Quy Nguyen Dossier: Germany - The Country of Immigration November 2010

The Storyteller‘s Stories Leaving or staying? One Turkish guest-worker family decided to go back. Other million migrant guest-workers, however, stayed in Germany

“Can you see it? Over there is our new home!” says Ah-met Sezer, 52, and points at the red brick building behind the two lines of trees in front of us. We are on the way to the Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany, which started as a char-ity association founded by Sezer and his friend Aytac Eryilmaz in 1990. The museum, now holding the most extensive collection of material on the history of migra-tion in Germany, is situated on the fourth floor of a district hall in Cologne. The once industrial and worker area of the city quar-ter Ehrenfeld is now inhabited by a high number of migrants; most of them coming from Turkey and Italy. “We moved here in February with the support of the city mayor. From this year on, the State Min-istry for Labour, Social Affairs and Integration has begun to finance some parts of our work,” Sezer continues. “We will celebrate our 20th birthday here tonight. Poli-ticians are coming. Like Zülfiye Kaykin, the State Secretary for Integration, do you know her?” Sezer asks as he marches through the hall’s entrance door. This small Turkish man talks fast. And he walks fast. A “good habit”, he later proudly says, which he learnt from the Germans.

In 1970, Ahmet Sezer came by bus from Istanbul to Germany; his aim was to study. His first con-nection to the migrant’s history has a name: Munich main station, track number 11. It was the first place he set foot on in Germany - as well as for the other million migrant travellers. Between 1955 and 1973 about 14 million peo-ple from different recruitment states, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Greece

- to name a few - came to work in Germany as the so-called “Gastar-beiter” (guest-worker). They sup-ported the post-war economy to overcome its severe labour short-age. Then in the late 1980s came a turn: the migrants did not want to return home. The law which was supposed to encourage their return failed. Approximately five million guest-workers stayed in Germany and began to fetch their families. Their short-term working stay turned into a long-term one. From guests, they turned into im-migrants and became a part of the German history and society since then, even without much notice from their guest land.

“A history – and five kilograms of garlic sausage”

Under which conditions those people of the first generation of immigrants worked and lived, how they felt during their first years in a strange land, what they have brought to this land and how

they are integrated in the society are some among the many ques-tions which concerned Sezer and Eryilmaz at that time. In 1989 the two young Turkish men started to search for migrant’s artefacts that can provide them with an answer. One year later, their char-ity association named Documentation Cen-tre and Museum of Migration from Tur-key came into life. During the first days, however, not so many people believed in their idea. And so they started only with an initial donation of 500 Deutsche Mark (now about 250 Euro) from a Turkish company - and with five kilograms of garlic sausage, a Turkish speciality, from another company.

Divided memories When Ahmet Sezer walks through different depot rooms in the 1000-square-meter exhibition and

library space of the museum, he al-ways feels as though he is living in another time, he says. Everywhere on the brand-new IKEA laminate shelves different used household pieces lay around, from plastic

basins, kitchen sets to candles. Another de-pot room is filled with old leather suitcases and furniture. Portable radio, television, bro-ken records, protocol, advertisement, maga-zines for foreigners - in the other. All those things which don’t seem to value much any more. Except for Sezer. “They contain untold memories and stories,” he says.

By emphasizing that, he intends to imply about the other part of Germany’s immigration history which can be found here, but has been left forgotten and ignored for a long time in German history books and in the country’s numer-ous state museums.

It might be a story that one can hear from an old tape at the audio station near the museum entrance door. The dish-washer named Bedriye Furtina, who came with her husband to Hamburg in 1959, told us about how migrants cul-turally enriched this country and changed the locals’ eating habit. She said, “In the beginning, there were almost no vegetables here. But then one by one, spinach, aubergine, paprika came to Ger-many. In the market, we shared the recipe so that German people can cook them. Back then, the Germans disgusted those who eat garlic like us. But now they eat it even more than we do.”

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According to the German Federal Statistical Office, more than 15 million people living in Germany now have migration background. So, what does homeland mean to them? “Homeland is not a place, but a feeling,” said once the Federal Minister of Health Philipp Rösler, who himself is an adoptive child from Vietnam. Following the same idea, these two special projects of DOMiD offer journeys of emotion back to one’s homeland and to the migration history of Germany - interactively on the net. 1. Route of Migration: Coming, returning, and stayingThe travelling ways and different memory places of emigrants and immigrants in Germany www.migrationsroute.nrw.de2. Arrived - Migrant’s stories from 40 yearsUntold stories of the Spain and Portuguese guest-workers, among them was also Armando Rodrigues de Sá (see main story) www.angekommen.com

on the wall of the main exhibition room - about a Portuguese guest-worker. On 10th September 1964, Armando Rodriguez de Sá arrived at the Cologne-Deutz railway sta-tion as a happy man. The president of the Federal Labour Office wel-comed him as the millionth guest-worker with a flower bouquet and a motorbike. The motorbike is now exhibited as an important and interesting artefact of immigration history in the House of History in Bonn, the Germany’s former capi-tal - nonetheless, not together with his tragic life-story. Rodriguez got sick in 1981 during his holiday in Portugal. He could not pay for the doctor, as he didn’t know that even in a foreign land he was still medi-cally insured. Soon after that he died at the age of 51.

Such unknown stories, out of other hundred stories being told and exhibited here, have brought the museum, in recent years, a wide recognition. As for Sezer and his team, those stories gave them the greatest motivation to dig out and to uncover even more. By play-ing the role of the Meddah - the traditional Turkish storyteller, he hopes that young people with im-migration background could find in the museum their inheritance and their identity - in the eating habits, the dreams, the traumas, in slang, in the maxim of life of their grandfather and father’s genera-tion. So that they could form an opinion for themselves, about the integration issues the German ma-jority society is currently debating; and what politicians like Thilo Sar-razin, a former board member of the German central bank, argues about, ‘Who can and who cannot belong to this country’, is rational or not.”

“Migrants find their memories, Germans a part of their history”

“Yet, after all, the migration his-tory is not dedicated only for im-migrants,” adds Ahmet Sezer, “it’s our shared history. It needs to be visible so that German people can see it and know about it. Because if they don’t, we will forever be ‘guest-workers’ and strangers to them.” He says every single word with a confident voice of someone who has himself lived the life of an immigrant long enough. He knows what he’s talking about. So, what does this man believe about the integration process in Ger-many after all those years living here? “The immigrants are still not absolutely welcomed, recognized and accepted. Although the Ger-man society is on the right way, much still waits to be done. Also for us,” answers Sezer without any hesitation. Then he politely excus-es himself. He still has something to finish - a note of thanks to the politicians who are coming for the ceremony.

Later that evening, also in a note of thanks praising the work of Sezer and his team, the State Secretary for Integration, Zülfiye Kaykin, mentions an old green suitcase. When she saw it, she cried; because it looks exactly like the suitcase that her father carried when they first arrived in Ger-many. Kaykin is the daughter of a former Turkish guest-worker. At that moment her precious memo-ries are fully relived - thanks to a museum of migration. The museum opens from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mon.-Fri., in Venloer Street 419, 50825, Cologne For more information: call 0221-800 28 30, or visit www.domid.org

Migration For 20 years a small group of Turkish intellectuals has chased the dream of “A Museum for Migration in Germany”. Now they hold a unique collection of migrant stories and memories. A visit to their museum.

by Quy Nguyen

The storyteller Ahmet Sezer

H O M E L A N D O N T H E N E T