Cemeteries as Sites of Pilgrimage. Places of Collective Nostalgia

Abstract

This paper considers the issue of expelled Germans and refugees from Yugoslavia after 1945, as well with how they dealt with the own pasts. German cemeteries in what is now the former Yugoslavia serve as reading lenses of history, whereupon their changing visual appearance in the course of time represent a metaphor for German and Yugoslav history.
Here I am taking a bottom-up approach by considering individual memories, which enable a process of bridging to an official top-down look (historiography, books, and archives).
Under the banner of the expulsion and flight of Germans, a type of nostalgia has developed for the abandoned home and a longing for a return to one’s collective roots. In this manner, the abandoned and destroyed cemeteries have become main gathering points serving as special places of pilgrimage. From 2000 onwards, Germans from all sides gather in their former home areas in order to commemorate their past. The annual reunions represent a collective feeling of grief about traumas in the past and personify attitudes towards memory.
Taking into consideration what are called homeland journals (Ger. Heimatblätter), it is possible to follow a level of nostalgia that is constantly being passed down to younger generations. This nostalgic addressing of identity serves as an attempt to renegotiate and overcome a ‘historical feeling’ of guilt and trauma.