The Forest as Homeland
The forest in popular films and novels
In the so-called “Heimatfilm” the forest still acts as a counterpart to the city. It stood and still stands for unspoiled nature and a perfect world. In the period after the Second World War the forest offered a kind of idealistic replacement for the loss of the Heimat, the homeland, and for unfulfilled hopes and failed ideologies.
The plots and personnel of the Heimatfilm resemble those of the peasant farce and the mountain film, but also those of the popular Heimat novel. As in these genres the people in the Heimatfilm struggle to find a way to achieve their private happiness.
After the heyday of the Heimatfilm, which helped to promote tourism at the time when the young Federal Republic was being built up, the importance of the genre gradually began to decrease after 1960. Meanwhile, its topics and adaptations, often set in the forest, have returned to the screen in television series.
