Decolonization of Migration in Divided Berlin: Berliner Künstlerprogramm and Artistic Representations of Migrant Subjectivities in the 1970s

By Nazan Maksudyan

This research forms part of a broader research agenda on the aestheticization of migration in France and Germany during the 1970s. It focuses on aesthetic representations of migrant subjectivities and the critique of labor migration in the context of arts and cultural production. The overall project adopts a sound studies perspective, and in this brief exposition, I focus on the concept of artistic residency and the invitation of artists from the “European South” to intervene in migration debates with an aestheticized frame.

The global wave of decolonization and anti-colonial critique in the 1960s and 1970s had a direct impact on Western European societies’ critical engagement with their colonial and imperial past. As evidenced by Quinn Slobodian’s research, third world politics had a notable impact on West Germany.[1] In addition, it is important to note that this historical period, which was characterized by revolutionary, anti-colonial and “third worldist” activism, was also closely intertwined with the political activism of migrant workers seeking to defend their rights. As Olivia Harrison’s exemplary analysis of France demonstrates, the activism of migrant laborers and the critique of colonialism were inextricably intertwined during this period.[2] While there is significant research on the involvement of migrant workers in the labor movement (at times in leadership roles) in Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as their left-wing “revolutionary” activism, these topics have not been discussed in the context of decolonization.[3]

A significant development in Germany during the 1970s was the emergence of critical migration studies, which employed a Marxist political economy and sociology lens to examine the phenomenon of migration and the role of “guest workers”. One of the most influential works on the subject in German is Marios Nikolinakos 1973 book, Politische Ökonomie der Gastarbeiterfrage,[4] which posited that Western capitalism was able to avert a severe economic downturn with the assistance of migrant labor, which facilitated the substantial accumulation of capital during the 1960s. In 1971, Ernst Klee published Die Nigger Europas: Zur Lage der Gastarbeiter, a seminal text that addressed the issue of migrant workers in Germany from a racialized perspective.[5] Klee’s work highlighted the exploitation of migrant workers in Western countries, not only as a working class, but also as “foreigners.” Although Marxist political economists employed the term “sub-proletarian,” the designation “Nigger Europas” unambiguously evoked the legacy of slavery and the colonial era. This term underscored the intertwined experiences of migrants and the enduring global struggle for racial justice and equality. The social and economic circumstances of migrant communities in Northern Europe were viewed as an extension of a longer historical trajectory characterized by exploitation and colonial rule.

The critique of labor migration developed by the social sciences and migrant activism in the period has resonance with aesthetic representations of migrant subjectivities in the art scene and works of art.[6] As Rita Chin’s analysis of “artistic expressions and counter-narratives” about migrants demonstrates, the German New Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s did, in fact, facilitate a transformation in the German public discourse surrounding migrants.[7] Notable films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including Katzelmacher (1969) and Angst essen Seele auf (1974), feature protagonists who are “guest workers” and interact with Germans. In Heinrich Böll’s 1971 novel Gruppenbild mit Dame, the character Mehmet, Leni Pfeiffer’s lover, is a migrant worker. These initial portrayals were limited to adult male workers (although there were already numerous women and children residing in the country at the time), and they underscored the necessity for a “bottom-up” perspective.

Berliner Künstlerprogramm (Artists-in-Berlin Program) and Artists from Migrant-Sending-Countries

The Berliner Künstlerprogramm (BKP) of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) was initially funded by the Ford Foundation and hosted its inaugural cohort of fellows in 1965.  Typically, 20 to 25 artists were invited each year. Over the course of the program’s first decade, more than 250 musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, visual artists, and filmmakers from 40 different countries were hosted. The majority of these individuals were in Berlin for a period of approximately one year, although in a few cases, their tenure was shorter. In its tenth year, the program’s anniversary publication revealed that over twenty invited artists had decided to extend their residence in the city beyond the prescribed fellowship period.[8]

It is beyond question that BKP played a significant role in establishing a connection between the Eastern and Western hemispheres during the Cold War. In its 1976 report, the DAAD characterized BKP as “a cultural turntable between West and East” (kulturelle Drehscheibe zwischen West und Ost), a designation that underscores BKP’s role as a nexus for cultural exchange in divided Berlin.

