While not a prolific member of “Der Neue Deutsche Film”, Reitz was one of the founding fathers, along with Alexander Kluge of “Die Hochschule für Gestaltung” and began as a filmmaker because of the Oberhausen manifest. It would take almost twenty years before he would step out from the shadows of Wenders, Schlöndorff, Herzog and Fassbinder, and with “Heimat” create one of the key works and milestones of “Der Neue Deutsche Film”, which according to Variety was “the fulfilment of all the hopes of the New German cinema over the past two decades.”

After five years of production, “Heimat” was born in 1984. Perhaps the best German television series to date, even surpassing Fassbinder’s epic “Berlin Alexanderplatz”, Edgar Reitz here told the story of the family Simon and the little township of Schabbach from 1919 to 1982, and with it showing how the decline of the republic after the first World War, the rise and fall of the Third Reich, the “Wirtschaftswunder" of the fifties and the changes during the seventies, affected not only Germany, but also the common man. More than just a chronicle of German and a simple German family, “Heimat” was, according to Reitz, the story of the common man, who always loses out, who always is an innocent bystander to history; A sentiment Reitz continues in his last instalment, "Heimat 3", where he tells the story of German from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to 2002.

In 1992, Reitz returned with “Die Zweite Heimat”, here retelling part of the chronicle with the story of Hermann Simon, during the sixties and seventies, and his experiences in Munich. The title is significant, meaning "the second home", which not only refers to Hermann who leaves Schabbach and moves to Munich, but also suggests a change in the German ideology during the period. Hermann's move to Munich here suggests a moving away from the old and traditional values, into more individualism. His journey thus becomes a metaphore for the period, which again only puts his return to Schabbach into a greater context and perspective. It is about, where one belongs.

While lacking the historical scope of “Heimat”, Reitz instead expands his story by introducing a complex array of people and history, experimenting with colour (alternatively shooting in black and white, then colour) and time (some episodes lasts a few hours, some a day, some months) as signifiers, and using music and his mise-en-scene more elaborately. The shorter time span allowed Reitz to examine history and characters with a depth, which the original couldn’t, and once again Reitz tested the patience of the viewer by making his second instalment ten hours longer, to a total of 25 hours for 13 episodes.

Not so much an in media res sequel to “Heimat”, “Die Zweite Heimat” stands for itself and both works cannot be compared directly. Instead of telling the story of Germany history by proxy, Reitz here captures the spirit of the sixties and in terms the disillusion that followed in the seventies from the perspective of music and film, love and hate, friends and lovers.

With "Heimat", Reitz has allowed the Germans to recapture their history, their past and their country as their "home". A testament of “Der Neue Deutsche Film” and one of the greatest achievements in story telling.
 

Henrik Sylow