Heimat Open Access

Abstract

Heimat
By Alicia Marie Brandewie

My collection explores questions of memory and history through my personal relationship with my maternal grandmother and the public experience of the Donauschaben Germanic people during and after WWII. I utilize the relationship with my grandmother to test the barriers that separated us in her lifetime: language, age, and mental illness. These poems discover how maternal relationships, inheritance, and heritage can supersede those boundaries. The single example of my family's experience expands to the public, collective plight of the Donauschaben. My poems bear witness to their history, returning this small but complex element to the larger conversation surrounding the war. As a member of the postmemory generation - those born after an event but who still feel its influence through their predecessors - I complicate the distinction between perpetrator and victim. My poems seek to rectify an atrophy of memory - at both a personal and public level.

Heimat is both a personal journey and a public memorial. Art and history interplay to explore the emotions of the individual and the empathy that can unite a population. Interlaced throughout is my maturation as a person and as a poet. My poetry enables me to not only face what haunts the past, but to preserve and encapsulate its beauty and positive influence. Among loss and destruction are the gifts from one generation to the next, transcending language, time, disease, and even death.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction...1

Omen...7
Ekphrastic...8
Fettle, 1929...9
Elocution...11
Zinzinnati...12
The Beitz Family, 1934...13
In The Closets the Hangers Rattled Like Bones...14
Osteoporosis...16
Too...17
Schooling...18
Candid...20
Surname...21
Light Carol...22
Mother of Those Who Were Driven Out...23

The Pfaffer...26

Circulation...40
Regime...41
Eclipse...42
Pearls...43
Emulsion...44
Paramnesia...45
Antecedents...46
Oriens...47
Überstezen: from Über, Across, and Stezen, to Place...48
American Pastime...49
Practical...50
Cognition...52
Epiphany...53
Heimat...54
Conception...56

Notes...57

About this Honors Thesis

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Emory College
Department	English and Creative Writing
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, General History, General Women's Studies
Keyword	Maternal lineage History World War II Memory Poetry
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Trethewey, Natasha, Emory University
Committee Members	Lancaster, Marianne, Emory University Covey, Bruce, Emory University Young, Kevin, Emory University

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