Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 347 Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own Roxane Riegler Murray State University Abstract: In this essay, I explore how two Jewish Austrian writers with migrational backgrounds, Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich, negotiate their search for Heimat (home, homeland) and identity� I am interested in their efforts to come to terms with the loss of their old home (St� Petersburg, Russia) and the need to establish a new one� Their approach is two-fold: contrary to recent claims that Heimat as a place has given way to Heimat as space due to increases in migration, mobility, and deterritorialization, I argue that both Vertlib and Rabinowich have not abandoned the idea of a place-bound image of Heimat � While they also perceive Heimat as a space that encompasses global relationships and loyalties that go beyond the confines of small (-minded) Austria, both authors claim that country as their homeland, thus undermining a public discourse that denies migrants the right to establish a Heimat in their new country� Keywords: Austrian literature, migration, Heimat, Julya Rabinowich, Vladimir Vertlib Sagen Sie, was bedeutet für Sie eigentlich Heimat? Nun gut, Heimat ist natürlich ein mehrdeutiger und dehnbarer Begriff … Heimat im engeren Sinne, präzisiert jemand am anderen Ende des Saals� Im engsten Sinne� Sie meinen, was mich vor Rührung zum Schluchzen bringt? So romantisch sind wir nun auch wieder nicht� Wenn Ihnen der Begriff Heimat nicht gefällt, dann meinetwegen Vaterland, Mutterland […]� ( Schimons Schweigen 204—05) This short conversation from Schimons Schweigen (2012) by Vladimir Vertlib excellently demonstrates the conundrum in which the migrant narrators of two debut novels - Zwischenstationen (1999) by Vladimir Vertlib and Spaltkopf 348 Roxane Riegler (2009, Splithead 2011) by Julya Rabinowich - find themselves� When pressed for answers about their Heimat (home), traditional meanings of Heimat elude them and compel them to provide multi-layered responses� Although constantly confronted with the search for belonging, a successful quest is neither easy nor guaranteed� In my essay, I explore how these two Jewish Austrian writers, who were born in the former Soviet Union, negotiate their search for belonging, Heimat , and identity� Both authors are aware of the idea’s ambivalence� How, then, do they construct Heimat both in their texts and in their lives? Central to the texts under consideration is the elusive balance between new or emergent identities and social environments, on the one hand, and the authors’ concern for their ( Jewish) background and history, on the other� I am interested in their efforts to cope with the loss of their old home and to establish a new one, not only as an expression of the socio-political or traditional sense of Heimat but also as a means to satisfy their “genuine emotional needs” (Kaes 166)� Concepts such as identity, hybridity, and belonging have been intensely discussed in connection with migration and minority politics� In the mid-1990s, Homi Bhabha initiated a still ongoing discussion on the fluidity of identity by creating an open space (“third space”) where not only people but also discourses meet (Bhabha 1995)� In this “in-between,” boundaries are dissolved and dialogue is pursued� 1 Bhabhas’s idea of hybridity, then, rejects an essentialized identity and underscores constant change� This means that ethnicity, far from being a permanent and stable condition, is transformed through internal and external influences� It also implies that both the migrant’s position and the position of the majority population have to be redefined� Although Bhabha does not overlook conflict and uneven power relations, he nonetheless emphasizes the creative potential in this third space� Both the “contaminated yet connective tissue” between two groups is present (Bhabha 1998: 30)� In her noteworthy study The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature (2005), Leslie Adelson paints a more critical picture and argues vehemently against the optimistic notion of that world in-between which, in her eyes, infers two intact worlds on either side: [It] becomes conceptually problematic when the conceit is made to function as an analytical paradigm that is effectively incapable of accounting for cultures of migration as historical formations � Additional problems arise when whatever worlds are meant are presumed to be originary, mutually exclusive, and intact, the boundaries between them clear and absolute� Envisioning migrant cultures “between two worlds” as a delimited space where two otherwise mutually exclusive worlds intersect is not especially helpful either, since the presumption originary, essentially intact worlds still applies� (4) Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 349 One world would be the receiving country and the other the migrant’s country of origin� If migrants find themselves in that world between worlds and thus are consequently isolated from the real world, as it were, they are incapable of communication� Adelson writes against this restrictive notion calling it a “cultural fable�” 2 Echoing Arjun Appadurai, she conjures up a post-national world and argues that stable or static worlds do not exist and therefore the notion of “between two worlds” is debatable� She claims that migrants are made stuck in the “in-between” which she neither considers as an innovative nor a productive place but rather describes it as an inexorable or a dead-end position� Not belonging anymore to their place of origin and at the same time being excluded from the new environment, the migrants have to content themselves with that lonely world in-between� It would follow that no stories can be told for story-telling presupposes movement� The in-between is a “spatial configuration […] in which nothing happens” (3)� While Adelson’s reflections are enlightening and very supportive of migrants’ plights and fates, they do not entirely do justice to texts in which the authors themselves put their migrant narrators in an in-between space: Vertlib locates his narrator in a “Zwischenwelt” ( Zwischenstationen 256) and Rabinowich uses the metaphor of two separate worlds that have to be straddled ( Spaltkopf / Splithead 71/ 79)� 3 More interestingly, this Zwischenwelt is indubitably not a static or isolated world but rather serves as a transitional place and is understood as a phase in the narrators’ lives on their way to construct a more permanent place of belonging� Indeed, the German term Zwischenwelt encompasses a wider meaning than the English “world between worlds�” It can designate both a static place and a transitional place� This position implies destabilization of both the place of origin and arrival and prefigures new dimensions (Søren 19)� Since mobility and deterritorialization have become social and cultural norms, the concept of Heimat is changing and taking on multiple meanings� According to Johannes von Moltke, the term is not simply anti-modern and nostalgic (12)� He takes his cues from Anton Kaes and argues that there is more to Heimat than belonging to a nation or nostalgically yearning for an idealized past (Kaes 1999), thus recognizing that it is only human to search for stability and security even in our fast-changing world� Moreover, to long for the old Heimat also indicates that there are positive memories that need not be imagined or sentimental� Vertlib and Rabinowich grapple with these concepts of identity, belonging, and yearning to come to terms with the loss of their original home and to find a new one-- a Heimat , to use that highly charged term� Acknowledging that their