Moving from Cologne to the Hanseatic cities, this chapter demonstrates remarkably similar Heimat revivals and trends in local identity narratives in early post-war Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. All three cities saw a major renaissance of local culture and emphasis on the value of Heimat in repairing community bonds and mobilizing for reconstruction. Democratically engaged locals argued for “democracy” and “openness to the world” as Hanseatic values and redefined the long-standing metaphor of their cities as “gates to the world.” Abandoning nationalist narratives of them as exit points of German power, such groups argued for their maritime cities as sites of international reconciliation. Locals wove such narratives by drawing on useful local historical memories. Hanseatic locals, however, reflected the same shortcomings in democratic practice, including persistent attempts to evade guilt for the Nazi past, gendered understandings of Heimat, and exclusion of newcomers. As in Cologne, more inclusively minded locals, however, sought to combat hostilities towards newcomers by engaging with the Heimat idea and arguing for “tolerance” as a local value.

The chapter examines heated debates about Heimat, federalism, and regional identity in the German Southwest during referendum campaigns over the construction of new federal states in the region. While this history has often been glossed over as the pre-history of Baden-Württemberg, the chapter shows how it was saturated with debates about the spatial foundations of democracy. Opposing groups of regionalists who had different cognitive maps of region advanced similar ideas about “democracy” and “openness to the world” as regional values. Abandoning narratives of their region as a bulwark of the nation, many on both sides competed over whose regional vision would offer a better “bridge” to France and Switzerland. Many federalist regionalists in the Southwest further argued that Heimat feeling should bolster decentred ideas of nation. As in the case of Cologne and the Hanseatic cities, the case of the Southwest again demonstrates how early post-war denizens used regional identities to forge early identifications with democracy and European unification. At the same time, the referenda simultaneously demonstrated the same serious shortcomings in democratic mentalities and practice.