James Kaye, Thesis Summary
Heim and the Unheimlich or Modernity: Visions of Home in the Idyllic Landscapes
of Dalacarlia and the Salzkammergut
This thesis endeavours to expand upon an understanding of the ways in which the concept home
has been used in reference to questions and aspects of identity, belonging, dis/continuity,
community or nation in Austria and Sweden between roughly 1870 and 1940. To address this
problematic, actual homes i.e. as family residences, will not be examined. This study will devote
its
attention
to
a
mass
phenomenon
known
as
the
home
movement
(Heimatbewegung/hembygdsrörelse) that in contemporary jargon might be referred to as that of
the "virtual" home. This movement found expression, as the home was constructed in hometown
historical
museums
(Heimatmuseen/hembygdsmuseer),
hometown
associations
(hembygdsföreningar/Heimatvereine),1 hometown books (Heimatbücher) etc. They represent
discourses about the home both utopian and practical.
The huge, and more importantly,
mushrooming quantity of these home materials in the era under consideration indicates that this
may belong to the category of mass phenomena. It should be stressed that these virtual homes
even if the are nowhere to be found, were very real. As a mass-phenomenon these virtual homes
can be seen a component in the creation, as well as a result, of "mass man" whose roots according
to George Mosse are found to be a,
necessary consequence of the creation of the industrialization of Europe, and the world of
myth and symbol within which such mass politics moved provided a most effective instrument
of dehumanization.2
The equation of mythic and symbolic homes with modernity and dehumanization, may appear to
be a dubious proposal as homes are more commonly associated with individuality and the self
than masses, and are rarely seen as patently related to active aspects of the construction of
communities which relegate the individual as subservient to a greater entity such as, national
monuments, museums, histories and associations. Ironically however the home was exploited
under a wide number of guises that can be associated with the above. It should be noted that
these exploitations of the concept home, the sources for this research, are in fact not places of
individual/family residences at all, but fall under what appear to be two often intertwined or
coinciding categories. The first can be referred to as "home" institutions i.e. institutions either
where the word "home" is utilised in (or as part of) the institutions name and institutions that
belong to a group that could be referred to under the rubric that contains "home" including home
town museums or home town associations; the second are ideals, models or visions of what
homes as individual/family residences should be such as homemakers guides and instruction
1These
institutions will be researched, for the most part, upon the basis of representations in of these
institutions such as guides, publications, yearbooks etc.
2 See: George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in
Germany from the Naploionic Wars Through the Third Reich, New York: Howard Fertig 1975, p. vii.
books, or theoretical architectural discourses on the home that address the "home" during the
period and at the locations being addressed in this work.
Within this framework, the "virtual" home has received scant attention at the academy. Despite
this it appears to be of pivotal relevance to, and may offer new insights into cultural history of the
first half of our century due both to the rapid expansion of its usage and its ubiquity in discourses
which appear to have been present in extremely diverse segments of society. They were neither
vertically nor horizontally limited: On the one hand the discourses are neither exclusively elite nor
common, it spans the chasm from intellectual circles to those of every-day popular culture. And
on the other hand its subject (in its ambiguity) has represented everything from a spiritual state
to the simple abode, a state, continent or planet. A focus upon how these vertical and horizontal
constructions of the home, within the context of states evolving in modernity, functioned may
offer much to expand the understanding of the shaping of twentieth century communities up to
and beyond national communities, as well as, expand knowledge upon interactions and
relationships along these axes.
The weight of this research will be devoted to a micro-historic discourses of home comparatively
in the landscapes Dalarna and the Salzkammergut, defined as Symbolic Central landscapes for
Sweden and Austria respectively.3 These discourses, ironically, seem to have been aimed at
offering solutions to what can be portrayed as the alienating effects of modernity in Sweden and
Austria which had become manifest at the outset of the turn of the century. In fact the home was
simultaneously, in a sense, recognised as a necessary invention, or result, of the modernisation
process particularly due to the relationship it had with the demarcation of working and living
space, implicit in its conception and as an essential eternal element or ideal which had been lost
and eagerly awaited rediscovery. The home as such was both revered as a utopia, and reviled as
the embodiment off all that is evil. In virtual homes pasts and futures were constructed as
ironically "public" places in the guise of nostalgic4 utopias, simultaneously private homes were
often portrayed as living hells. Visions linked the sublime and terror (on the value level), with the
unknown, the familiar and the repressed (on the knowledge level).
