Nicolas Pethes

The article analyzes how the concept of ‘Heimat’ was established and shaped in the second half of the 19th century in the contemporary mass medium of the journal. In the context of the universal claim and the miscellaneous structure of periodical publications, the locally focused discourse on the homeland serves as a centralizing element. Based on this centripetal function, the article discusses the role of literary publications in these periodicals. A comparison of Adalbert Stifter's canonized Nachkommenschaften (Descentants) with the today unknown Der Schütz' von der Pertisau by Herman Schmid, editor of the the journal Heimgarten, shows that “Heimat” refers not only to geographical and cultural, but also to genealogical complexes. Furthermore, Stifter's satirical revision of Schmid's demonstrates that irony can also be part of he discourse on the homeland – a tendency which only becomes apparent when we analyze literary texts within the context they were first published in.

The article introduces the basic epistemology of the concept of ›milieu‹ (or ›ambience‹) that was so significant for nineteenth-century studies of nature, society, and art: focusing on an object’senvironment means to include a formerly »unmarked space« (Niklas Luhmann) into the realm of observation. This paradoxical crossing of ›inside‹ and ›outside‹ was highly productive for innovative theories of life in philosophy, science, and literature: drawing from George Canguilhem’s reading of Claude Bernard’s concept of the milieu intérieur, the article reads Hegel’s description of the »prose of the world« as an early version of the awareness that reality is not found ›out there‹ butproduced by discourses which, as the naturalistic movement at the end of the century shows, also include aesthetic theories.