Product Details

• Actors: Marita Breuer, Kurt Wagner, Rüdiger Weigang, Eva Maria Schneider, Karin Rasenack
• Producers: Edgar Reitz, Hans Kwiet, Joachim von Mengershausen
• Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: German (Unknown)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Facets
• DVD Release Date: August 30, 2005
• Run Time: 925 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0009ZE944
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,189 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Heimat - A Chronicle of Germany" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Heimat isn't just (just!) a great motion picture--it's one of the richest, most deeply satisfying life-experiences the movies ever afforded. Conceived for West German television and divided into 11 feature-length chapters, Edgar Reitz's film begins in 1919 with the return of a soldier from the Great War to his hometown of Schabbach, in the northwestern corner of Germany, a rural region known as the Hunsrück. It will end some 16 hours (in screen time) and 63 years later, having refracted the history of modern Germany through the experiences of the people--especially, but by no means exclusively, one extended family, the Simons--living in and connected to that village. Not that the film unreels as a didactic history lesson. We come to know intimately dozens of sharply imagined characters whose lives, personalities, and allegiances shift and deepen across a broad expanse of time and event. Reitz and co-writer Peter Steinbach never force these characters into unnatural dramatic or symbolic poses. Some of the most telling truths emerge out of the corner of one's eye, as it were, from the patient accumulation of unobtrusive yet heartbreakingly beautiful detail. Few films have held the particular and the universal in such eloquent equipoise.

To cite just one example: On an evening in 1924, a German-American flyer sets his small plane down in a field near Schabbach. The following day, as he prepares to continue his journey, he invites Paul (the returning warrior) up for a brief spin, and there's an almost metaphysical thrill to the moment: thanks to the new technological wonder of the aeroplane, Paul is about to see his village as no native ever has, and Schabbach is about to be placed in relation to the rest of the universe as it has never been placed before. They take off, and almost immediately, just when we expect a transcendent Big Moment, Paul's attention is diverted from the panorama by the sight of a dark woman wheeling a baby carriage along a country road. He thinks he knows who it is--someone who has caught his imagination and led him to dream of an alternative destiny for himself. Down!, he urges the pilot. Yet returned to home ground, running after the woman as the plane takes off again in the background to disappear forever, he discovers it's not the woman he thought it was after all. And so two Big Moments have slipped away, and life goes ineluctably on.

So does history, though the citizens of Schabbach see very little of History directly. The Führer who seizes the imagination of some and implicates all in his vision remains a voice on the radio, a face in a frame on the wall. Even when one of the Simons visits Berlin as a low-level Nazi Party apparatchik, neither he nor the camera investigates the glow of a torchlight rally outside the window of the room where he makes love to his future wife. By the same token, the America toward which some members of the Simon family yearn is only a carefully memorized and recited postal address and, for one character who does get there, the Statue of Liberty glimpsed through the one pane in a window whose other panes have been blocked.

Heimat means homeland, and the homeland or heartland film was a national genre encouraged by Propaganda Minister Goebbels during the Hitler years (at one point two of the characters in Heimat go to see another movie called Heimat!). Reitz's film, so free of anything resembling melodrama, adopts a plain, unhurried visual approach that could almost be mistaken for documentary; yet it's a subtly stylized experience from beginning to end, with its interlayering of glowing color and pearly monochrome (sometimes within a single scene), epic detachment and discreet intimacy. The storytelling, too, is subtle, true to the rhythms of real life: characters who seem key to the narrative drift out of it never to be seen again, or perhaps to return, all but unrecognizable, years later; other characters who seem minor and incidental may come to assume remarkable significance and poignancy. Throughout, Marita Breuer as Maria, a young, lovely bride who becomes a matriarch by default, limns a character of quiet dignity and authority who remains the heart of the film, and of Schabbach, even after she has passed away. This film constitutes a definition and celebration of the idea of community, of having and sharing a place in the world. And once you've experienced it, lived with it, you'll feel part of its community as well. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

