Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The guests who wouldn’t leave

Gee honey, I thought they’d never leave. What do you mean they’re still here??

First came the Italians. Then the Spanish and the Portuguese showed up. Then the Greeks and the Turks and the Yugoslavs and… hey, wait a cotton-pickin minute! There are even Americans here now!

It was 50 years ago this week that the natives were in the middle of their famous Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) thang and didn’t have enough manpower to make all of that cool stuff that everybody wanted to buy from them – back then. Political agreements were reached with neighboring countries ("Der Vertrag mit Rom", for example) and Gastarbeiter (guest workers) started rolling in by the thousands (remember that the important word here is “guest”). The natives assumed (and you know what happens when you ass-u-me something, right?) that these folks would eventually want to go back home again someday already. That was a false assumption, of course.

There was never any real thought put into integration and Germany has to this day yet to take that big step to becoming what one could call an Immigrationsland (immigration land). 

So there we have it. Now the 6.7 million Gastarbeiter and their Nachkommen (descendents) just won’t leave (about 8 percent of the population, by the way). And the natives have tried all the usual tricks, too.

You know: “Yawn, yawn. Oh man, I really have to get up early tomorrow morning,” or “Wow! It’s really gotten late, hasn’t it?” Nothing seems to work. They’re still spread out on the sofa drinking native beer and waiting for the next DVD.

Max Frisch: “Wir riefen Arbeitskräfte, und es kamen Menschen.”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum! 

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:41:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |
Comments
1 - nice picture at bottom of article, but what does it have to with the article? (Comment this)

Written by: Bud Harpur (Cheryl's dad) at 2005/12/25 - 19:50:12
2 - I have really enjoyed reading your posts these last few months. Thirty five years ago I was a soldier stationed in Berlin - and loved it. Because of the war in Viet Nam, the attitude towards soldiers wasn''t always as good as it might have been, but nevertheless we had a number of Germans that we spent a lot of free time with, liked and enjoyed being around. I spoke German, as did many of the guys I was with so that made things easier, but their way of thinking and seeing things then was much as it sounds like it is now. I remember the first time I went with some locals up to the area where the Turkish Gastarbeiter lived. and made the mistake of saying to one of them "Oh, I didn''t know you had ghettos too." The answers I got left no room for doubt. I would not bring that up again. They were insistent that these were not ghettos, that the Turks preferred living in that kind of housing, that the reason we never saw Turks working at anything other than menial jobs was because they (the Turks) wanted it like that, and not because of any sort of discrimination. I got the impression that they sort of thought that the Turks really looked forward to dumpster diving. I didn''t want to start an interminable argument, so I didn''t tell them I''d been hearing those same statements in the US for years.
By the way - I appreciate the notes in German. It resparks an interest I have unfortunately let lapse and got me to drag out my Woerterbuch.
Sure wish I could have visited KaDeWe over these holidays. Oh well
Keep on writing, and have a Merry Christmas (Comment this)

Written by: Nyles Van Hoosen at 2005/12/25 - 22:36:30
3 - Hi Bud! Great to hear from you again (tell Cheryl that The Lettermen will be coming through town this spring). Well, I didn''t label it properly (although if you hold mouse over the picture long enough...). That is the picture of the first Italian guest worker in 1955! (Comment this)

Written by: clarsonimus at 2005/12/26 - 19:57:56
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