Belonging

Summary

The German word Geborgenheit – that deep and infinitely warm sense of safety and security, comfort and trust, loving protection and being taken care of that constitutes the feeling of belonging – is one of the most powerful emotions, albeit one difficult to translate into other languages. Geborgenheit is primarily formed in private spaces, especially within the family, but some also find it in language, literature or nature. Others simply associate it with Heimat, home, another emotionally laden concept, which seems to be a primarily private matter. This chapter though explores the political dimension of Geborgenheit and Heimat. It becomes an issue whenever a threat appears, especially in wartime, when soldiers go into the field under the banner of their endangered homeland and seek to protect the place and social context to which they felt they belong. Beyond the narrow horizon of each individual, that is, the region, family and cultural environment in which they had grown up, the feeling can also be projected to and from the fatherland or the nation. This chapter also explores the question of how being absent from home feels and translates into political action, namely by millions of refugees, expellees and migrants.