One in four people in Germany has a migration background, but less than 8% of the members of parliament have foreign roots. Germany is out of touch with reality, says Maissun Melhem.
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Politicians with a migrant background, such as Serap Güler, are few and far between in the German BundestagImage: Chai von der Laage/imago images
"What's your Heimat?" (home country), W. Michael Blumenthal, the founding director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, was asked in 2014, the year of his farewell from Germany.
Blumenthal was born in 1925 in Oranienburg, near Berlin, and grew up in the capital, before being forced to flee with his parents in 1939. The family survived the war in Shanghai, China, before settling in the United States.
Blumenthal answered without hesitation at the time: "My home is the US." No surprise there. Blumenthal is a former US Treasury secretary who worked in Jimmy Carter's administration exactly 30 years after he first set foot on American soil in San Francisco as a 21-year-old stateless refugee with $200 in his pocket and little formal education. At his farewell event in Berlin, Blumenthal also highlighted the similarities between the German capital and New York — a reference to the colorful and multicultural nature of both cities. He was undoubtedly right.
In principle, yes, although it has only happened once before. And at that time — not even 10 years ago — there was a serious debate in Germany about whether the "Asian" appearance of Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler was compatible with his position. Rösler, of all people, who came to Germany from Vietnam when he was nine months old, grew up with German adoptive parents and is thoroughly socialized here. And why should a politician's appearance and origin play any role at all in his or her political career?
An election campaign short on diversity
In just over a week, Germany goes to the polls to elect a new Bundestag (parliament). We can be proud of the fact that German democracy has been stable for 72 years. And yet we should ask ourselves whether the Bundestag is still fulfilling its mandate as defined by the Basic Law. Are the members of parliament really "representatives of everyone"?
Those with a migration background would beg to differ. Only 58 of the 709 members of the current Bundestag have a migrant history — a share of just under 8%. And the situation is unlikely to get much better in the new Bundestag. Walk down any street in Germany — even in multicultural Berlin — and most of the candidates on the election posters are white.
Migrants are more than just spectators
The Federal Republic of Germany's migration history began just a few years after its founding in 1949. After the first guest workers treaty with Italy was signed in 1955, people flocked there to start a new life — not just as guest workers. Since the 1950s, nearly 6 million people have sought protection and asylum in the country. Many of them found not only temporary safety and security, but a permanent new beginning.
Just as Blumenthal found his home in the US, most of these people now call Germany their home, politically, socially and culturally. Why should they be content to watch the political events in their country as mere spectators? They and their descendants are more than qualified to hold a political office.
The current make-up of parliament does not reflect the society we live in today, where every fourth person has a migrant background. If the next Bundestag looks anything like this one, the question of how migrants will be represented in German politics in future needs to be addressed urgently.
Germany still has work to do if it really wants to live up to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's recent claim: "We are a country with a migrant background."
Migrants' stories from a new home
In the 1960s, workers from several countries flocked to Germany to support and partake of the country's economic success. An exhibition tells their stories.
Image: Asimina Paradissa
Asimina Paradissa in Wilhelmshaven
Asimina Paradissa was 20 years old when she moved to Wilhelmshaven in northern Germany. In the photo, the Greek woman poses in front of the dormitory at the Olympia company. Back then, she took pictures of weddings, parties and visits to the zoo for her colleagues and friends. The 76-year-old is still a passionate photographer.
Image: Asimina Paradissa
Enroute to Paris
Many young people moved to West Germany in the 1960s in accordance with recruitment agreements. The so-called guest workers came primarily from Greece, Spain, Italy and Turkey. Yücel Asciglu also came to Germany to work. The photo shows him with three friends on the way to Paris in 1971, where they were planning to spend their Easter vacation.
Image: Yücel Aşçıoğlu
Wedding Day
Initially, mainly young men like Onur Dulgür moved to West Germany. The photo shows him on his wedding day on Dec. 23, 1965. "That day I was so happy because Monika and I had finally managed to get notarized permission to get married," Dulgür recalls. Monika's German family opposed thre union, so there was no family present at the ceremony.
Image: Onur Dülger/DOMiD-Archiv, Köln
Keupstrasse, Cologne
This is a 1977 photograph of Cologne's Keupstrasse. The street was the scene of the 2004 NSU right-wing extremist group's nail bomb attack on businesses run by migrants. More than 20 people were injured.
Image: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln
"Turks in Germany" series,1975
The exhibition (June 19-October 3, 2021) showcases private photographs as well as those by well-known photographers, including Candida Höfer (photo). The professional photographs are not the main focus, however — for the first time in the history of the Cologne museum,it is all about private snapshots.
A picture can tell a whole story, as the exhibition's curator Barbara Engelbach says, and this photograph is a testament to that. It shows the Spitareli family in Cologne in 1967. The father holds a radio he bought for his wife so she could listen to Italian radio broadcasts and feel less lonely. The two children only joined their parents in Germany at a later date.
Image: Rosa Spitaleri/DOMiD-Archiv, Köln
Tales of loneliness
Migrants' stories are also tales of absence, longing and loneliness. Sofia Zacharia had to leave her three small daughters behind in Greece when she moved to Aachen to work. In the photo she and her roommates stand in front of the women's dormitory of the Leonard Monheim company. Photos gave loved ones at home an idea where the migrants lived.
Image: Sofia Zacharaki/DOMiD-Archiv, Köln
Carefully staged
The photos were often carefully staged, like this shot of Ali Kanatli (front right) with friends in Cologne. The photos "tell of arriving in a new place, of finding one's space, perceiving and shaping one's own living environment," says guest curator Ela Kacel, who initiated the exhibition.
Image: Ali Kanatlı/DOMiD-Archiv, Köln
Cramped living conditions
Often the pictures show how the immigrants wanted to see themselves in their new environment. There is no sign of the cramped living conditions in this photo, which shows the Türköz and Ücgüler families in their first shared apartment in Cologne.
Image: Alpin Harrenkamp
Good memories
Often enough, the migrant families lived in houses in need of renovation or in cramped quarters, virtually excluded from the regular housing market. Their photos, however showed the sunny moments in their lives, like the Türköz family's outing along the Rhine River in 1972.
Image: Alpin Harrenkamp
Protests
In the 1970s, migrants begin to openly and actively campaign for an improvement of their living conditions. Throughout Germany, workers took to the streets and shut down entire factories. The photo shows strikers at the Ford plant in Cologne in 1973.
Image: Gernot Huber
Party time, 1965
"In Situ: Photo Stories on Migration" is also a story of emancipation. It tells tales of people who came to a foreign country, which they discovered for themselves and which ultimately became their home.. It is not only a (photo) history of migration, but also the history of Germany.
Image: Chrysaugi Diederich/DOMiD-Archiv, Köln
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This opinion piece was translated from German (rm).
