... und Pommernland ist abgebrannt

The word Pommernland, which translates as ‘Pomeranian lands’, is a romanticising term that has always, particularly in the Romantic era, evoked a specifically German type of nostalgic longing. A local country song written by Gustav Adolf Pompe in 1850, for example, includes the following line: “Pomeranian Lands, I pine for you.”
The title is a line of a popular children’s song from the time after the Thirty Years’ War. In that war, Pomerania, one of the areas that had been converted to Lutheranism after the Reformation, was almost entirely laid to waste. After the Second World War, when Pomerania had been destroyed once again and its German population had escaped or been driven away, the song became popular again.
Both these associations highlight the fact that German Romantic nostalgia has become virtually impossible in the wake of the political events of the 20th century. As a result of the abuse of the German Romantic tradition by the Nazi regime, Pomerania, as an object of constant longing, has literally abgebrannt (ie. burnt down), as in the song.
Lydia Jeschke