“Die Funktion des [Berliner Künstler]Programms als kulturelle Drehscheibe zwischen West und Ost konnte auch im Berichtsjahr voll wahrgenommen werden. Es kamen u. a. Künstler aus Polen, Jugoslawien und Rumänien. Erstmals gelang es auch, die Dritte Welt mit in die Programmplanung einzubeziehen.”[9]

Indeed, the artistic policies of the mid-1970s were shaped not only by the enduring Cold War politics but also by the global anti-colonial critique and the migrants’ rights movement. As the quote attests, the opening up to the Third World also occurred in 1975, within the context of the global wave of decolonial critique. It is therefore not fortuitous that the program extended invitations to artists from migrant-sending countries at the same time that the migration debate became intertwined with decolonization. As migration scholars and artists have previously emphasized, the ways in which resident artists can both transform and be excluded by the local conditions of artistic production are crucial.[10] The questions of who is invited, where they are invited, for how long and under what conditions define the patterns through which the issue of migration has been opened up to artistic intervention.

The invitation of Füruzan from Turkey, Vlassis Caniaris from Greece, and Videobase from Italy for similar projects and around the same time is quite interesting, since these three art projects engaged in a discourse with evolving cultural policies concerning the perception of migrant workers. In a sense, the role of these “native artists” was to serve as a mediator, facilitating new avenues of engagement with the phenomenon of migration. They were tasked with representing their country and their compatriots in a manner that would challenge existing perceptions and foster alternative relationships with migrant subcultures. Such aestheticized representations of migration also provided the host society with an opportunity to develop a more engaged attitude towards migration. Caniaris, Füruzan, and “Videobase” were expected to find novel ways of representing their country and countrymen in another light.

Füruzan (1932-2024), BKP Residency, Literature, 1975-76

Following the success of her inaugural collection of short stories, Parasız Yatılı (1971, Public Boarding School), which was awarded the Sait Faik Short Story Prize in Turkey in 1972, the Vienna-based Europaverlag entered into an agreement with Füruzan to translate three stories from the aforementioned collection into German and publish them under the title Frau ohne Schleier (Woman without a veil). In the following year, Füruzan was invited to Berlin as part of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm.[11] She was the first artist from Turkey to be extended an invitation to come to Berlin. Her residency was marked by notable achievements and fruitful outcomes, spanning from July 1975 to June 1976. However, her continued presence in the city extended beyond this initial period, with intermittent visits until 1980. Subsequent to her stay, she authored four books, which were published between 1977 and 1988.

During her time in Germany, Füruzan visited the mines in the Ruhr area and conducted interviews with the Gastarbeiter miners. Additionally, she spent time in West Berlin interviewing migrant workers and their families. She subsequently published her observations and commentaries in her book Yeni Konuklar (1977) in Turkish, which was also published in German in 1985 under the title Logis im Land Der Reichen. The book presents a series of testimonies that shed light on the discursive, structural, and political challenges faced by labor migrants. Her interviews with coal miners in the Ruhr area (long before Günter Wallraff’s famous book, Ganz unten) provided a novel perspective, as she resided with these workers at the Heim and descended into the mines. The interviews conducted in Berlin were similarly innovative, as they included a diverse range of migrants, extending beyond working women to encompass school-age children. These interviews with children represent one of the most original aspect of her New Guests.

Vlassis Caniaris (1928-2011), BKP Residency, Visual arts, 1973-75

Vlassis Caniaris was a relatively well-known visual artist in the 1960s who spent extended periods in Rome and Paris. His works were exhibited in several European capitals. In 1969, he was compelled to leave Greece as a result of his courageous exhibition that was critical of the military regime. At the time, numerous other Greek artists had already sought exile in West Berlin, with artist residencies frequently arranged by the Goethe Institute in Athens.[12] Caniaris was one of ten other Greek artists who had been invited by the DAAD prior to him in the 1960s and 1970s.  

In his exhibition, “Gastarbeiter – Fremdarbeiter,”[13] Caniaris challenged the public perception of “guest workers” by focusing on their private lives. He reflected on the living conditions of migrant households through a combination of visits, interviews, and photographs, which he incorporated into his work. At the core of his approach was the conducting of personal interviews with the workers. Caniaris’s preference was to depict the private sphere, in which migrants are compelled to engage in activities such as eating, dressing, and sleeping, as stations and situations of displacement, including homelessness, abandonment, and anxiety. His work showed that migrants had individual environments, individual desires, and individual dreams. Like Füruzan, Caniaris was particularly interested in the experiences and perspectives of children, which is reflected in the many figurines of children and toys that appeared in this exhibition.