Despite, what may be seen as, the radically different developmental trajectories of Sweden and
Austria from the turn of the century to the Second World War, the exploitation of the concept
"home" can be found to be omnipresent in attempts to find solutions in this crisis plagued era for
both countries. This "coincidence" is one of the factors that make constructions of home in
3For
more on symbolic central landscapes see Hans Kuhn, „Nationale Mythen aus Landschaft und
Geschichte: Dalarna und die Urschweiz“ in Skandinavistik, Jahrgang 9 Heft 1 Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin
1979
4 Here, where nostalgia is defined by Svetlana Boym as "a longing for a home that no longer exists or perhaps
has never existed. It plays with the illusion that time can be revisited like space, that historic time is not
necessarily irreversible. The past can be discovered, recreated and redeemed, it can give a new legitimization
to the present,..." see Svetlana Boym, „Nostalgic Memorials and Postmodern Survival in Russia“ in Bo Stråth
2
Sweden and Austria on a higher level suitable for a comparative study of utopian dreams or the
construction of communities in an age commonly characterised by alienation.
I have already stated that the utilisation of discursive applications of the concept "home", in
regions of Sweden and Austria from the 1870s through the caesura of the Second World War, as a
point of departure for an investigation of the construction of communities within the process of
modernisation may appear odd because the home, as a rule, is neither associated with community
nor modernity. After all the home is generally perceived to be a component, if not the epitome, of
the private realm associated with domestic concepts such as the self, family, comfort and secrecy 5,
and not an entity or constituent of the public-sphere, of community or society defined as "the
body of institutions and relationships within which a relatively large group of people live."6
Separate from a larger society the home, as a haven, is an entity, a world unto itself, where
familiar comprehensible and trusted relationships function in a harmonic manner. Secondly the
home, on all but a particular discourse, is not commonly perceived to be a modern institution.
Alongside its currency the home is vested with "eternal" values particularly in reference to
relationships which are generally not understood to be novel but eternal such as those between
woman and man, parent and child, or among siblings.
Despite the above mentioned perceptions, the home is not disassociated from society or
modernity; In fact the home was regularly connected with both in the Swedish and German, i.e.
Germanic discourses: either as a metaphor, microcosm, model, or essential and ideal form.
Furthermore, the contemporary conception of the home has itself been defined as an invention of
and inseparable from modernity. Walter Benjamin designates the home along with privacy not
only as connected with each other but also with modernity. Still the connection between the
home and society at large can be called a topos in Austria and Sweden, particularly during the
time period at hand but it may also be a candidate for research over a far greater time span.
Within these two categories, chronology and topography, this project has shifted its focus from
the original proposal to a certain extent. This shift has resulted from a number of realisations that
have been made in the course of my research. The chronological framework of this project which
was originally bound by the twentieth centuries two World Wars, due to what are commonly
perceived as the manifold reactions, in Austria and Sweden, to a common crisis (although to a
different degree) that faced both states in the wake of the First World War, which however
resulted in two distinct developmental trajectories. These "coincidentally" culminated in the
development or triumph of what may be classified as "home" solutions: "Heim ins Reich" and
"Folkhemmet" respectively. Although these original premises stand, it became apparent that this
and Nina Witoszek (eds.), The Postmodern Challenge: Perspectives East and West, Leiden: Rodipi 1999 p.
143.
5 Christopher Reed, Introduction, in Christopher Reed (Ed.), Not at Home: the Suppression of Domesticity
in Modern Art and Achitechture, London: Thames and Hudson 1996, p. 7.
