Heimat: Eine Chronik in elf Teilen

Like most other people who saw the series so many years ago,It has remained vividly in my mind,and was a very welcome release on DVD. Although the entire cast were excellent,the performance of Marita Breuer as Maria was outstanding.An amazing, and thoroughly convincing portrayal of the phases of one womans lifetime.With so many strong characters appearing through the story,her magnetism is all the more remarkable. Now we have the wonderful news that HEIMAT 2 will be released in May,with HEIMAT 3 following in August.Can't wait. HEIMAT has to the best piece of sustained drama ever to appear on the small screen.Why can't British TV produce programmes of this calibre? The Singing Detective from the BBC remains the only thing approaching it for quality.

What can one say? This is what (television) drama should be. I saw the first Heimat when it was broadcast in the Netherlands in 1985, shortly after it was released in Germany. I was stunned. It seems that every decade one or two television productions excel, and this was without a shred of a doubt the eighties' highlight. When the second Heimat was shown on Dutch television in two marathon sessions (it runs for over 25 hours in all) I sort of locked myself in, and never regretted it.

I cannot begin to describe what Heimat is about. It's an epos. It's European history of the twentieth century on a small scale, literally. It's 'roman fleuve' and yet it's not. It's your family, that sometimes you wished wasn't there (and for good reasons) and then you're glad to meet again. It's all the human frailty and without the excuses. It *is* the human condition. And it only helps that it is beautifully shot, that the actors put on a superb show, that the music at times is haunting.

Now, on the verge of having the third series shown on TV, the first Heimat is finally available on DVD (with the other two series promised for the next few months). And although I saw most of it about twenty years ago, it is like coming home again and meeting your boyhood friends, those favourite aunts, that dear old uncle - what was wrong with him, again?

If you are looking for action, a thrilling plot, romance in a grand manner, wonderful CGI, and be done before dinner, don't look at Heimat. But if your willing to submerge yourself, to be engulfed by a very good story, to get really, I mean really, well acquainted with characters - well, I'm not in for commercial breaks, but go out and get it!

I can only echo the preceding comments: See this film. I would add some ifs, however: See this film if you appreciate good direction, consistently solid acting, and discriminating characterizations; if you savour cultural subtleties; if you find 20th-century European history fascinating; if you think the dynamics of community life have much to tell about the human condition; if you've ever wondered what it meant to be German in the 1920s, '30s, & '40s (although the film covers 1919-1982); if you can't quite understand how Nazism could have gained acceptance and then pre-eminence in a northern German village far removed from Berlin and full of the usual diverse personalities; if you want to put a human face on the monolithic histories about war and propaganda; and if your attention span is longer than that required by the average Hollywood production (the film runs to something like 16 hours, in 9 videocassettes).

Heimat is a superb cinematic chronicle of social and political change in human enterprise, a Bildungsroman of a community. You will not forget it.

Seeing this film, or rather set of films, in my early teens irrevocably changed my idea of the possibilities of human interaction and the range of potential experience. This monumental exploration of individuals, and their historical setting, reveals how full bodied and intense every human existence is. The people are portrayed as they are to themselves: their experiences of the smallest to the largest internal and external phenomena are detailed with the greatest of artistry and perception. Edgar Reitz displays a fabulous appreciation of human motivations and longings.

When these phenomena are set against the immense time allowed by the length of the work, one cannot help but apprehend the force and vivacity of happiness, defeat, lust, love, sadness, melancholy, that each person feels. When I saw these films I perceived my future experiences, how my life would inevitably twist and oscillate due to both intended and accidental events. I acquired a feeling of the longevity of being and what it meant to reflect upon past lives, memories and contexts. A masterpiece and a revelation. I only wish the BBC would screen it again.

If anyone knows where I can get a copy, could they contact me

You can only appreciate this series if you like the German tradition of very slowly moving, but brilliant novels, like 'the magic mountain' (der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann. Don't expect any form of action: it's real life, looked at through the eyes of real people, and there's no heroism, just life and the things it does to all of us. I had the habit of watching at least one or two episodes each week in winter, and I think this is the way to enjoy the series; watching the whole thing in - let's say - one week, would ruin it and make it boring. The way music is integrated in the series, and even becomes a theme in the second series, often triggered something; it's like Marcel Proust's 'a la recherche du temps perdu': the emotions shown, the feeling of time moving on and never coming back and history being written without you being able to change a single thing doesn't make you happy, but gives you a mild feeling of accepting things just the way they are.