Continuing our conversation about films on Heimat, that untranslatable and highly charged German word that encompasses home, belonging & more, we talked to German author Frank Goosen, who has three films on the screen and more in the works.
Frank will be our guest in Toronto for our GOETHE FILMS series "Heimat NOW".
Jutta Brendemühl: Talking about Heimat, you and I are on the same page: We grew up within 10km of each other in the post-industrial West German region called Ruhrgebiet, went to Bochum University at the same time, hung out in the same three, four bars and clubs… Quick, give us 5 words that describe and define your Heimat:
Frank Goosen: Work, beer, soccer, Autobahn, green. Yours?
JB: You’re a down-to-earth guy, Frank, a true “Ruhri”. Mine are solidarity, loyalty, guts, sangfroid, and the neighbourhood of the city of Mühlheim called “Muttererde” – which translates as mother earth as well as top soil.
You have made a career of that feeling, of Heimat, as the most famous Ruhrgebiet writer-performer, who speaks and writes the rough and quick-witted working-class dialect of the region.
How do you walk that fine line between flat-lining stereotype and cliché and heart-warming audience engagement?
FG: Just by watching people and describing what they do and say. And people don’t always act according to the stereotypes. As many in my generation, I grew up with a strong skepticism against all forms of nationalism. Heimat was a discredited term when I was young. The former German President Gustav Heinemann once was asked if he loved Germany. “I love my wife,” he responded. I like that.
JB: I love your motto “Woanders is auch scheiße” – elsewhere is also crappy. How do people in other places react to that maudlin attitude, what feedback to you get when you read in Dresden or Freiburg or Kiel?
FG: Most people understand the irony. And in German it sounds much rougher than in English! A few people in the Ruhrgebiet dislike it because they think I am saying that it’s really crappy where we are. But
it’s just self-irony, and it makes you stronger and more clever when you can laugh about yourself.
JB: Your books seem to attract directors like the proverbial moths to the light -- the fourth film based on your writing is in the works, the premiere of “Summer Fest” by Sönke Wortmann coming up in June. Why is that, you think,
what makes your writing so inherently cinematic? And what shifts from page to screen when you watch, say, “Learning to Lie” (which we are showing at GOETHE FILMS on 9 March)?
FG: I am strongly influenced by movies and TV shows in my writing, by popular culture in general. And I really like to write dialogue -- maybe that attracts filmmakers even more to my books. Film sometimes is much more emotional than the written word. I’ve always stressed that my first novel “Learning to Lie“ isn’t autobiographical, but in fact there are some chapters that are very close to real life. To see that on the big screen almost came as a shock. Not the scenes of Helmut’s parents and family, but some of the scenes with his first big love Britta. I was surprised how it struck me. (German
trailer here)
JB: Challenging our joint sentimentality --a great marker of the original post-war Heimat films--, let’s look at the dark side of the moon, where Heimat delineates one’s tribe, one’s claim, one’s stake, and separates us from the other. How to share Heimat, how to make it inclusive and not exclusive?
FG: It is important to emphasize: This is MY Heimat and MY view to it. I don’t force others to have the same feelings about that. Mutual respect is the key.
JB: Do you belong through your writing?
FG: Yes I do. Not only writing about my city and my region but mainly writing about the people I meet in my life or about the music I loved twenty years back. That is the time I am writing about right now.
And through writing I turn twenty-nine again. Nice feeling.
JB: Referencing Arne Birkenstock’s lovely cross-country music documentary that we are showing as part of our “Heimat NOW” film series: What’s your “Sound of Heimat”?
FG: The language, our dialect. The soft “datt“ and “watt“ instead of the sharper standard German “das“ and “was“. The quick contractions like “hömma“ instead of “hör mal,” meaning ‘listen.’ And the fact that
harsh words can have a tender meaning.
(btw, Jutta's #SoundOfHeimat is skyping with Frank Goosen!)
Email me by 5pm EST Friday, March 3, for your chance to win a pair of tickets to either of the 5 GOETHE FILMS screenings. Only the winners will be notified.
Feel inspired? You can pitch in too. Share your sound of home with us on social media to win swag at our author reading wtih Frank Goosen at the Goethe-Institut Toronto on March 10.
interview by
@JuttaBrendemuhl.
image: audio book cover of Radio Heimat, courtesy Frank Goosen / tacheles!/ROOF Music
