Die zweite Heimat: Chronik einer Jugend

I remember watching this - presumably all however-many-hours (26?!) -it-was - on BBC2 as a teenager who had just started learning German. How I long for it to be repeated again. It was a great (though obviously not a commercial) success here in Britain, thanks to the Beeb. Sadly the German public state broadcaster, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), which funded Die Zweite Heimat, chose to relegate it to a very late night slot when it was premiered, so in its own country it is less well known.

Meanwhile, though, if you can read German, try and get a copy of the screenplay. A massive hardback, to read the scripts and directions is just as engrossing as watching the films themselves - and there's some lovely colour and black-and-white stills too.

And if you haven't seen Heimat, the prequel, do so too!

This epic brings together a superbly-gifted cast and crew, a narrative depth superior to most novels, wonderful music, philosophy and a connection to LIFE that I find difficult to explain. To immerse oneself in Die Zweite Heimat is for me akin to a spiritual experience, similar to the awe one gets when looking at the stars in a clear night sky. The language, and use of both colour and monochrome segments adds to the dramatic impact. The film inspired me to go to Munich and visit some of the locations, including the Edgar Reitz office. From then on, I vowed to improve my German skills - after Die Zweite Heimat I feel almost German, as if I am in the head of the characters. I also try to match the piano playing of Henry Arnold (Hermann), but this is the one thing that will always elude me ! This drama is unparalleled and I have been fortunate to see it on BBC2 in the UK and SBS in Australia. The sequel, Heimat 3, is currently being filmed in Germany.

In September 1992, something extraordinary happened at the Venice Film Festival: the festival audience from all over the world enthusiastically celebrated a quality German series.

Don't worry, there's no mistake, even though HBO wasn't supposed to start with the "Sopranos" until 1999. Edgar Reitz consciously conceived his "mini-series" as a long feature film in 13 individual films and, like eight years before with "Heimat", essentially invented the streaming of quality series.

THE SECOND HEIMAT accompanies Hermännche (Henry ARNOLD) from the Hunsrück village of Schabbach, which we had already gotten to know in HEIMAT, to study in the million-dollar village of Munich. And we were able to see how the good-looking village boy sleeps his way through many beds and gradually matures into a composer. We met fellow students of his who had so many talents that they were unsuccessful, and others who very gradually slipped into terrorism. The nights in Munich were filmed in color, while the gray everyday life appeared in black and white.

Six months after the sensational success in Venice, the German television station ARD broadcast the 13 films of this extraordinary film experiment on 13 evenings during prime time with unusually low ratings. And those responsible for the ARD committee really stuck with it, but after that the great era of television experiments on German television was almost finally over. For me personally, DIE ZWEITE HEIMAT was a very important viewing experience at the time. At around the same age as the protagonists in the film, I was still stuck in my small town due to lack of money and was saving up for my long-awaited studies.

Edgar REITZ knew exactly what he was talking about.

I first saw Heimat 2 on BBC2 in the 90's when I was at art college living and moving among artists and musicians, hoping for future success. So 'The Second Home' - of friendships made after leaving the familial home, of striving for a professional excellence - strongly resonated with my living reality. I was captivated by the characters, the storytelling, the lyrical camera-work and above all by the music. In it I could divine the beginnings of German Electronic music, of 50's Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Can, Neue, Faust of the 70's, the sound experiments of John Cage, Walter Carlos and the British electronic psychedelia of The White Noise. The soundtrack composer Nikos Mamangakis studied with Carl Orff of Carmina Burana-fame so I found its tastes contemporary to the Electronic Pop/ Sound Effects world.

I hadnt seen Heimat or Heimat 3 so I watched it as a whole in itself without a before or after. As someone else has commented, it is both epic and lyrical - historical and artistic. Many favourite moments including the wonderful voice of Gisela Muller (Evelyn), the Bach marimba of Daniel Smith (Juan), the piano-playing of Henry Arnold (Hermann) and the cello-playing of Salome Kammer (Clarissa).

I could write more but it's already been said here. Why can't British or US TV PRODUCE SUCH MASTERPIECES ? The Wire had the realism and politics and epic sweep of a city, David Lynch and Dennis Potter had imaginative tropes to their serialised TV work too but this is art-house and soap at its most cinematic and narrative sublime. It's never included in critics' choices of Best Films but it should be. Still as poetic and powerful as when I first saw it over 17 years ago. I watch the 3 boxed sets every autumn for their 'mellow fruitfulness'. Inspired and inspiring.

As much as I admire the artistic quality of these 13 films, I still like the original series of 11 "Heimat" films from the 80s even more and I think there's a reason why "Die zweite Heimat" was shown only once on German TV while there have been several reruns of "Heimat". Actually there are 2 reasons:

1) The TV scene in Germany has changed dramatically between 1983 and 1993: the two (+ one local) public channels back then are in competition with more than 15 private channels now. This was not a good thing for the attention span of the audience and the quality of the programming.

2) Apart from this general reason there's a problem with "Die zweite Heimat" itself IMO. Almost all the protagonists are ambitious artists (in various fields like music or film) with a high political awareness. In this sense they form an active avantgarde of Germany's society in the 60s, which is quite in contrast to the mostly passive protagonists of "Heimat", who just react to the turbulent times they live in. Although this gives Edgar Reitz the chance to paint an even more precise and detailed picture (because he was part of this avantgarde and knew people like Clarissa, Juan or Reinhard), it's harder for the viewer to identify with these people. An example: the girl from Detmold (can't remember her name) is on her way to become a left-wing extremist (RAF-terrorist?) long before 'ordinary' people join the APO in 1968. Being so much ahead of your time makes it very hard for your contemporaries (let alone the viewer of the films), to understand your feelings and motivations.

Nevertheless these films belong to the best German films of the 90s and I would love to see them again. If you also like this 'chronicle'-genre let me recommend two other German series made for TV which are nearly just as good IMO and deserve to be better known: "Rote Erde" is about some families who go through the changes in the Ruhr-area mining industry between about 1890 and 1919 (first 9 episodes) resp. 1923 and the 50s (second 4 episodes). "Löwengrube" is about a policeman's family in Munich over three generations in the 20th century (32 episodes).