place of origin is unstable and has undergone significant changes, even while recognizing that Austria’s history and present culture are wrought with quandaries, 350 Roxane Riegler they are not oblivious to a changing world in general� Nevertheless, they look for stability and certainly suffer because of their uprootedness� In their attempt to create a new room for belonging they do not bypass the Zwischenwelt � Their approach is two-fold: First, they create a space for themselves that is not necessarily a specific place or set of relationships� Contrary to recent claims that increases in migration, mobility, and deterritorialization requires a conceptualization of Heimat as a space rather than a place (Moltke 12), I argue that place remains essential to images of Heimat in the texts by Vertlib and Rabinowich, however critical of the term they may be themselves� While they do perceive Heimat as a space that encompasses global relationships and loyalties that go beyond the confines of small (-minded) Austria, both authors still claim that country as their homeland� Thus the conceptual and continuous tension between space and place cannot entirely be eased� Both authors were born in Leningrad, today’s St� Petersburg, from where their parents migrated to Vienna, Austria, during what is now termed the third wave of Russian emigration (Tichomirova 166)� 4 Vladimir Vertlib was born in 1966; when he was five years old his family left the then-Soviet Union to escape widespread anti-Semitism� The family first stopped in Vienna, only to return and finally settle in the Austrian capital in the eighties after a decade-long journey through different European countries, Israel, and the United States� Julya Rabinowich, born in 1970, came to Vienna in 1977 with her parents and maternal grandmother� Both authors have graduate degrees� Vertlib is an accomplished economist and Rabinowich a trained interpreter for English and Russian� An artist, she also has a degree from the University for Applied Arts in Vienna� Moreover, she took several courses in psychotherapy and worked as an interpreter for refugees� Vertlib has published blogs, articles in newspapers and magazines, narratives as well as several widely read novels� His first major literary text is a sartirical, yet touching narrative Abschiebung (Deportation, 1995) which tells the story of a Russian Jewish family and their plight as unwelcome aliens in the US� As the title indicates, the family is indeed deported� The text that will be of interest for us, however, is Vertlib’s 1999 debut novel Zwischenstationen (Way Stations) which deals with the same family and their search for a new homeland� 5 In an interview with Kirstin Breitenfellner, Vertlib affirms that he did not have the intention to write again about his migrational experience, but the characters knocked on his door to demand more room� A semi-autobiographical text, Zwischenstationen captures the author’s feelings and emotions as well as the atmosphere of the different way stations (69)� Through the fictionalizing of his own experiences, however, the author points beyond his personal life in order to be culturally more relevant (Vertlib 2005: 130—31)� 6 The novel is divided into twelve chapters that can each be read as a Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 351 separate and self-contained story� Each chapter focuses on different aspects of the life of migrants such as friendship among migrant children, loneliness and boredom, exploitation, ethno-centrism, escapism, illegality, education, and coming to terms with the (Holocaust) past (Riegler 129)� As readers, we observe everything through the eyes of the unnamed narrator as he experiences the woes of an erratic life and his attempts to deal with his loneliness and emotional survival� 7 Rabinowich has published several plays that have been performed in Vienna� 8 Her debut novel, Spaltkopf (2009, Splithead 2011), is, like Vertlib’s Abschiebung , Zwischenstationen , and Schimons Schweigen (2012), a story with autobiographical traits� And similarly to Vertlib, she insists in an interview with Brigitte Schwens-Harrant that the novel is not purely autobiographical, expressly in the second half in which she does not identify with all her protagonist’s personality traits (67)� Die Erdfresserin (2012, The Eartheater) deals also with the experience of migration but is, according to the author, purely fictional but inspired by accounts of traumatized migrants (Schwens-Harrant 74—75)� As an undocumented alien in Vienna, the main character must deal with the precarious life of a migrant, trauma, and her ensuing psychosis� 9 In Spaltkopf , two narrators, Mischka and Spaltkopf himself, give an account of the migration of a Russian Jewish family� 10 Whereas Mischka’s perspective is limited to her own personal experiences and fairly self-involved, Spaltkopf maintains a distanced, though far from objective, point of view� An invisible fairytale being, he is used by mother and grand-mother in order to scare children into obedience� This sinister spirit is able to devour thoughts and souls� Throughout the whole story Spaltkopf comments on Mischka’s reflections and provides the readers with additional information, for example, the repressed emotions and facts about ( Jewish) family history� Through the account of both Zwischenstationen and Spaltkopf ideas about Heimat are articulated, and the word or idea is continually redeployed� A brief overview of the origin and meaning of the term Heimat (home, homeland) will demonstrate its complexity� It is a concept with multiple and therefore elusive meanings� Since the introduction of the word Heimat into the German language its meaning has undergone major changes� The word itself was recorded for the first time in the 15 th century and signified, in judicial terms, the place where someone lived and had property� In the 1820s, this term was also applied to the dispossessed� Socio-economic changes in the 19 th century such as industrialization brought a change in meaning, and Heimat began to register as an emotional experience� It became the place where someone was born and for which one became homesick when it had to be exchanged for a new residence� The village or small town one had to leave for the city and factory turned into a 352 Roxane Riegler site of yearning for the past and the good old times� In the 20 th century, it became fraught with mystical meaning emphasizing nationality and race; this notion was especially exploited by the Nazis� After WWII, in an attempt to repress the memory of National Socialism and the murder of millions of Jews and other minority groups, the term Heimat was represented as completely devoid of political content, a site that merely transmitted clichés and outmoded ideals (Huber 1999)� Members of the majority population in Germany and Austria had to deal with destroyed cities and perished family members of their own� Heimat , in the immediate post-war era signified an experience of loss which was filled with nostalgic memories (Kaes)� To those spatial, temporal, and emotional aspects the question of identity was added in the second half of the 20 th century (Larkey), especially in the context of migration (Binder)� Today, Heimat is in essence a conglomerate of these traditional meanings, depending on how accepting or critical one feels toward the idea, and on the socio-political or cultural group to which one belongs� The concept Heimat has become a profoundly contested intellectual space or stage on which competing ideologies are played out and where the term is repeatedly appropriated and exploited� The 2016 Austrian presidential elections serve as a pertinent illustration as two