the pragmatic sense of habitat (of plants and animals, Philipp Andreas Nemnich), a person's place of birth or permanent residence, and in Upper German (Bavarian and Swiss) also of the house inherited from one's father.
Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Leonhard Frank, Ludwig Marcuse, Franz Werfel and Stefan Zweig are some well-known examples of such authors.
The concrete utopia is Ernst Bloch's notion of homeland which he created in his main work "The Principle of Hope" (Das Prinzip Hoffnung) during his exile in the United States.
Bloch, who opposed war in Wilhelmian Germany in 1914, who had to leave Nazi-Germany in the 1930s as he was a Marxian Jew and who was forced to emigrate from the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s, defines homeland as something beyond class society.
Da war ich noch nie!“) The concept of "Heimat" first emerged in a literary context that was neither religious nor poetic during the period of Industrialization and Romanticism.
People moved from the country to the cities to an increasing degree in order to find employment in a factory, which eventually led to urban expansion and the impoverishment of many.
Prior distinctions of social classes such as aristocracy and peasantry gradually dissolved (due to urban expansion and the rise of capitalism) and were replaced by the conceptions of proletariat and bourgeoisie instead.
Those who were at risk of social deprivation perceived the new world order, in which the upper-class was shrinking and there were more industry workers, as something "unheim(at)lich" (literal German translation in the sense of something "unfamiliar" and disconcerting.).
The concept of "Heimat" is closely associated with the present – as its meaning is established in a particular moment – and aims to provide an answer to a central question: Am I in the right place?
In Germany, most of the "Heimat" associations dealing with the authentic display of specific regional clothing are connected to the German society for traditional costumes based in Munich.
German: "Städte umgebaut [werden] zu Räumen, in denen überschüssiges Kapital noch mehr Rendite abwerfen kann"), which makes it hard for many of them to have feelings of "Heimat".
[7] The state shall edge away where we love our Heimat—Kurt Tucholsky, 1929The specific aspects of Heimat—love and attachment to homeland—left the idea vulnerable to easy assimilation into the fascist "blood and soil" literature of the National Socialists.
It was conceived by the National Socialists (Nazis) that the Volk community is deeply rooted in the land of their Heimat through their practice of agriculture and their ancestral lineage going back hundreds and thousands of years.
Unlike the historism found in the 19th century, Heimatschutz did not embrace ornate and decorative elements and tried to reinterpret traditional techniques and regional design languages in a clean and modern way.
[9] Georges Scelle in Belgium, Felix Ermacora in Austria, Alfred de Zayas[10] in the United States, and Christian Thomuschat and Dieter Blumenwitz in Germany are amongst those who have written extensively on the subject.