Home is where the people rules! : the idea of socialist Heimat and its emotional regime in the GDR

In the post-war years, the German Democratic Republic competed against the Federal Republic of Germany for providing a new beginning in Nazi-Germany. Thus, the ruling Socialist Unity Party started a broad campaign to acknowledge the new order as a prerequisite of Heimat. An emotional regime forms the backdrop to the theory of socialist Heimat, in which the people loves the state, the party and its neighbours. This paper examines the ideology of a socialist Heimat and the emotional regime, which used the political leaders of the country to direct the patriotic feelings of their inhabitants towards socialism. At the end, this essay additionally offers some remarks on the impact of this process and focuses on how Heimat became a special notion in the GDR with particular aspects.