of the candidates represented opposite notions of Heimat. It came as a surprise to the Austrian public that the green candidate Alexander Van der Bellen (The Greens-The Green Alternative) used the term Heimat on his election poster� It read “Heimat braucht Zusammenhalt” (Our homeland needs community/ social cohesion)� Van der Bellen was well aware of the fact that some Austrians might be taken aback by this slogan: liberals, because they generally do not use the word in public discourse and conservatives because they feel they own the idea� On his webpage the green candidate, the child of former WWII refugees, asserts: “Niemand hat das Privileg, Heimat für sich zu vereinnahmen” (No one has the right to claim [the term] Heimat for themselves) (“Van der Bellen will ‘an Österreich glauben’”)� Van der Bellen’s slogan indicates solidarity and cooperation� Showing a happy candidate being as it were hugged by the word “ Heimat ” the picture, too, demonstrates inclusion� 11 Conversely, as can be expected, Norbert Hofer, the presidential candidate of the FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), a nationalist right-wing anti-immigration party, used the term in a restrictive way� On a poster voters saw: “Aufstehen für Österreich� Deine Heimat braucht dich jetzt” (Stand up for Austria� Your homeland needs you now)� Hofer’s catchphrase intimates an imminent threat that needed to be dealt with� Austrians instantly should think of the current refugee crisis in Europe and understand that this presidential hopeful desires to protect them and that they would be included in the effort� Here, too, community is alluded to albeit in a somewhat combative way� Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 353 Given the exclusive and politically conservative interpretations of Heimat , it is no wonder that the idea has come under critical scrutiny and has been defined in terms that dismiss its legitimacy for our contemporary culture� According to Peter Blickle it is an irrational, pre-modern or anti-modern concept, a “strangely elusive idea” that defies enlightened theories ( Heimat 13)� It is linked to an idealized space where no conflicts exist� Heimat is seen as an escapist expression for people who are not able to adjust to a reality that includes an ever-changing, more diverse society; Heimat is a concept for the immature and uneducated, an attempt at unity in a world “where wars and destruction do not exist or are so far away that they do not matter” (62)� Heimat therefore provides “a world where men and women know their roles so perfectly that they come together in due course without strains and crises” (62)� For Blickle, then, the idea of Heimat is as unwarranted as it is restrictive and exclusive� He defines endeavors to create a Heimat for oneself as the “beginning of [a] small, autistic, windowless world in which those who feel the need for the defensive structure of a Heimat begin to spin or imprison themselves” (78)� This achieved and flawed ontological security comes with a price: those on the outside who might threaten that sense of belonging are excluded and ultimately rejected� 12 In a more differentiated and less contemptuous reading of the term, sociologist Nora Räthzel analyzed the responses of participants who articulated their associations with Heimat and foreigners during seminars on racism that she held in Germany and German-speaking towns in Switzerland� She found some unexpected genderand migration-related answers� Most female participants perceived Heimat as highly positive, associating the term with feelings of belonging, security, and warmth� Images like paradise on earth, uninhabited landscapes, houses, and rooms provided a sense of peace for them� Contrary to the dreams of women, men, a bit more realistically, saw conflict, felt anxieties and separation more often but were also more prone to reject Heimat altogether� In her analysis, Räthzel argues that men, too, subscribe to that harmonious place; why else would they reject Heimat if it were not for that utopian space where conflicts should not exist? She writes: “[…] it is a view equally unwilling to see Heimat and conflicts belonging together” (55)� Therefore, both genders, albeit in different ways, perceive Heimat as a “harmonious place of passive enjoyment” (52) where social reality must be suppressed and conflicts ignored� Although ethnic minorities and migrants, much like women, tended to refer to a geographical place much less often than members of the majority did, they nevertheless expressed a search for harmony� According to Räthzel’s findings all except one member of this group thought of Heimat as “being understood, feeling accepted and safe” (55)� On an unconscious level, writes Räthzel, they had internalized the “dominant romantic vision of Heimat ” (56)� They had to 354 Roxane Riegler suppress reality - everyday tensions with the majority population, institutionalized discrimination, in short being marginalized - in order to arrive at that dreamlike place� In their construction of Heimat they were inclined to exclude problems and negative experiences even more so than members of the majority� Since minorities generally subsist at the margins or are (perceived as) excluded from society and public discourse they may resort to dreams in their search of belonging� Räthzel interprets this process as a reaction to the experience of exclusion� Interestingly, minorities not only adopt the romantic image of Heimat but also the idea that Heimat means belonging to a nation, a question that both Vertlib and Rabinowich also pursue� This argument implies that without roots one does not have the right to claim a new place as home� Two factors emerge from Räthzel’s study: If one cannot claim a place as Heimat then one has to become independent of a geographic physical place and depend more on social contacts and acceptance (57)� Research on Heimat demonstrates that its meaning depends on the scholar’s attitude toward the idea� Blickle, for instance, is very critical toward Heimat because he sees the concept in a rather restricted way, reproducing the exclusionary polemic already familiar to the political arena� What we ought to observe is that such a narrowly conceived understanding of Heimat parallels the restrictive and essentialized readings that have been produced within politically conservative and propaganda-like contexts� This occludes the fact that Heimat need not be automatically linked to nation, purity or political stability� Whereas Blickle and Räthzel approach Heimat with great attention to the concept’s construction, artificiality and exclusiveness, others have focused on different aspects and proceed in a more descriptive manner� Notwithstanding their criticism of a politically appropriated meaning they still recognize that people do have “genuine emotional needs” (Kaes 166)� It has been claimed that traditional images of Heimat no longer have a place in today’s migratory world because of the non-existence of an authentic cultural homeland� Heike Henderson suggests that there is no more “place for absolutisms of the pure and authentic” (229)� She does not, however, entirely do away with the concept of Heimat because she, too, recognizes that most people would say that they experience Heimat or attempt to create some form of belonging for themselves, however far in the past (memory) or, for that matter, in the future (hope) it may be; or however different it may be, say, from the understanding of a right-wing political party� And she argues that Heimat “does not necessarily have to be stable and absolute” (229)� In sum, we could argue that the quest for stability is a universal desire� Looking at the well-known