6 Raymond, Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Fontana 1983
3
"crisis experience" of the First World War (and its aftermath) as a "modernist event"7 despite its
demarcation of a significant caesura in both Sweden and Austria and representation to a certain
extent of a caesura in the discourse of the home, does not necessarily coincide with the inception
of a comprehensive discourse on the home in either of the states. Nevertheless, they represent an
important juncture in the discourse on the home. Additionally the final war years may also be
significant due to a different premise, the democratisation processes that took place in 1917 and
1918 in which Sweden and Austria respectively adopted political systems that approached a vision
of democracy where the governments became responsible to a democratically elected parliament. 8
This period, when popular mandate became the justification for government may represent a
caesura for both states which is relevant to discourses on the home. It should be noted that the
process of democratisation in Sweden developed on a much more continuous trajectory than in
Austria and was far more permanent than the first Austrian Republic's 15-year experiment with
democracy. That is not to say that a temporal coincidence of the inception of a wide discourse on
the "home" does not exist. In fact it became apparent that the intensification and development of
this discourse can be perceived at a juncture much earlier than the inter-war years which indeed
appear to represent a continuity and at best intensification of an existent phenomenon. The
earlier development coincided with the fruition of problems of a different order preceding the
turn of the century.9 These included phenomena such as alienation, capitalism, industrialisation,
urbanisation, secularisation, and nationalism.
In another respect, this research attempts to avoid making the mistake of offering an explanation
of fascism/National Socialism, particularly one that limits it as a unique aberration that resulted
exclusively from the crises of the War and ensuing peace not connected to the process of
modernisation. It intends to examine a phenomenon upon a far more profound or fundamental
level that was not predetermined to end in any specific fashion, as in fact the framework of this
comparison predetermines.
This is both a justification of the bonuses and rational of a
comparison of simulacra in Austria and Sweden where the war experiences were very different
and the inter-war years had, to a significant extent, differing results. Informed by Mosse of the
limiting tendencies of creating an exclusive causal relationship between the unique experiences of
the War and ensuing peace, and the development of fascism, the aim here is to fit into a much
Hayden White, "The Modernist Event" in Vivian Sobchack (ed.), The Persistence of History: Cinema,
Television, and the Modern Event, New York: Routledge 1996.
8 For more on the Austrian political System See Emerich Tálos, Herbert Dachs, Ernst Hanish, Anton
Staudinger (Eds.), Handbuch des Politischen Systems Österreichs, Erste Republik, 1918-1933, Wien:
Manzische Verlag, 1995.
9 For additional justification of the selection of this the outset of the turn of the century as a chronological
starting point for an investigation into the development of this discourse on the home, see: Jonas Frykman
and Ovar Löfgren, Culture Builders: a Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life, Alan Crozier (trans.),
Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick and London, 1987, p. 63, Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local
Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1817-1918, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press 1997, p. 134.
7
4
larger framework of the process of modernisation with particular attention to secularisation and
democratisation to which fascism can be ascribed. Mosse sums up his criticism as follows:
Fascism as an actual historical movement was the product of the First World War, and this fact
has been used to deny or to underestimate its connections with a prewar past. Without the
War and the Peace that followed, there would have been no fascist movement and therefore, so
it is argued, the prewar period did not really matter that much. Fascism thus becomes closely
linked to its "epoch": the Europe between the wars. This point of view is not meant to provide
an apologia for Fascism, but it does endow the movement with certain uniqueness and views it
as an immediate response to a particular historical situation.
There is a large measure of truth to such an analysis, for the collapse of Europe after the war
was an essential ingredient of fascism and provided much of its popular appeal. Yet, all these
historians ignore fascism as a mass movement, and also mass democracy, both of which
developments had a long history before Nazis and other fascists made good use of them.10
More than a product of the inter-war crisis the discourse around the home, or the home as text, is
clearly, although not exclusively, a component of these mass movements and as such a result of
the process of modernisation.
This also, not coincidentally was connected to phenomena
common to both Austria and Sweden such as capitalism, industrialisation, urbanisation,
secularisation, gradual democratisation etc.
In this respect it can be surmised that the
phenomena at hand resemble each other to a striking extent. It remains to be seen however
whether this similarity or resemblance implies an identical relationship or if what can be seen as
results correspond with one another and how all of this can be understood within the framework
of modernity?
George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in
Germany from he Naploionic Wars Through the Third Reich, New York: Howard Fertig 1975, p. 3-4.
10
5