Rethinking Culpability: National Socialism and Guilt in Reitz’s four Heimat series

This work on Edgar Reitz’s Heimat cycle (1984-2013) considers guilt (in terms of both culpability and conscience) in relation to National Socialism. It is argued that Reitz reveals and conceals, deplores and relativises culpability, sincerely condemning National Socialism, yet also struggling, sometimes with imperfect success, against an urge to encourage viewers to err on the side of lenience in their assessment of complicit Germans not persecuted by the Nazis. Reitz tends to acknowledge and regret the evils of National Socialism (and, in the case of Die andere Heimat, European colonialism) in subtle ways that may stimulate viewers to engage carefully and self-improvingly with topics of utmost moral gravity; the subtlety of these acknowledgements may, on the other hand, sometimes be excessive and detract from viewers’ awareness of the extreme evils that are a persistent background presence throughout the cycle, with the predominantly indirect depiction of such evils very possibly stemming partly from Reitz not wishing to focus viewers’ attention and emotional engagement on the victims of those evils. My original contributions revolve around how Reitz is attracted (particularly in Die zweite Heimat) to allusions that point to issues in determining culpability; how Reitz repeatedly challenges the distinction between perpetrator and victim in attempts to lay claim to a morally normal status for the German nation in the wake of National Socialism; and how Reitz engages in rituals, such as sacrificial scapegoating, in the hope of appeasing avenging fate and allowing his narrative and nation to withstand the pressure of the ongoing echoes of National Socialist guilt. Over the course of the cycle, Reitz seeks to move on, taking Germany with him, from the National Socialist period. Reitz’s approach is often problematic, but also sometimes very well-meaning.