pyramid of needs established by psychologist Abraham Maslow (1970) we notice that humans function best if their basic needs are Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 355 met� 13 Once physiological needs are taken care of, higher needs, such as the need for safety, social interaction and respect can be attended to� According to Maslow, certain lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed� Peace, community, love, all contribute to a sense of well-being and belonging� The anthropologist Ina-Maria Greverus approaches Heimat from an essentialist standpoint; her explanation of the concept clarifies some questions� She addresses the notion of Heimat from a universal angle because, for her, belonging to a place and social ties operate together� She takes into account what she calls the “territorial imperative” as “a conditio humana. In this sense, the territorial imperative as a basic human orientation towards a territory offering gratification of needs for safety, activity, and identity is both intentional and based on primary requirements for existence” (18)� Culture provides us, in the words of German writer Bernhard Schlink, with community and belonging, recognition, and protection (49)� Not unlike Greverus, another anthropologist, Beate Binder, underscores that the need for Heimat can be considered as an “anthropological basic constant” (anthropologische Grundkonstante, 4)� She argues that migrants, despite the thwarted history and instrumentalization of the idea, establish spaces of belonging in urban areas, thus changing the original cityscape (7)� In our two texts, the narrators relate their parents’ endeavors to preserve the old home in their apartments: they cook Russian food, serve it on Russian china, brew Russian tea, read Russian literature, and so forth� As authors, Vertlib and Rabinowich grapple with the territorial imperative and demonstrate that the quest for Heimat is indeed a basic constant� In “Wohngespräch” (apartment talk), a series of the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard , they both acknowledge their inherent discomfort� Vertlib claims to have arrived in Salzburg and does not want to move ever again� And yet, the space he feels most at home is the virtual language space ( Sprachraum ), as he puts it, a space with open borders that allows him to walk back and forth freely (“Zu inneren Räumen habe ich keine Beziehung”)� Rabinowich has always lived in Vienna since her arrival from Leningrad� Missing continuity in her life, she tenaciously has made the third Viennese district with its multi-ethnic restaurants and her apartment an anchor, a home� Since her apartment building served as a small transition camp for Jews during the Third Reich it took her much courage and energy to make the apartment her home (“Landidylle mit Autogestank und Stadtidylle nebenan”)� Despite all the stumbling blocks that migration and rejection produce both writers have been unyielding in creating a stable place for themselves� Looking at Heimat from these perspectives, we find that we do not have to abandon the idea altogether or negate its usefulness in today’s ever-changing world� On the one hand, there is the public discourse on Heimat ; this is, as we 356 Roxane Riegler have seen, the interpretation that Blickle and Räthzel view cautiously and critically� However, many people do have a more personal approach to Heimat that echoes the claims made by Greverus and Binder� In a poll in Der Spiegel (German weekly magazine) participants responded thus when asked what they considered their Heimat : on a geographical-territorial level 31 % referred to their place of residence as Heimat , 27 % to their birth place, and 11 % to their country� On a relational level, Heimat signified someone’s family (25 %) or circle of friends (6 %) (qtd� by Schlink 23)� In other words, Heimat constitutes a combination of place and relationships� It seems that these people did not look to a centuries-old, nationalistic and exclusive interpretation, but rather applied the idea to their individual environment as well as their own needs and wants� When my husband and I were in Austria some summers ago, we asked members of my family and several friends what their understanding of Heimat was� Of course, it goes without saying that the results remain quite anecdotal� Nonetheless, we got answers similar to those in the Spiegel poll� Moreover, the people whom we asked were certainly not “autistic” in Blickle’s terms or bound to a distant innocent past� These were people who are acutely aware of conflict, social imperfections and the existence of deficiencies in their own lives� In many cases having lived in the same town or village their whole lives, they felt a strong sense of belonging to their place of residence, language, family and friends� Although they embraced changes in demographics - some are or were married to migrants and have ethnically mixed children - they did not feel that their Heimat was threatened and they clearly exhibited a strong sense of belonging and community� This attitude substantiates the fact that cultural transformation does not necessarily have to lead to the perception of losing one’s Heimat � Although there seems to be a human longing for a kind of ontological security (Binder), it does not follow from this that the idea of Heimat is itself unchanging� Whatever their reasons for or against migrating, most individuals seem to share a desire to build a space where they feel safe and ultimately at home� To be sure, not everyone has the same starting point, and it is much easier for some groups to create a Heimat than for others� Heimat is created over time and with the social and cultural means at the group’s disposal� It is indeed a creative concept, one that underscores the human capacity to adapt to new circumstances� Drawing on findings from critical psychology and cultural studies, Räthzel emphasizes this human capability for agency and that there is a biological basis for learning (46—47)� Migrants have to and do adjust constantly to new circumstances� The majority population is not expected to adjust, but has the same ability� It follows that it is not the impossibility, but rather the unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances that may mark the majority� This is certainly caused by the politically reinforced fear of being overrun by Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 357 foreigners who will supposedly destroy the beloved Heimat � Thus, Blickle’s dislike for the concept is quite understandable� However, the wholesale rejection of Heimat risks concealing its complex political, personal, and literary functions and therefore hinders the kind of cultural analysis that the texts by Vertlib and Rabinowich deserve� At first glance, Vertlib and Rabinowich and their narrators seem to fit the image of the postmodern transcultural hybrid nomadic subject that is not dependent on a home (Boa and Palfreyman 203)� They are polyglot, able to function in a variety of cultural settings, highly successful in school, presumably integrated in Austrian culture and society as adults, while still maintaining ties to Jewish and Russian culture, and perhaps switching from one culture to the other, or even inhabiting both or more cultures simultaneously� And yet, I posit that one cannot overlook their narrators’ attempts to find a home in a specific geographical place, and the tension produced in the texts is palpable as they struggle to establish a place of belonging and prioritize their loyalties� They do not wish to live in an in-between that “happy place of hybridity,” as Adelson has called Bhabha’s concept (5)� And to be sure, it is not a happy place