Every hour that passes brings a supplement of ignition to the crucible in which the world is being fused. We have not had the same past, you and ourselves, but we shall have, strictly, the same future. The era of separate destinies has run its course. In that sense, the end of the world has indeed come for every one of us, because no one can any longer live by the simple carrying out of what he himself is.

—Cheikh Hamidou Kane[1]

 

heimaten. An Introduction

According to Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, all state power comes from the people. Some things can be said with certainty about this people: almost thirty percent have a history of migration, and that percentage will only continue to increase in the future. People desire in different ways, have differing political opinions, belong to different religious communities, are of different ages, and have different incomes and levels of wealth at their disposal.

If, as stated in the Basic Law, all state power comes from the people, this also means that all state power comes from a plural society. This reality is where heimaten comes in; heimaten, used as a verb, derives from Heimat—meaning home or homeland—and is something that is actively shaped and thereby constantly recreated. But heimaten can also function as a plural noun because Germany is conceived of as a place of plurality with urban centres, medium-sized towns, and rural regions, with two seas, islands, lowlands, uplands, and mountains. And all these places are home to people who, through loose associations and institutions, initiatives and organizations, shape what is today called German society and culture.

In this sense, heimaten as a verb and as a plural noun does not denote a utopia, but a reality that is central to democracy. At the same time, democracy is currently subject to existential threats at a level that it has not seen for decades. In this sense, heimaten also means making existing structures and narratives visible, strengthening them, and developing them further.

heimaten. The History

The term Heimat has been misused many times in the past and present to exclude some people and groups from society, to question their belonging, or to make them responsible for grievances. This kind of exclusion is a threat to livelihoods because it suspends the German state’s promise of protection. As a result, people who are not recognized as part of this society not only experience exclusion, but often pay for it with their lives. In this way, the state itself exerts violence. While the murder of George Floyd in the US by white police officers was recorded in the media and triggered worldwide outrage in 2020, Oury Jalloh burned to death in a German police station in Dessau on 7 January 2005 without the police officers on duty being held accountable to this day. This can be interpreted as Staatsgewalt, state power, authority, or, in a literal translation, state violence.

This kind of violence has a long history in Germany. By the end of the nineteenth century, the ominous and homogeneous idea of German society had solidified, the catastrophic culmination of which took place under National Socialism. Even then, this idea had nothing to do with reality. From 1945 onwards, there was a consensus in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that this catastrophe must not be repeated. The authors of the Basic Law therefore declared plural democracy, the right to freedom, and separation of powers to be the basis of the constitution of the new FRG.

heimaten takes up this tradition and asks how the spirit of the Basic Law can be realized in the present and preserved for the future. Thus, heimaten contrasts the homogeneity of national concepts of Heimat with the true diversity of society, not only in the present, but also in the past. It reverses the notion of integrating into dominant German culture by emphasizing that what is called ‘German culture’ today is the result of the contributions of, among others, Black, Jewish, Muslim, Sinti and Roma, and queer people, as well as countless others who were and are part of German society.

If Heimat, then heimaten.

Furthermore, the historical thread must also trace those violent aspects that are often overlooked in German discourse. For example, 2024–25 marks the 140th anniversary of the Berlin Conference. At this 1884–85 conference chaired by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and attended by representatives of other European states, the Ottoman Empire, and the US, the African continent was divided up without regard for the realities and needs of the people living there. In the interests of the European colonial powers involved, Africa, its people, and its resources were abandoned to exploitation and destruction. The construction of differences and the ideological division of the world into supposedly inferior and dominant groups of people formed the foundation of the colonial system of exploitation, which continues to have a structural effect to this day. The so-called identity of the West is based on these orders, hierarchies, and the racism that accompanies them. Frantz Fanon emphasized this as early as 1956, even before the end of the colonial era, at the first congress of Black intellectuals in Paris in his lecture ‘Racisme et Culture’.

heimaten means focusing on the connections that have been established through the history of violence: if the wealth of the colonies strengthened the colonial powers and continues to do so today, are the societies concerned not also entitled to a share in the history and presence within German culture? But what the societies that were brought into relationship with each other through colonial history will produce in the future is also part of the consideration. For as soon as societies decide, or are forced by increasing global interdependence or impending catastrophes, to remain in close contact, it is crucial that these relationships are expanded to include new dimensions. At the same time, they must also move forward so that previous violence is followed by something new, something more equitable and inclusive.

heimaten. The Many Futures

Heimaten thereby also means asking what kind of future we will leave behind for future generations. Here, too, it is worthwhile to look at history. In the German present, those whose history is told and how it is told determines who belongs to this society. If certain people are excluded from remembrance, this also means that they are excluded from symbolic participation. And those who remain excluded from symbolic participation do not feel that they bear any responsibility for this society. In this sense, a lack of plurality in the symbolic order is also a problem for democracy as it excludes unrepresented parts of society from participating in it. heimaten is a working towards strengthening democracy.

In recent years, a number of different initiatives have responded to this situation in spite of (or perhaps because of) current political escalations—as seen in the recent elections in Saxony and Thuringia. Futures are already being realized in work that has been undertaken by people everywhere for decades and heimaten emphasizes such developments: models of a post-migrant repositioning of the German present, of Jewish self-determination through disintegration, of decolonization, and a new foundation of relational histories for the present and future through initiatives such as Decolonize, the Initiative Schwarzer Menschen in Deutschland (ISD) [The initiative of Black people in Germany], or ADEFRA—Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland [Black women in Germany], which contribute to the heimatization of Germany beyond the German context; a specifically German form of creolization in the sense of Édouard Glissant’s poetics of diversity.

In this sense, heimaten also means visualizing futures that already exist. This process could be described as a way of remembering the future, focusing on what infrastructures already exists, and making it visible.

heimaten. The Programme

In heimaten, civil society approaches of plural democracies meet the potential of aesthetic practices. The focus is on narratives, research by academics and civil society actors, and educational formats. Artistic forms have a particularly special role to play in this encounter because they allow for arrangements that can foresee new realities and aim to make the overlooked visible.

The project kicks off in September 2024 at HKW, combining focused discussions with the opening of the exhibition, Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld—Of (Un)Real Frontiers, Of (Im)Moralities, and Other Transcendences, music, and a discursive literary heimaten Summer Jam. September 2024 also marks the kick-off of the heimaten network, which brings together actors from all German-speaking countries.

A discourse programme launches in December 2024 that brings together strategies of heimatization with questions of plural memory work. Two festivals, the De-Berlinisierung (de-Berlinization) festival at HKW at the end of March and the decentralized heimaten festival, which takes place with cooperative partners in all sixteen German federal states and in Switzerland and Austria throughout the month of September ahead of the 2025 federal elections in Germany.

Dr Ibou Diop and Dr Max Czollek, co-curators heimaten

 

[1] Original French: ‘Chaque heure qui passe apporte un supplément d’ignition au creuset ou fusionne le monde. Nous n’avons pas eu le même passé, vous et nous, mais nous aurons le même avenir, rigoureusement. L’ère des destinés singulières est révolue. Dans ce sens, la fin du monde est bien arrivée pour chacun de nous, car nul ne peut plus vivre de la seule préservation de soi. Mais, de nos longs mûrissements multiples, il va naitre un fils au monde. Le premier fils de la terre. L’unique aussi.’ Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure (London: Heinemann, 1972), 72.