Heimat (film) - Edgar Reitz's Heimat As Autobiographical

Edgar Reitz's Heimat As Autobiographical

Berkeley Film and Media Professor, Anton Kaes (1989) argued that auteur film-maker Edgar Reitz's trilogy was autobiographical. Both Reitz and Paul Simon, his fictional character in Heimat had fathers who were skilled craftsmen. Edgar Reitz was born in 1932 and Paul Simon in 1898 in Hunsrück. They both grew up there, then left when they were in their twenties and returned in their fifties. Like Hermann Simon, in the 1950s Reitz left rural life for the world of German urban avant-garde arts and intelligentsia. Reitz worked at the Institute of Film Design in Ulm, while Hermann became a celebrated conductor in Munich. Wealthy American entrepreneur Paul Simon returned to Hunsrück only briefly when the war ended, but Hermann Simon's return was more permanent. He and his first love restored a house overlooking the Rhine that lay in ruins, eventually composing music for representing and celebrating his relationship to heimat. Both Hermann and Reitz 'dramatized the tensions between staying home, leaving and returning (Kaes 1989:164)', Hermann through music and Reitz through film.