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Holy Homeland: The Discourse of Place and Displacement among Silesian Catholics in Postwar West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2010

Robert E. Alvis
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Extract

The author of the above quotation, Rudolf Jokiel, was one of over twelve million ethnic Germans expelled from their homes in Germany's eastern provinces (East Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Silesia), the Sudetenland, and other pockets of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and resettled within the country's truncated postwar borders. The expellees bitterly lamented their enforced exile, and many Christians within this population shared Jokiel's sentiments concerning the connection between faith and homeland. Those who settled in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) developed an elaborate network of overlapping subcultures dedicated to preserving their memories of lost homelands and advocating for their right to return there. In the process, these lands came to acquire a distinctly religious aura, holy places that were integral to their spiritual well-being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 827 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2010

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References

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3 The spatial elasticity of the term has served an important purpose as Germans have navigated between regional, national, and supranational identities. The concept of Heimat, Celia Applegate notes, “offered Germans a way to reconcile a heritage of localized political traditions with the ideal of a single, transcendent nationality. Heimat was both the beloved local places and the beloved nation; it was a comfortably flexible and inclusive homeland, embracing all localities alike.” See A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). The quotation above is found on page 11.

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