for them� Moreover, there is a clear effort on their part to solidify their transcultural and fluid situation by investigating both their point of departure and arrival� At first, they yearn for their place of origin, St� Petersburg, but when their longing is shattered, they attempt to make a home for themselves in Austria� There they feel themselves to be outsiders, yet wish to be accepted and integrated� In both cases, they seek acceptance from their social environment and intuitively know that dialogue and exchange are fundamental for a sense of belonging, including dialogical encounters with the majority� 14 Recognizing that they do not exist as isolated beings, they are painfully aware of their communal selves (Bredella 19—21)� The two narrators first have to solve the problem of past experiences and the old Heimat � “Primary attachment” as Greverus puts it, refers either to a place or to a group of people (16) and a person’s memory certainly plays a fundamental role in constructions of belonging� For it is by looking back or through absence that we become more deeply aware of Heimat � 15 This is especially true of migrants and exiles� Only when we leave our place of “primary attachment” do we realize that we had a place where we belonged and that we miss and, perhaps, idealize the lost home� That is exactly what happens to our two narrators� Both return to St� Petersburg after years of absence to rejoin the old Heimat with its familiar places and people� Vertlib’s narrator returns to visit his uncle, aunt, cousin and, just weeks before her death, his grand-mother� Looking back, he tries to evoke warm feelings from his childhood, reminiscing about his days in pre-school, the protection he found hiding under his grandmother’s 358 Roxane Riegler skirts� These memories are serene in nature� As a child, the narrator was largely unaware of his family’s restricted life and, at first, does not remember much negativity� But the flickering positive images are swiftly undermined by more sobering memories of a police raid in his family’s apartment and friends who pretended not to know the Jewish family out of fear of repercussions from the regime ( Z 15—17)� During his visit in St� Petersburg, it becomes impossible for the protagonist to reconnect with his old surroundings� But even at the outset, the differences between Eastern and Western Europe are overwhelming for the young man and the now westernized narrator feels increasingly alienated� Furthermore, the text depicts an incident in the subway to demonstrate that the image of the old Heimat has become more than fragile� As the narrator and his relatives witness a heated anti-Semitic discussion among several passengers in the subway, they feel more and more intimidated and do not have the courage to intervene� Luckily, an older man seizes one of the prejudiced and aggressive interlocutors and throws him out of the car ( Z 19)� Both this relatively insignificant occurrence and his re-emerging memories remind the narrator why his family had to leave the Soviet Union in the first place� The father was a Refusenik , a Zionist, and therefore considered as an enemy of the state� Tired of anti-Semitic sentiment and discrimination, many Jews applied for emigration in the 1970s� Now, as the narrator puts the puzzle together, the old times suddenly do not seem so good anymore; the narrator asks himself: “What am I doing here” ( Z 20) as he ponders on what happened in the subway� 16 A few days after his arrival, Soviet president Boris Yeltsin dissolves parliament, an act that could cause political instability and undeniably creates fear of pogroms in the Jewish community� All in all, the narrator’s stay in St� Petersburg turns out to be a less than positive experience� And as he leaves Russia in the direction of Finland, he buys a candy bar, gets sick, and knows that he won’t return� Likewise, Rabinowich’s Mischka, the main narrator of Spaltkopf , goes back to St� Petersburg where she visits an aunt after the death of her paternal grand-mother� Mischka intentionally puts on her punk clothes, generating open rejection in the bus that takes her and her aunt from the airport to the city� A woman yells at her and demands that she leave St� Petersburg immediately� Her appearance is perceived as an offense and a shame ( Sp 170/ 195)� Much like Zwischenstationen’ s narrator, Mischka feels utterly alienated� But it is also her reluctance that maintains the distance between her and the other family members who have become like strangers to her� Conceivably to protect herself emotionally, she describes them as one would describe cartoon characters: deformed and ridiculous� And as she meets her former roommates from the communal apartment, she experiences only disappointment� Neither acknowledged nor Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 359 welcomed by her childhood friend Lenka, she knows that “[w]hen the door closes behind us […] I’ll never come here again�” ( Sp 184/ 212)� In hindsight, Mischka looks at her visit to St� Petersburg as a failed search for her lost Heimat � She reflects: “Later, I will stubbornly look for my Heimat like a stupid dog that has been taken several kilometers away and persistently tries to run back in the wrong direction” ( Sp 23/ 22—23)� 17 Despite the desire to reconnect with her old surroundings Rabinowich’s protagonist has to resign herself to the fact that her home will be elsewhere� Moreover, she is also unable to follow her parents in their attempts to live in Vienna and (imagined) St� Petersburg at the same time� Whereas they bring St� Petersburg with them to Vienna and cling to their memories, the daughter runs the risk of being torn in two� Each city, St� Petersburg and Vienna, fights for primacy and Mischka recognizes that she has “not mastered the splits” ( Sp 71/ 79)� Here, the notion of a fixed world in between is not precise enough to describe Mischka’s situation� The metaphor of the splits indicates that being located between St� Petersburg and Vienna is not a permanent possibility� The narrator has to make a choice since remaining suspended between two cultures is too painful and will ultimately damage her� Both narrators suffer disillusionment in St� Petersburg� On the one hand, they are now foreigners in their birth city because they have been socialized either in different countries like Vertlib’s narrator or solely in Austria like Mischka� They have indeed adopted much of the Western lifestyle and many of its cultural values, so much so that their visits are over-fraught with emotions to the point that they have strong physical reactions in the form of nausea to St� Petersburg� They have difficulties connecting with their relatives and struggle with the great distance that separates them� Neither of them is able to transcend the initial culture shock� During their visit there is no reconnection, no bonds are reestablished, no relationships deepened� The old Heimat is not viable anymore, rather, it has become a foreign place in which neither of the narrators wishes to live� Let us now consider for a moment Vienna or Austria as a possible new Heimat � Both narrators are eager to belong to the new country, to find some means of becoming part of their new environment� The reasons why this process is neither smooth nor definitive are multi-faceted� Despite their outward success in the new country, the narrators remain deracinated, partly because they are migrants with a different cultural background, partly because Austrian society views them with suspicion to say the least� 18 They still have to acquire the language and orient themselves� For both narrators, the adjusting process is an absolute tour de force � For