1989 marked the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the party that governed communist East Germany. This historical shift upended the status of numerous migrants who lived, studied, and worked in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The dissolution of the institutions and fabric that underpinned the GDR’s economy, society, and politics overlapped with social transformations marked by heightened racism, xenophobia, and right-wing extremism in a newly unified and, for many, precarious Germany. The following collection of material features the stories of those who were forced to return, the conditions and political engagements of those who stayed, and highlights key instances on a path towards a reparative horizon.

Although the GDR state existed until Germany was officially unified in October 1990, and contractual agreements retained their validity until then, shortly after the Wall fell some allied governments, including those of China and Angola, already requested their citizens to return as a systematic shift became clear. Other countries refrained from taking a similar approach, as was the case for Mozambique and Vietnam. From as early as January 1990, some East German companies took matters into their own hands and slowly vacated foreign workers, ending employment relations and either increasing rent for worker housing units or mass-evicting their residents.

Contract workers from Mozambique, of which, according to the Mozambican Labour Ministry, approximately 17,000 had come to the GDR since 1979, were quickly exiled and forced to return—in many cases without full payment for their labour. Referred to as madgermanes in Mozambique—a term that plays off the phrase ‘made in Germany’—they went back to a homeland that had meanwhile been ruptured by civil war, thus rendering their acquired training futile. Significant percentages of their wages—retained by the East German government in order to support their return to and the ‘development’ of the (by then collapsed) People’s Republic of Mozambique—remain unrepatriated to this day.

Weekly protests of the madgermanes in Mozambique, which persist until today, address the grievances related to not only this outstanding compensation but also the profound disruption of entire lives that left family and friendship bonds abruptly, and in many cases indefinitely, severed. Today, the voluntary network Reencontro Familiar, operating in both Germany and Mozambique, is committed to reuniting families that were torn apart.

Some female Mozambican former contract workers, who are less numerous and rarely featured in public discourse, have given the name regressadas (returnees) to themselves. Here, Ana Raquel Masoio, Graziel Jostino Chambule, her GDR-born son Juma Madeira Junior, and Ilda Melembe share their personal archives and testimonies, bearing witness to individual expectations and collective realities, intercultural differences and solidarities, motherhood, exclusion and violence, and the return to an unfamiliar homeland. Juxtaposing the aesthetics of employee portraits that were typical of GDR Betriebe (companies and factories), the regressadas were photographed and interviewed in their current homes in Mozambique by researcher and artist Aghi.

The 1990 Ausländerbeauftragte [Commissioner for Foreigners] Almuth Berger recounts that of the 60,000 Vietnamese contract workers who lived in the GDR in 1989, 16,000 remained in Germany after unification. Fighting for the right to stay, it was only in 1997, after years of political struggle, that former contract workers of the GDR were granted a residence permit. Until then, many lived in a state of legal, economic, and social uncertainty. A photo by José Giribás Marambio from 1993 captures a police raid of the home of a former Vietnamese contact worker. In two other photos by Marambio from 1993, former Vietnamese contract workers are seen taking to the streets in protest of murderous racist attacks as well as police violence in the recently-unified Germany. The subset of former Vietnamese contract workers who stayed in Germany after the fall of the Wall constituted a minority compared to those who were deported in March 1990 or those who opted for a payout and a return ticket facilitated (but not always paid for) by the German government, following renegotiations in June of the same year. For those who chose to remain, the conditions surrounding their right to stay and opt for the possibility to receive a permanent residence remained confusing, if not obscured. Post-unification Germany adopted the ambiguous status of immigration inherited from the West: an administrative permittance coupled with a social and political refusal to understand the nation as one of immigration. It is this basis that led to different statuses being applied to different groups of former workers; those who had acquired enough years evidencing their economic activity received a secure status and were able to bring their families to Germany, while those who did not satisfy newly-established policies and requirements found themselves left with the uncertainty of temporary statuses.

Alongside bureaucratic difficulties and administrative obscurities came systemic and structural xenophobia, racism, and anti-Asian hate, which manifested through personal violations by individuals as well as larger coordinated group attacks and murders against former contract workers and immigrants.

In a series of attacks that took place during 1991 in Hoyerswerda, Vietnamese immigrants and a hostel used by Mozambican contract workers were targeted. A year later in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Vietnamese immigrants and Roma asylum seekers were attacked in a xenophobic incursion that left many injured. At the same time, in the west of Germany, people were murdered in right-wing arson attacks against families from Turkey in Mölln (1992) and Solingen (1993). Alongside organized group attacks were the individual murder cases of Amadeu Antonio (1990), Nguyễn Văn Tú (1992) in the Marzahn district of Berlin by a Deutsche Volksunion (German People’s Union) (DVU) sympathizer, and Phan Văn Toàn (1997). However, structural racism and right-wing extremism did not begin with unification; they are rather continuities of a German history (both in the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany) that is strongly marked by colonialism and National Socialism. This section also highlights the murders of Raúl García Paret and Delfín Guerra (12 August 1979, Merseburg); Manuel Diogo (30 June 1986, Coswig Anhalt); and Carlos Conceição (19–20 September 1987, Stassfurt)—all of which were officially unrecognized or unresolved by the GDR, and remain so today.

To this day, the work of memorial initiatives commemorates and fights for clarification and recognition of these racist and right-wing motivated murders. Their remembrance is an urgent reminder of the necessity of addressing their social causes and consequences in order to prevent their proliferation. Initiatives that are exemplified in this collection such as the Initiative 12. August or Light Me Amadeu campaign, or the commemorative initiatives for Nguyễn Văn Tú and Phan Văn Toàn, advocate for an active culture of remembrance in public spaces by organizing memorial events and demanding memorial plaques or street names that commemorate victims.

In 2021, two former contract workers, Văn Giang Bùi and Mạnh Hùng Lê, opened the DDR-Café-Imbiss in Hanoi to create a gathering space for former GDR contract workers. They formed the group DDR-Erinnerungen (GDR memories), which organizes gatherings and collects memorabilia within an archive room that continually receives donations. Spanning from the East and West of Germany, through Maputo to Hanoi, former GDR migrants, their children, and now grandchildren continue to navigate the remnants of a complex, tangled, and deeply rifted history, acknowledging common ground and taking a stand for justice and recognition.