When the NBC series Holocaust was aired on German television early in 1979, it started a heated public discussion about the ethics of turning this episode of national disgrace into a family melodrama and thriller. But, so the verdict ran, if a tearjerker manages what no documentary film, no literary account, and not even a show trial like that of Adolf Eichmann had achieved, namely to bring home the horrors of Nazi rule and to open locked doors of memory, conscience and personal history – as Holocaust did for millions of Germans – why quibble over points of detail or aesthetics? And why had German filmmakers not tackled the subject themselves in a format accessible to the general public instead of waiting for Hollywood? The American series had crossed, inadvertently or not, a certain taboo threshold for the West German media; and Reitz's Heimat, begun around March 1979, responds to the challenge by entering into a sort of dialogue not only with Holocaust, but with its reception in Germany and the “retro” fashion in general.

Reitz, in fact, had participated in the debate quite directly, with an article he published in the May 1979 issue of medium, entitled “Let's work on our memories.” It conceives the issues from a partisan aesthetic perspective, as befits a film-political activist and co-signatory of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto: “If we are to come to terms with the Third Reich and the crimes committed in our country, it has to be by the same means we use every day to take stock of the world we live in. We suffer from a hopeless lack of meaningfully structured, aesthetically communicated experience… One should put an end to thinking in categories, even where this terrible part of our history is concerned. As far as possible, we must work on our memories. This way, films, literary products, images come into being that enlighten our senses and restore our reflexes.”

What stands in the way of this, according to Reitz, is the economic hegemony of Hollywood in the entertainment market, which translates itself directly into a dominance of aesthetic forms.