Mischka, this non-belonging is also grounded in the fear of losing her identity� Feeling the pull of Austrian culture, Mischka understands the risk of losing herself even as she hopes to become attached� Splithead says about her: “She hopes she can 360 Roxane Riegler grow into the new country� Then once again, she’s tormented by the thought that it could close seamlessly around her crush her” ( Sp 58/ 64)� Conversely, while the narrator of Zwischenstationen describes himself as a transcultural world citizen who has found a new home with a hybrid identity, he is reminded by an acquaintance that Austria played a significant role in the administration of the Holocaust� And as he tries to overlook that fact, he is forced to confront the realities of cultural and historical continuity and must keep an emotional and intellectual distance from his new home country ( Z 276—80)� The feeling of homelessness or not-belonging is also caused by an Austrian society reluctant to welcome migrants� Interestingly, in Zwischenstationen, it is more their Russianness rather than their Jewish background that causes non-acceptance on the part of the Austrians� Pushed by his parents’ ambitions, Vertlib’s protagonist works relentlessly at his academic success in an effort to overcome his status as an outsider� “Don’t you believe that they will ever forgive you for who you are� If you want to make it to the top you have to be a lot better than they and when you fall you fall deeper” ( Z 163), admonishes his mother� Mischka wants to free herself from the stigma of foreignness and distinguishes herself from other migrant children to close the cultural gap between herself and the Austrian students� She acquires German in record time, finds an Austrian friend whom she follows around, and “bitterly despise[s] minorities” [Minderheitenhasser] ( Sp 65/ 73)� However, she is well aware of her problematic position� Lucidly she affirms: “I want to unload the contempt I feel for myself onto others as cheaply as possible” ( Sp 65/ 73)� The transcultural identity, the blurred lines between the self and the foreign, is subjected to a long and difficult process� Notwithstanding cultural differences, the beneficial role the majority could play is evident� Cultural differences (real and perceived) exert such a powerful influence because migrants are so critically received and stereotyped� “There are several ways of crossing cultural boundaries� Among them are conversations, stories and common concerns,” writes Bredella (25)� Precisely this dialogical approach would have helped our protagonists, together with myriads of other migrants, to feel at home more quickly and, ultimately, more fully� Instead both the protagonists and migrants generally must often deal with rejection or at least stereotyping behavior that prevents dialogue� Even if the protagonists make friends in school, they still are not accepted as friends but rather perceived as exotic Russians� To escape from the ever-demanding reality and to deal with their non-belonging both narrators immerse themselves into a world of daydreaming� When they feel utterly alone or threatened by the outside world, including their family, they retreat into a space where no conflicts exists� These are very sensual spaces and physically perceived� Void of other human beings, these spaces offer solace� Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 361 Räthzel asserts: “In order to construct a harmonious image of Heimat , any trace of real experiences must be erased” (55)� It is an imaginary space, a dream world� Räthzel explains that the idealized description of Heimat can be understood as a reaction to the experience of exclusion� The narrators’ daydreams bespeak that “romantic vision” (Räthzel 56) of Heimat � Throughout the novel the narrator of Zwischenstationen attempts to dissociate himself from the so-called real world� He is an avid, even undiscriminating reader who seeks to lose himself in the world of fiction and mythology� The text reads: “I found the land of happiness in the distant past, in ancient Greece, in classical Athens” (258)� The narrator also daydreams and creates a fictitious counter-world� For instance, in the midst of social turmoil, the family finds itself once more in Israel searching for a place of belonging� Those tensions are too much for the young boy to bear and he creates an ideal refuge: Then I opened the window and with pleasures breathed in the southern aroma of oranges� […] The sky above the plantation now had a reddish-yellow color� The houses of Rischon-le-Zion had disappeared behind a curtain of haze and it seemed to me that the whole world consisted of fragrant oranges, animosities had ceased to exist, every argument, every fight had become superfluous� ( Z 111—12) This place lacks people and buildings, leaving nothing to remind the narrator of his conflict-ridden life� Not only are the oranges fragrant and alluring, but they neither demand attention nor expect any kind of comment or behavior� Of course, the narrator cannot remain there� But there is this perception of a timeless space, a refuge where he finds some solace� Interestingly, when the narrator of Schimons Schweigen returns to Rischon-le Zion the image of that beautiful serene place is dismantled (87—88)� He finds nothing that reminds him, even remotely, of his space of retreat� That which offered him a brief time of peace is now long gone� Mischka, too, retreats into another world� First the world of writing and art: “In foreign spheres” she pens “complex fantasy novels” ( Sp 74/ 82)� The text links her inner emigration with her parents’ fear of losing her on her way to adulthood� Her body - she gains a great deal of weight - serves as barrier both from the outside world and her own awakening sexuality� The “balancing act” ( Sp- 74/ 82) between her old homeland and Austria as well as her vacillating between childand adulthood become the mechanisms for creating a self� Spaltkopf reflects: “She wants to go both forward and back” ( Sp 82/ 91)� Even the title of her first work indicates her position in that Zwischenwelt : “Marillenknödelessen in Sibirien - ein echter Reißer” (Eating apricot dumplings in Siberia - a real page turner, Sp 109/ 124)� 19 Numerous references to a world between worlds underscore in different degrees the fact that Mischka is not yet able to decide where she 362 Roxane Riegler belongs or will belong� The ironic self-deprecating remark “a real page turner” also insinuates the impossibility of bringing together two separate worlds� A particularly apt and striking metaphor for that space in-between is employed by the narrator at the beginning of the novel and demonstrates her position: “Faced with the choice between two stools I take the bed of nails” ( Sp 7/ 7)� At a literal level, the difference between a chair and a bed of nails suggests that sitting on a chair is much more comfortable than lying on a bed of nails� But as Mischka has to choose between two homes, only to end up in a third more challenging and even dismal place - after all who wants to have a nail of beds as their resting place? - the reader realizes the resilience and strength required to endure “nails�” Of course, it goes without saying that lying on a bed of nails engenders pain� Rabinowich insists in a conversation with Julia Schilly that that kind of pain has its positive sides (Schilly)� Ultimately, only a fakir can lie on nails without getting hurt� Only someone, by virtue of experience and training, is able to face challenging circumstances and emerge victorious� Thus the bed of nails will - hopefully - be transformed into something more tolerable; something other than that “world between worlds” where someone