Local history rooms are small venues for collections and social gatherings with a focus on local history. They emerged in the early 20th century as a more modest form of local history museum in rural communities. Sometimes, local history collections or archives are also referred to by this name. They do not match the size, significance or professionalism of museums, although the boundaries between ‘Heimatstuben’ and local history museums are fluid. The origin of the term ‘Heimatstube’ cannot be clearly established. It is likely that it is closely linked to the staged parlour interiors that enjoyed great popularity in cultural-historical museums around the turn of the century (19th/20th centuries) by presenting the ‘embodiment of a backward-looking view of a self-contained world of rural and artisanal harmony’^[1] . The term ‘Heimatstube’ can be traced back to the mid-1920s in Upper Silesia and Austria, and just a few years later in Switzerland. In the German Reich, the term became more widespread in the 1930s, when the Ministry of Science, Education and Public Enlightenment sought to counteract the rising number of newly established local history museums through reforms. Museums in district towns were to be converted into ‘Heimathäuser’, whilst ‘public education work’ in smaller towns was to be carried out through ‘Heimatstuben’. During the Nazi era, these institutions were often devoted to ethnic propaganda and, in areas such as Upper Silesia, particularly to issues relating to the border regions.

After the Second World War, the term was defined in Baden as ‘a new form of local heritage preservation – and hospitality’^[2] and was also used in the German Democratic Republic to describe small, locally-based collections of local history, which were mainly based on private initiatives. In the Federal Republic of Germany, a special form of ‘Heimatstuben’ also emerged: the collection and meeting centres for refugees, displaced persons and resettlers. Thematically, these focused on places or regions in the areas of origin or, more generally, on a constructed ‘East German’ homeland. The term gained nationwide recognition in 1953 with the publication of guidelines on the organisation of twinning schemes by the municipal umbrella organisations and the regional associations. These guidelines also listed as an ‘individual measure’ the ‘creation of a “Heimatstube” or a “house” for the East German partner’^[3] . The classification is usually based on the principle of provenance and is reflected in names such as Pomeranian, East Prussian, Silesian or Transylvanian ‘Heimatstuben’. Within these groups, further distinctions are made according to the individual localities that form the focus of the local heritage collection.

‘Heimatstube’ was and remains – beyond the specific form presented here – a commonly used term. The term ‘Ostdeutsche Heimatstube’ (East German Heimatstube), which was predominantly used in publications by organisations representing displaced persons as a collective term for all Heimatstuben of German refugees, displaced persons and resettlers, is considered open to debate. Rhetorically, this has led to the co-opting of various regions of origin that cannot primarily be described as ‘East German’, such as Transylvania or Galicia. Furthermore, in common parlance, the attribute ‘East German’ no longer refers to the former Reich territories beyond the Oder–Neisse line, but to the new Federal States. Nevertheless, the pair of terms has remained in use for the designation of ‘Heimatstuben’ (homeland museums), which are usually run by several regional associations and have not committed themselves to a specific region of origin.

Polish: Regionalne izby pamięci. Hungarian: Tájszoba. (In parallel with developments in Germany, Hungarian-German heritage centres have been established in Hungary since 1994.)

The ‘Heimatstuben’ – memorial centres dedicated to German refugees, displaced persons and repatriates – are a widespread phenomenon, particularly in the western Federal States, where over five hundred of these semi-museum-like establishments have now been established. In the eastern Federal States, the Federation of Displaced Persons (BdV) has established further ‘Heimatstuben’ since 1990, predominantly in Saxony and Thuringia. In terms of numbers, however, the main concentration is in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony – the main host states for refugees and displaced persons from the western occupation zones after the Second World War.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the ‘Heimatstuben’ were regarded within the organised communities of refugees and displaced persons in West Germany as a symbol of ‘loyalty to one’s homeland’. Initially, they were intended as a temporary measure designed to collect material cultural artefacts and foster solidarity amongst regional communities, with the aim, amongst other things, of being as prepared as possible for an early return. However, the West German town and local authorities that supported these ‘Heimatstuben’ intended them rather to serve the purposes of integration and helping people settle in, and, in the context of sponsorship initiatives, to signal a willingness to welcome the‘new citizens’. In this context, they were intended to function as meeting places between locals and refugees or displaced persons. However, the ‘long-standing residents’ made little use of these facilities; those affected mostly kept to themselves. In the 1970s and 1980s, this integrative aspect receded further into the background. Instead, the ‘Heimatstuben’ developed into ‘refuges’ for displaced persons’ organisations, where their status as a victim group was emphasised and, contrary to general federal policy trends, claims to the ‘lost territories’ continued to be asserted. Due to the dwindling numbers of the ‘experience generation’, their significance as meeting places for those affected has steadily declined over the past few decades. Conversely, however, the collections have grown, for example through the liquidation of estates; in many cases, the ‘Heimatstuben’ have become ‘repositories of memory’ (E. Fendl).

