Heimat Across Space and Time in Nora Krug’s Belonging

Abstract

This article explores notions of belonging and home in Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging. Beginning with an exploration of how Krug feels disconnected from her identity as a German, the essay identifies a shift in the way that Krug comes to appreciate notions of home and homeland. Through the process of understanding her family’s Nazi history, Krug comes to not only feel more connected to her past but through this, she is able to feel at home again in her familial identity. Krug’s identification with history as a conduit for establishing identity is explored through the lens of postmemory and is analyzed in relation to public and private ways that Germany commemorates the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary society. (MR)