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From the point of view of the writers, work on the HEIMAT 3 cycle provided two challenges. The first is that dealing with the progress of Germany since 1989 is to break new narrative ground. A comprehensive representation of the “state of the nation“, dealing with our most recent continuities, breaks and development, has not (yet) been undertaken in our modern literature in the breadth which we seek to achieve. Secondly the chronicle narrative is still far from developed dramatically, so that as a writer one is free (and required!) to develop this type of narrative technique. What a lot of time it took for us writers to agree on how people live their lives today in Germany. There have always been always winners and losers, just as there are originators and iconoclasts, cheats and moralists, carefree people and reformers. But what is there that is new about them, what is it that distinguishes today’s moralist from one of thirty years ago? Or even more difficult – what distinguishes the moralist of 1989 from the one in the year 2000?
If you are confronting such questions you will tend to look at everyday life, rather than at films of which there are plenty. But only in that way can we tell the stories of the people who are right amongst us. The HEIMAT cycle aims to be close to people without becoming patronising. It is artistic without cutting itself off in an elitist way from the general public. Everything that life discloses fundamentally has a chance in HEIMAT 3. “Informal storytelling” is nothing like as harmless as it appears – it can come together to create an evocative image. But that is also our intention. Storytelling is a way into the world. Thomas Brussig
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