Hometown group, hometown (local) community; furthermore: hometown district (association or community). The naming of individual groups was not standardised; other terms also exist, such as ‘hometown parish’, ‘federal homeland group’, ‘group of former residents of (+ place name)’, ‘working group of displaced persons from (+ place name)’ and others.

The term ‘Heimatgruppe’ probably originated in the context of the Heimat movement at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century as a designation for local associations within the Heimatvereine, whose aims were the preservation or restoration of tangible and intangible cultural heritage ([architectural]monuments, legends, customs, etc.) and natural resources (flora and fauna, landscape) of their immediate social and geographical environment (Heimat).

In this context, a ‘hometown group’ or ‘hometown (or local) community’ (HOG) refers to associations of refugees, displaced persons or (late) repatriates from a particular hometown or district.

In Germany, these ‘Heimatgruppen’ are predominantly organised as registered associations. In the association’s name, the term ‘Heimatgruppe’ is followed by the name of the place of origin or the larger regional unit (e.g. Heimatgruppe Bielitz-Biala e. V., Heimatgruppe Grafschaft Glatz e. V.). Hometown groups with a specific local focus are often sub-divisions of the so-called ‘hometown districts’, whose framework is based on the former administrative districts of the region of origin (e.g. Heimatkreis Wollstein e. V.), or on specific regions of origin. Heimatgruppen and Heimatkreise exist – also independently of the respective regional associations – predominantly in Germany and Austria, and to some extent in other countries abroad, where displaced persons settled after 1945 or joined forces with ‘fellow countrymen’ who had emigrated earlier (France, the USA, Canada, etc.) or founded similar associations. Many groups already had similar associations in their countries and regions of settlement, such as the Upper Silesians in the Ruhr area or the numerous ‘Eghalanda Gmoin’ in West Germany, some of which were revived after 1945.

The aim of these home-town groups is to maintain contact between former residents and to preserve the memory of their home town or home parish. This is achieved primarily through regularly organised homelands meetings, the publication of homelands newspapers, newsletters or books, and in some cases also through the establishment and maintenance of homelands museums and websites, as well as group trips to the former home towns.

Hometown associations and similar organisations, in their role as groups formed for mutual support and the preservation of identity, have been a widespread socio-cultural phenomenon amongst numerous immigrant groups living outside closed settlements – including overseas – since the 19th century.

In the Western occupation zones and the Federal Republic of Germany, associations of refugees and displaced persons began to emerge after 1945, and increasingly so following the lifting of the ban on such associations in 1948; these included the first ‘Heimatgruppen’ and ‘Heimatkreise’, as well as their informal precursors. Initially, their task often consisted of collecting and passing on the addresses of former residents in the so-called ‘hometown registers’. From this, association-based and cultural activities, as outlined above, increasingly developed. In the GDR, a similar development was not possible due to the ban on association.

Early research into refugees and displaced persons in the Federal Republic of Germany also took account of organisations representing displaced persons, particularly with regard to structural and substantive elements, as well as sociological and functional aspects. In more recent research, however, ‘Heimat’ groups have been given insufficient attention; they are occasionally mentioned in the analysis of individual phenomena (e.g. ‘Heimat’ chronicles) as actors at the local level or as precursors to regional associations. To date, there has been no comprehensive overview of these groups as a whole, nor any studies on their functions, organisational forms, constitutions, membership structure, etc., or on how these have changed since the late 1940s. Only federations of individual regional heritage groups, such as the Pomeranian District and Town Council, have provided self-descriptions of their sub-groups (see below); a systematic overview of existing regional heritage groups was provided in 1989 by W. Kessler for the East German Cultural Council Foundation.

• Karl Ditt: The German ‘Heimat’ Movement 1871–1945. In: Federal Agency for Civic Education (ed.): Heimat. Analyses, Themes, Perspectives. Bonn 1990 (Discussion Papers on Political Didactics 294/I), pp. 135–154.
• Pomeranian Association of Districts and Towns (ed.): The Pomeranian Heimatkreise 1945–1995. 50 Years of Work for Pomerania. Lübeck 1998.
• Alfred Karasek-Langer: Folk Culture in Transition. In: Eugen Lemberg (ed.): The Displaced Persons in West Germany. Their Integration and their Influence on Society, the Economy, Politics and Intellectual Life. Vol. 1. Kiel 1959, pp. 606–694, esp. pp. 658–666.
• Christian Lotz: The Interpretation of Loss. Controversies in the Politics of Memory in Divided Germany concerning Flight, Expulsion and the Eastern Territories (1948–1972). Cologne et al. 2007 (New Research on Silesian History 15), p. 32.
• Wolfgang Kessler (ed.): East German Cultural Heritage in the Federal Republic of Germany. A Handbook of Collections, Associations and Institutions and Their Holdings / East German Cultural Council (OKR) Foundation. Munich et al. 1989.

• Bielitz-Biala Local History Society e. V.
  www.bielitz-biala.de/index.php?Itemid=26&id=12&option=com_content&task=view
• Local History Groups of the Dramburg District
  www.dramburg.com/org.htm#hg
• Grafschaft Glatz Local History Group e. V.
  www.grafschaft-glatz.de/organe/heimatgr.htm
• Kleinscheuern Hometown Association e. V.
  http://www.kleinscheuern.de/home
• Local branches of the Sudeten German Association
  www.sudeten.de/cms/?Die_Sudetendeutsche_Landsmannschaft:Gliederungen_der_SL:Heimatgliederung

Heinke M. Kalinke: Heimatgruppe/Heimat(orts-)gemeinschaft/Heimatkreis. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32820 (as at 14 May 2012).