Edgar Reitz’s monumental 11-part series Heimat tells the story of Schabbach, a German village in the Hunruck region, from 1919 to 1982. The story unfolds through the eyes of Maria Simon as she marries, raises her sons, and grows old while Germany changes around her. The Simon family, like the rest of the German people, endure the hard times after WWI, struggle with the rise and fall of Nazism and WWII, and then prosper with the rebuilding of the country after the war. Despite the film’s sweeping scope of history, the tone is intimate as Reitz pays attention to the smallest details of daily life--for it is those moment that are the most memorable in retrospect.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this Facets Video release... Get the Region 2 Version, August 25, 2005

By 

dooby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heimat - A Chronicle of Germany (DVD)

Heimat or Homeland tells the history of Germany through the eyes of the extended multi-generational Simon family who hail from the fictional rural village of Schabbach in the Hunsrück.

It is a great TV series, one of the few that can truly be called epic. The original 16 hour long miniseries eventually spawned 2 sequels to form the Heimat Trilogy which runs for a total of 54 hours. This present release is the original 16 hour miniseries now also known as Heimat I, and essentially follows the life of Maria Simon from the age of 17 in the aftermath of the First World War, through the rise of Nazism, the destruction of the Second World War, the rebuilding of Germany and its subsequent prosperity. It spans the years from 1919 to 1982 and ends with the passing of Maria. Filmed in 1984 for German TV, it features over 140 speaking roles and has literally a cast of thousands. Heimats II and III chronicle the life of Maria's son and take us through German reunification and into the new millennium. Throughout it seamlessly marries the epic sweep of history with the personal and intimate lives of its participants.

The original 16 hour Heimat won the FIPRESCI Prize (awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics) at the 1984 Venice Film Festival. Its sequel, the 26 hour long "Die Zweite Heimat" (Heimat II) took home the Special Jubilee Prize at the 1992 Venice Film Festival.

This monumental series certainly deserves a lot better than what Facets Video has provided. The Facets release comes with a soft, blurry picture. Colors are washed out. It is like watching a video tape. The reason is that it was transferred from a Beta cam video source. The picture quality is in short horrendous. To top it off, the large English subtitles are not removable. They are permanently burnt onto the film.

There is a Region 2 version released in November 2004 (on Tartan Video). It is superior in every way imaginable and despite its higher price is the preferred choice. The picture quality there is superb because it was mastered from the original film source. The image is clear and sharp. Colors are rich and vibrant. The English subtitles are optional and can be removed. It is treated in a way that befits this grand epic. The presentation is also so much more attractive; it comes in the form of a thick hardcover book with dark leather binding and gilt edges. You can see a review and comparison of both versions at [...]. Avoid this Facets release. The Region 2 version is still available from Amazon UK although it is supposed to be a limited release. Don't be swayed by the cheaper Facets version. It does not do justice to this monumental work. Get the original. Keep in mind that your DVD player must be able to play back Region 2 discs and your system must have native PAL capability. German and UK programs are all recorded in PAL format, not the standard American NTSC.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Experiencing History ... Again?, February 12, 2003

By 

MarmiteMan (Norwich, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heimat : A Chronicle of Germany [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There's no denying this, but I had heard of Edgar Reitz's 1984 magnum opus but paid little heed to this 923-minute arthouse epic upon its release and the various reviews accompanying it. Then in 1992, completely Unemployed/able, bankrupt (both financially and spiritually) and [upset] as friends went out for drinks/girls/A Good Time on a Saturday night, as one does ... I thought I'd give this much-vaunted German drama a go.

The first TV episode (of eleven) was two hours long and I anticipated my friends returning somewhat worse for drink during it ... But they did not return, which was fortunate as ... I watched open-mouthed with wondrous appreciation of the sheer and heart-warming brilliance of a simple tale of everyday vicissitudes and emotions spanning sixty-three years of a small Hunsrück village's history, most of it seen through the eyes of Maria (Marita Breuer). Slow-moving it certainly is, with many of the black & white and colour outdoor scenes carefully composed tableaux ... but it was soooo captivating ...