feels caught and imprisoned� In the end, having survived the instability of migration and rejection, both narrators emerge from their predicaments strengthened� There is no denying the painful and distressing sides of their experience—one wishes for them, and their creators for that matter, a less conflicted childhood and youth—but it is their resilience that ultimately saves them� The same experiences have also allowed them to create a Heimat for themselves� If the need for Heimat is a conditio humana , to restate Greverus’ argument, how then do Vertlib and Rabinowich answer the loaded questions “Where do I belong? ” (Greverus 12) or “Aber wo ist die wahre Heimat? ” ( Z 40)� How does the so-called transcultural nomadic subject with multiple identities negotiate Heimat ? In Spiegel im fremden Wort (Mirror in Foreign Words, 2007), a collection of lectures about literature, Vertlib argues that migrants find themselves in a situation of permanent adjustment and justification� He also states: “I feel only whole when I know that I will never be able to feel whole� … This deficiency is precisely my wholeness� This is probably my opportunity” (qtd� in “Die Fähigkeit zur Toleranz”)� Here we also witness the dilemma in which our narrators find themselves� Understanding only too well that they belong neither to their original nor to their present culture, they still settle and create a Heimat of their own, something they can call home or a space of belonging . This is what Adelson has called “a scalar understanding of interactive contexts - as opposed to a dichotomous model of discrete worlds” (11)� The negotiating of Heimat is just that: negotiating� The result is a dynamic space with enough room that allows for creativity and innovation� Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 363 At first, for Vertlib’s narrator, reading and his parents are the only constants in his life� Due to the family’s continual leaving and arriving, the family is unable to build strong relationships with co-workers, neighbors, or acquaintances� When he observes a coworker in a streetcar in Vienna he envies her for her settled and seemingly balanced life� The text reads: “This woman did not have to worry about her sense of belonging� She had her place in the world� I, however, had to think of my phantasies during my youth” and his longing where he could find a Heimat ( Z 288)� Although reading and intellectual pursuits serve as a space where he feels at home, Vertlib’s narrator still operates with the notion of place . He realizes that he has become Austrian over the years, a Viennese who has adopted Viennese condescending attitudes towards Austrians in the “Provinz�” When, at the end of his odyssey, we see him traveling to Salzburg to live with his girlfriend, he foresees another change, namely the transformation to become a “Salzburger” who loves the mountains and mocks the Viennese for their presumptuous viewpoints ( Z 291)� It is not without irony that the narrator buys a Tyrolian hat at his arrival in Salzburg and starts to yodel as he leaves the train station ( Z 292)� He is well aware that a single city or even country can only inadequately serve as a home� For a migrant and Jew in Austria Heimat does not come naturally� Rabinowich’s Mischka, seems to find her Heimat in Vienna without resorting to irony, yet just like the Zwischenstationen narrator she must also remain in an ambivalent position� A remark about her daughter’s position explains: “I take credit for that […], and I am proud of it� I gave her the gift of firm ground beneath her feet, roots that would not sprout for me” ( Sp 164/ 189)� Through her daughter she has become attached to Vienna� Rabinowich concludes her novel with Mischka standing in front of her aunt’s window overlooking St� Petersburg� In her mirror image the narrator beholds also Spaltkopf’s face� Hardly recognizable, wobbling Spaltkopf frames Mischka’s features in the window� Now that she can see him he has lost his power over her� We already know from an earlier comment by Mischka’s mother that once Spaltkopf is visible he has lost his power over his victim ( Sp 18/ 19)� He cannot suck out Mischka’s soul anymore� Her daughter may be the key for Mischka’s victory over Spaltkopf and fundamental to her construction of Heimat � Heimat in literature is tied to hope, longing, and dreaming� It does not necessarily represent accessibility and the daily life but rather, according to German writer Bernhard Schlink, something unfulfilled or unfulfillable (27)� This is particularly true for migrants who, by definition, do not have a fixed location and an emotional environment to call their home� And yet, they seek to feel at home in a place� One need not exclude the other� Binder suggests that Heimat can have both meanings: it can be both a concrete place and a cultural concept 364 Roxane Riegler (space)� Imagining Heimat is a resource to find a home in a place as well as in a space (Binder 16)� Heimat as Schlink emphasizes is also a non-place, a utopia (32)� Vertlib and Rabinowich would probably agree with all those statements, since they clearly attempt to create Heimat in various ways . Vertlib (2000) reflects frequently on his constructions of home and homeland� In his autobiographical essay “Die tägliche Herausforderung” (The daily challenge) he locates himself in the In-Between, in the “hallways and doorways of the world” (228)� At the same time he claims that Austria is his home now� Cognizant of this ambivalence he compares his image of Heimat with the image of a shadow� The image changes its appearance depending on the way one looks at it� It is the change in perspective that is an integral part of Vertlib’s concept of Heimat � Situated between the warm and cuddly [ kuschelig ] constructedness of Austria and the knowledge that it has to remain fiction, the author has accepted this incongruity� He writes in the brief essay “Jude, wie interessant”: “I feel at home in this country now and have paid a great price; often I had to betray and question myself and had to redefine constantly my rapport to my environment” (Vertlib 2000: 232)� Vertlib continues that he feels both close and removed from Austria (233)� A brief article by the author on his life in Salzburg also elucidates his dilemma: Heimat for him emerges not as a place but in fact as a conglomerate of places and people� Unlike the participants in the Spiegel poll, for Vertlib home is by necessity not confined to a specific place and people who do not live to far from it� Salzburg is “neutral territory” for him, unconnected to memories of childhood, emigration and “the wounds suffered thereby” (Vertlib 2007: 110)� Heimat for the author means a “‘community of like-minded individuals […] into which one could retreat as if to a sheltering preserve’ [and] extends across many cities and lands� It encompasses Jews and non-Jews alike� And I have been able to establish contact with this community in Salzburg as well” (110)� 20 Although his life has been determined by change, he says about Salzburg that he has “oddly enough arrived” and does not wish to move from there anymore (“Zu inneren Räumen habe ich keine Beziehung”)� Therefore, notwithstanding his proclaimed global citizenship, Vertlib always returns to the question whether Austria can be his Heimat � And although the author uses the term Zwischenwelt in Zwischenstationen, one arrives at the understanding that Austria has become his home by default� In a conversation with Wolfgang Malik, the author states that he actively participates in the cultural life in Austria, he feels connected to that country, prefers the Austrian variety of German, is married to a native Austrian and has adopted much