The outcome of the German federal election in February 2025, alongside developments in neighbouring countries and the wider global context, makes it clear that a shift to the right requires a strong and capable civil society, as well as smart strategies of resistance. This is where the discussion series Heimatization. On Belonging and Plurality comes in, which takes place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) from March to November 2025. It focuses on perspectives on plural democracy, sheds light on historical and current models of participation, and demonstrates how cultural interdependencies shape society.

Based on an initiative launched in September 2024 by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (HKW), numerous cultural institutions and civil society actors have come together to form the heimaten Network. It brings together various projects and partners from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland who, one year after the network was founded, will jointly organize the decentralised heimaten Festival for Plural Democracy, with an extensive programme from September to December 2025. All information on the festival events can be found on these pages.

‘According to Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, all state power comes from the people. Some things can be said with certainty about this people: almost thirty percent have a history of migration, and that percentage will only continue to increase in the future. People desire in different ways, have differing political opinions, belong to different religious communities, are of different ages, and have different incomes and levels of wealth at their disposal.’ This is what the co-curators of heimaten, Max Czollek and Ibou Diop, write in their basic concept. They continue: ‘If, as stated in the Basic Law, all state power comes from the people, this also means that all state power comes from a plural society. This reality is where heimaten comes in; heimaten, used as a verb [...], but heimaten can also function as a plural noun because Germany is conceived of as a place of plurality.’

In his curatorial statement on the entire heimaten project, the director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, focuses among other things on the distinction between the terms and concepts of ‘Volk’ (people) and ‘Bevölkerung’ (population). It is crucial for the process of making a home and for understanding what Germany was, is or wants to be. Ndikung writes: ‘This project is a possibility of unlearning Heimat and learning heimaten.’