Many languages and cultures have words or concepts that do not fully translate into other languages. The Dutch have 'gezellig' (~ cosy, comfortable, together). The English have 'fair' (~ honest, sporting, equitable). In the German-speaking lands Heimat means 'homeland' ... and more than that: it also means family, belonging, the roots, heart, soul and lifeblood of that homeland. Already part of German literature, the Heimatroman of the Third Reich was one of only four 'acceptable' genres in literature. That may make it somewhat un-PC today, but still, it was the most 'tame' of that vile ideology's strands of Blut und Boden: the yearning of, and for, the home soil ...

There's also a lot of balderdash posited and hypothisized about the true meaning of the concept 'Heimat.' "Four phases parallel Germany's discontinuous history: Heimat literature as a response to modernization and to regional tensions before World War I; the inter-war period when Heimat divided into racist ideology, left-wing opposition, and inner resistance to the Third Reich; a post-war dialectic between escapist 1950s Heimat films and right-wing claims to the lost lands in the East to which anti-Heimat theatre and films in the 1960s and 1970s were a response, with the urban Heimat in GDR films adding a socialist twist; regionalism and green politics in the 1980s and German identity beyond Cold War divisions. A key point of reference in debates on German history, Heimat looks likely to continue in postmodern and multicultural mode."

The fictional village of Schabbach (probably situated in the stretch between Emmelshausen and Boppard?) is, like many small villages throughout the numerous German uplands, quite remote and isolated from the hubbub of German cities - certainly before the radio age. Social contrasts are as great as those between small-town America in the Midwest and the great cities along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It remains charmingly untouched by the Big Bad World despite the encroachments of time, ideology and modernity.

Cannot help wondering if James Cameron saw the final episode, "Das Fest der Lebenden und die Töten," with Maria joining the spirits of the village's departed - P>Watching HEIMAT, EIN DEUTSCHE CHRONIK over the eleven weeks was a genuinely unforgettable experience. Have since availed myself of the 6-volume VHS set of this 'First Heimat' (the second, set in München in the turbulent student year 1968. But since receiving the videos, it took a while to actually sit down and watch all the episodes (have done so now!). Confess to having put it off, put it off [repetition intentional] ... knowing that with each episode's viewing I'd sit there mouth-gaping and watery-eyed (probably quite embarrassing) with all telephones disconnected/switched-off and bottles of German wine or wheat beer suitably chilled and at hand. But even upon watching HEIMAT again, I was surprised just how much could be remembered with so little effort. So deeply ingrained and memorable, both in mind and in soul, was the first viewing in 1992 that it was almost a real-life experience: of having also 'lived' those years as part of Schabbach and its people ...

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deeply moving, yet realistic story spanning 7 decades, February 19, 2001

By 

Jens Haetty (Burlington, VT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heimat : A Chronicle of Germany [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It sounds almost a little bit too exaggerated when I say that this miniseries brings you a lot closer to understanding Germany between 1900 and 1970. But hardly ever has a drama such as "Heimat" delivered so much insight into the German psyche, without the usual cheesiness or the overbearing morale that is common to so many movies of this kind. It takes hours to sum up the plot, just so much: The series revolves around the live of Maria, a woman who, from early childhood to her death, lives in a small village in the western German region of Hunsrueck. Here, life is not a show of poor but noble people. It is every turn a struggle for small things, for small comforts, for small gradual improvements over many decades. All historical developments in Germany are experienced by the villagers as influences from the outside world gradually transform the community: The first world war and the suffering immediately after it, the hyper- inflation, which leads to the emigration of that woman's husband (without her knowing), the brief occurrence of the "Golden 20s". The Nazi period is most impressively described: Little petty and opportunistic village Nazis and their ambitious wifes try to strive for more, the "Autobahn" brings a glimpse of the modern world, and short-lived hopes for Maria. The second great war brings all this to a grinding halt, until the "Wirtschaftswunder" (the "Economic Miracle") kicks in and brings not only the first prospects of good life into the village, but also the effects of the stuffy post-war (the "Adenauer") era, with its longing for consolidation. The focus of this series changes quite often, i.e. it is not only Maria's view that is presented to the audience, but that of other protagonists as well. As a prime example, one episode focusses on the forbidden love affair of Maria's youngest son Anton with an older woman (delightfully played by Gudrun Landgrebe).

If you think of buying this set, do not hesitate. It is worth it!