At present, the Heimatstuben are often only accessible to a limited extent; they are occasionally still used as meeting places or are in the process of being transformed from independent institutions into exhibition areas within museums of local and regional history that deal with the reception and integration of displaced persons, refugees and resettlers.

State support for the ‘Heimatstuben’ in the Federal Republic of Germany must also be viewed in the context of the efforts, continuing into the 1960s, to achieve the reunification of Germany within the borders of 1937. As the Federal Republic’s ‘Heimatstuben’ focused on places and regions that had belonged to what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and, following the recognition of the new border in the Görlitz Agreement in 1950, to the People’s Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union, they were officially regarded in the GDR as part of an “extensive system of training and meeting centres for revanchist organisations”.^[4] In this respect, the ‘Heimatstuben’ formed part of the East-West confrontation of that era. However, they had also been the subject of some controversy within the Federal Republic since the late 1950s, owing to the regional policy ambitions of their initiators. The socio-political impact of these meeting places, however, as E. Fendl notes, can be regarded as rather limited.

Opinions on the value of the collections – and thus the prospects for the future use of the ‘Heimatstuben’ – vary. Whilst many curators and those directly involved are convinced of their significance for the writing of history, museum staff, archivists, folklorists and historians tend to view the collections more critically and classify the phenomenon as part of the culture of remembrance. Occasionally, the collections are attributed limited value as sources for regional and local history in the regions of origin in Eastern, Central-Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, albeit with the caveat that the focus was on the former German-speaking population. Neighbours of different ethnic or religious backgrounds, as well as the period of National Socialism, were largely overlooked. Many curators and associations are opposed to the idea of transferring the materials to local museums in the regions of origin, even if this were done with the intention of supplementing their collections.

• Mathias Beer: ‘Local History Museum – An Overview’. In: Annemarie Röder (ed.): ‘Heimat – Approaches’. Stuttgart 2007, pp. 54–62.
• Kurt Dröge: The ‘East German’ Museum and Eastern Central Europe. In: Yearbook for German and Eastern European Folklore 43 (2000), pp. 1–27.
• Cornelia Eisler: Managed Memory – Symbolic Politics. The Local History Collections of German Refugees, Displaced Persons and Resettlers. Munich 2015 (Publications of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe 57).
• Elisabeth Fendl: Repositories of Memory – Places of Self-Determination. On the Significance and Function of the Egerland ‘Heimatstuben’. In: Hartmut Heller (ed.): Germany as a New Homeland. Aspects of Immigration, Acculturation and Emotional Attachment. Erlangen 2002 (Erlanger Research, Series A, Humanities 95), pp. 63–78.
• Utz Jeggle: Kaldaunen and Elche. Cultural Safeguarding Systems amongst Displaced Persons. In: Dierk Hoffmann, Marita Krauss, Michael Schwartz (eds.): Displaced Persons in Germany: Interdisciplinary Findings and Research Perspectives. Munich 2000 (Special issue of the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte series), pp. 395–407.
• Siegfried Lenz: Heimatmuseum. Novel. Hamburg 1978.
• Alfons Perlick: The East German ‘Heimatstuben’ and ‘Heimat’ Collections in North Rhine-Westphalia. History, Functions, Reports. P.p. by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Düsseldorf 1964.
• Martin Roth: The Local History Museum: On the History of a German Institution. Berlin 1990 (Berlin Papers on Museum Studies 7).
• Manuela Schütze: ‘Elchkopf und Kurenwimpel’. On the Museum-Based Appropriation of a Lost Homeland in East German ‘Heimatstuben’ after the Second World War in Schleswig-Holstein. Neumünster 1998 (Studies in Folklore and Cultural History of Schleswig-Holstein 37).
• Ulrich Tolksdorf: Local History Museums, Local History Rooms, Local History Corners. In: Yearbook of East German Folklore 26 (1983), pp. 338–342.

• Documentation of the local history collections. URL: www.bkge.de/heimatsammlungen/ (as at 5 July 2011)
  

Cornelia Eisler: Heimatstuben. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2011. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32746 (accessed 28 January 2015).