WDR, a regional German public network (Northwest region), ran a live evening chat forum last night (Thursday). The hype? People and their personal opinion of the 'Heimatland' (the homeland).
I sat and watched about 30 minutes of this chatter. It went back and forth. The hype was that Germans can't agree on the Heimatland, and this wide discrepancy of feeling means that there is no true single description. So the anti-immigration crowd (who were there) were kinda forced off to the side. Pretty well conceived angle to manipulating people.
Forty years ago, you could have walked into any pub and asked a dozen Germans to explain Heimatland, and they would have given you a general 'heart-land' description....mostly blending into each others view of West Germany. Based on the 1990s....bring DDR into the picture....the media....immigration....it's all very difficult to construct a Heimatland now.
I asked the German wife to define it, and she made it clear....it's full of Germans, and has some wide landscape of geographic offerings (mountains, beaches, flat range, urbanization, etc). Then she kinda added....it's not a welfare state. Course, her description is one of 82-million descriptions.
In a way, I think WDR opened up a can of worms here because if you can get people confused about this Heimatland business....why not open up a chat about public TV, and ask what people want or don't want with public TV or the TV tax business.
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