‘Homesick tourism’: memory, identity and (be)longing

Abstract

‘Homesick tourism’ commonly refers to the travel of Germans who visit their former homes in what is now Poland and other Eastern European countries, from which they were expelled in the wake of the second World War. The paper first differentiates homesick tourism from related types, with which it is often conflated, notably roots tourism, personal heritage tourism and migrant return travel. Drawing on travel reports written by German homesick tourists, the role of memory is identified as the defining criterion. It is shown that homesick tourists are characterised by a unique ‘tourist gaze’. Such clear definition and differentiation are useful in order to better understand and analyse the homesick tourism phenomenon, because homesick tourism is arguably a much wider international phenomenon, albeit unrecognised and sometimes politically contested. Much can be learnt from the German experience in this regard. As the homesick tourism phenomenon is soon going to be over, due to the passing of the survivor generation, the paper ends with the suggestion that Poland is in an ideal position to develop a genuine form of roots tourism targeted at future German tourists.

Keywords:

• expellees
• experience
• home
• homesick tourism
• memory
• migrant travel
• return travel
• roots tourism

Acknowledgement

My sincere thanks to the Glogauer Heimatbund, notably Marion Letz, for assisting me with sourcing archival material and to the following persons and members, who have greatly contributed to this study by sharing a wealth of personal knowledge and information, documentation and not least their own memories: Antoni Bok, Hans-Joachim Breske, Manfred Liersch, Klaus Schneider, Martin Sprungala and my father, Hans-Jürgen Marschall, to whom this paper is dedicated.