Scientific Profile
The German term Heimat (home, belonging) has a complex semantics that has changed many times since the early modern period and is by no means unambiguous, especially as it is affected by neighboring concepts in German (Heim, Haus, Zuhause, Ort, Gemeinschaft, Gemeinde, Land, Vaterland, Nation etc.) as well as other languages and cultures. It is precisely because of this complexity and polysemy that Heimat is a suitable starting and reference point for interdisciplinary research beyond the modern German-speaking world.
We examine concepts and practices of natural and sociocultural connectedness in different social, cultural, and media contexts, approaching “Heimat” as a dynamic model that can be observed and analyzed from pre-modern times to the present.
Thus Heimat can be operationalized for a joint research project combining many disciplines across the humanities and social sciences: From modernity to the Middle Ages and far back into antiquity, such disciplines as history, musicology, art history, theology and classical and modern philology are exploring diverse phenomena: social and individual ties to territorial spaces and social groups; practices of “homing” and discourses of belonging and foreignness; area studies perspectives develop transcultural dimensions and examine specific constructions of Heimat, for example in East and Southeast Asia, in North and Ibero-America and in Europe; current concepts and dimensions of Heimat are modeled by political science, ethnology, geography and law in a discourse-analytical or empirical approach.
Placing model theory at the center of the research program, we do not seek timeless characteristics or a conceptual history of Heimat but – on the basis of diverse model objects – different conceptions and multiple approaches and their common points of reference. We hope to provide a structure that, on the one hand, allows us to coordinate the diversity of ideas in the interplay of humanities and social science approaches and, on the other hand, provides scholarly sound approaches to Heimat as a basis for interdisciplinary debate.