of what one would call the Austrian mentality� Again, there is no definite answer� He concludes that “a certain distance and a latent distrust of Austria and the Austrians probably will always exist” (Malik 21)� [Eine gewisse Distanz und ein latentes Misstrauen Österreich und Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 365 den Österreichern gegenüber werden wohl immer bleiben]� “Yes and no,” argues Vertlib in the same interview when asked whether Austria is the location of his Heimat (21) and adds that there is no such thing as an ideal place (22)� His background as a migrant has sensitized him not only to his own personal definition of Heimat but also to changes in the Austrian and European socio-political landscape and he therefore expresses great solidarity for the precarious situation of immigrants in Austria� This seems to be the fate of migrants� Their needs for safety and for a sense of belonging must at times pertain to an unidentified future� At the present Heimat has this notion of incompleteness as adjusting to the host culture occurs slowly and probably partially, due also to the fact Austrian society perceives even adjusted migrants as foreigners (Malik 22)� Rabinowich also senses this paradox� Spaltkopf reads: “I am tired� I am not at home� I have arrived” ( Sp 10/ 7)� Although she seems to be at the end of her journey, there is no home to speak of� Rabinowich maintains in a conversation with Daniela Kainer that one is more mobile without a stable Heimat � Conversely, she states in that very same interview that she feels more at home in Austria than anywhere else in the world� She calls herself “a wild blend [Mischung] from the East” who has created for herself a rural idyllic place in the third district in Vienna (“Landidylle mit Autogestank”)� In this Viennese neighborhood, the author has found a place where she feels that she belongs, the quintessential romantic Heimat. On her personal website Rabinowich describes her move to Vienna in the following terms: “1977-- uprooted and repotted” (entwurzelt und umgetopft)� Uprootedness suggests force and violence, something that is being done to the individual rather than a self-initiated move� In this double phrase, two locations are invoked: the original home and the new one� By using the passive voice Rabinowich indicates that her move to Vienna was involuntary� However, the repotting is in the long run beneficial for the plant� There will be more room and more opportunity to grow� Neither Zwischenstationen nor Spaltkopf ends on a note of discouragement� The narrators seem to be able to live with the incongruities in their lives as the tension remains between Heimat as self-created space and Heimat as physical place� The two novels as well as the authors’ observations demonstrate that these two concepts can exist simultaneously� Moreover, they defy those definitions of Heimat that are used for self-serving and exclusionary political propaganda� The authors are well aware of the impact a national ethno-centric concept of Heimat exercises on the majority population� At the same time they undermine a naïve public discourse by expressing their need for a place to call home where that longing can be satisfied, if only intermittently� But they also warn against the skepticism of critics like Blickle and Räthzel, for example, since for our authors the desire for Heimat alone justifies their search, and invests it with value� 366 Roxane Riegler Notes 1 While the term and concept are not Bhabha’s creation, he was certainly instrumental in sparking the discussion� For an in-depth discussion of the term’s history, see Bhabha’s seminal work The Location of Culture (1994)� 2 Adelson borrows that term from literary historian Laura Brown (2001)� 3 Zwischenstationen will be quoted as Z and Spaltkopf / Splithead as Sp � The first page number refers to the German, the second to the English edition� 4 The first wave occurred after the October Revolution of 1917 and encompassed persons with the wrong social status or who were ideologically opposed to the political values of the Revolution� The emigrants of the second wave left their country during or shortly after World War II either because they were deported as forced laborers or prisoners of war by the Germans or they left on their own accord because they did not agree with the Soviet regime� At any rate, they did not return after the war out of fear of repercussions (Tichomirova 166)� 5 I am using David Burnett’s translation of the novel’s title here although Zwischenstationen has not been translated in its entirety� 6 Vertlib’s subsequent texts have no more autobiographical features but still deal with Jewish history and identity: Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur (Rosa Masur’s Remarkable Memory , 2001), Der letzte Wunsch (The Last Wish, 2003)� Am Morgen des zwölftenTages (On the Morning of the Twelfth Day, 2009); all were published by Deuticke, Vienna� Embedded in a love story between a German and a Muslim, this last story is dedicated to the differences between Occident and Orient but also highlights communalities between the two cultural traditions� Schimons Schweigen (Schimon’s Silence, 2012), however, revisits the narrator’s / author’s struggle with identity and belonging� Vertlib’s most recent novel Viktor hilft (2018) revisits the Russian-Jewish migration of the seventies and links it with the current refugee crisis� 7 For a good socio-literary contextualization and analysis of Zwischenstationen and Abschiebung see Dagmar Lorenz’ essay� 8 In Rabinowich’s short plays, refugees and migrants attempt to find their way in a new country (Austria)� For a complete list of Rabinowich’s plays, see her homepage� 9 Herznovelle (2011) and Krötenliebe (2016) do not address migration but rather psychologically tense and multi-layered relationships� 10 The description of Spaltkopf is so imaginatively done that even Russian readers of the novel believed that he is a real Russian fairytale figure� But Rabinowich made him entirely up as she told Brigitte Schwens-Harrant (68)� Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich: Creating a Heimat of One’s Own 367 11 Interestingly enough, a subsequent version of the posters, showed Van der Bellen in the same pose but without any text� The word Heimat had disappeared� Conceivably, despite Van der Bellen’s commitment to Heimat , his election managers thought it would discourage non-conservative voters� 12 Blickle has since softened his approach to Heimat and recognizes that the new Heimat concept can also be lived at an individual level although he still seems to reject Heimat as a physical place (2013)� 13 A graphic representation of Maslow’s ideas can be found on numerous websites (hierarchy of needs)� 14 For the role of human relationships and belonging see Taylor� 15 Jean Améry, an Austrian Jew who emigrated to Belgium in 1938, takes a profound look at what (a lost) Heimat means or cannot mean to him (71—100)� 16 All translations of Vertlib’s texts and Rabinowich’s statements-- with the kind help of Joshua Easterling-- are my own� 17 Here I am not following the English translation for I think it is better to keep the German word Heimat instead of homeland, and kilometers instead of miles� 18 Neither Vertlib nor Rabinowich addresses the question of being an intellectual or artist and that their isolation may stem also from that fact� 19 Apricot dumplings are considered essential to Austrian cuisine� They are a sweet main dish and very popular in the summer� 20 In contrast to Vertlib’s endeavors to create a Heimat for himself, Uta Larkey discusses émigrés who reject the idea altogether; 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