Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the question of emotional attachments to places and landscapes in the context of displacement, migration and return visits. Taking the example of German World War II refugees from former East Prussia (present-day Lithuania) the paper describes the role of places and landscapes as providers of emotional security in a world of increasing mobility and change.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will explore the question of emotional attachments to places and landscapes in the context of displacement, migration and return visits. While transnational migration studies have focussed strongly on the political, social and economic effects of movements between 'places of migration' and 'places of origin', the proposed paper argues that 'places of origin' can also provide existential emotional security in a world of increasing mobility and change.

Taking the example of German World War II refugees from former East Prussia (present-day Lithuania), the presentation will show that people's birthplaces have remained important over a period of 60 years despite the refugees rapid economic and social integration into post-war Germany. During the Cold War most of the refugees gave up their "dream of return", there remained at the same time a continued feeling of nostalgia and homesickness. The paper will show how their birthplaces have become 'nostalgic places of memory' and how emotions of longing and loss have been transmitted to children and grandchildren.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the 'lost homeland' has become far more accessible and many of the former refugees - if health and age still allow them - have travelled to their birthplaces, often together with their offspring, carrying with them their memories and place-images to the present-day locality.

Visiting the birthplace for the first time in 45 or 50 years has the power of mobilising deep emotions that were often hidden, unconscious or unspeakable before. Being confronted with the present-day post-socialist Lithuanian villages, these former inhabitants are often forced to face the traumatic breaks and ruptures in their own lives. Given the case study of the village of Nida (Ger. Nidden) on the Curonian Spit, I shall argue that most of the former German inhabitants are not interested in financial compensation or in getting back their houses and land. To the contrary, at the end of their lives their return to their village of origin often symbolizes a journey back into their personal pasts and a search for emotional peace and finally coming to terms with their traumatic war experiences, flight and loss of their homeland. The paper will analyse how the former refugees cope with these experiences and will reveal how specific 'places of memory', like the church and the graveyard, have received new symbolic and emotional meaning. Finally, the presentation will show how the 'new' Lithuanian population relate to the 'homesick tourists' and what kind of emotional attachments they have developed to their 'places of living'.