The exhibition placed a significant emphasis on the role of objects. In Caniaris’s view, objects represented the materialization of their owners’ characteristics, aspirations, and shortcomings. Caniaris juxtaposed the lives of migrant workers with the fate of used objects that are immediately discarded after limited use in a consumer society. In essence, he compared the utilization and subsequent discarding of both people and objects in accordance with a discernible rhythm.[14]

Videobase (Anna Lajolo, Alfredo Leonardi, Guido Lombardi), BKP Residency, Film, 1975

In 1975, the Rome-based film collective “Videobase,” comprising Anna Lajolo, Alfredo Leonardi, and Guido Lombardi, was invited to participate in a three-month DAAD residency.[15] The objective was to produce a documentary about the lives of “guest workers” in West Berlin. The Italian collective had previously produced a series of documentaries that espoused activist ideals and were created in Italy. The resulting documentary, Lottando la vita, was filmed in Berlin and focused on the living and working conditions of Italian migrants.[16] The filming took place in a variety of locations, including dormitories, pizzerias, bars, daycare centers, and on the street. The film presents a series of case studies examining the ways in which individuals from different generations respond to and cope with experiences of exclusion and declassification.[17]

In a discussion with Peter B. Schumann (RIAS), Anna Lajolo stated that:

“When we work in the working-class districts of Rome or with factory committees, we use the same method as here in Berlin: when we have finished a part, we check with the people concerned, show them what we have filmed, then we film the discussion about it, and at the end everything is shown together. So the language spoken here is the language of the workers. They express themselves. In general, we don’t use commentary – in other words, what people say is enough for us.”[18]

The film thus serves as a valuable document, reflecting the multiplicity of voices of Italian migrants in Berlin. The collective utilized video “as a tool for social analysis”, involving migrants in the discussion and filming process to raise awareness and develop solidarity. The film focuses on the ways in which migrants organize and resist, particularly in the context of the Casa di Cultura Popolare, an informal meeting place offering support to migrants on a range of specific issues, including work, schooling, and rights.[19]

‘North’ in Dialogue with ‘European South’

There were notable similarities between Füruzan’s project on New Guests of Germany, Caniaris’ exhibition “Gastarbeiter – Fremdarbeiter,” and the “Videobase” documentary Lottando la vita with respect to both their thematic focus and their methodological approaches. First and foremost, all three artistic projects facilitated a discourse between intellectuals and laborers from the same country of origin in a migratory context. In terms of identities and political stances of the artists, all three from Turkey, Greece, and Italy offered critical interventions, reflecting the North-South critique, anti-colonial politics, and the “revolutionary 60s”.

As their principal methodology, all three projects prioritized interviews with migrants, provided a platform for first-person narratives from migrant communities, and relied on audiovisual recordings for their documentation. Videobase explicitly considered the role of media technology as a distinct methodology, or “tool,” in their lexicon, influencing their work. In contrast, Füruzan and Caniaris primarily utilized sound recordings and photography. In Caniaris’ Berlin exhibition (1975), a cassette player served as the central element of the exhibition space, continuously playing the recordings he had previously made with migrants, capturing their voices and the sounds of their daily lives. Füruzan also took her small compact tape recorder everywhere she went and conducted all of her interviews with this media technology aid. Many chapters of the book read like a transcribed audio recording, although the actual questions posed during the interviews are not included in the text.

By commissioning artists from these migrant-sending countries, BKP succeeded in providing a context-specific local background to Italian, Greek, and Turkish migration in Germany. Caniaris, Füruzan, and “Videobase” were expected to offer a change of perspective in the representation of their country and countrymen.[20] Moreover, these artists facilitated a kind of North-South dialogue through their presence in the Berlin art scene, their engagement and dialogue with other artists, their media presence, and their works. They served as cultural brokers between German society and migrant communities, acting as intermediaries between disparate cultural and social groups. From this perspective, aesthetic representation of migration was potentially instrumental to foster dialogue and to facilitate migrant’s “integration” into the society.

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Footnotes

[1] Quinn Slobodian, Foreign front: Third world politics in sixties West Germany (Duke University Press, 2012).

[2] See Olivia C. Harrison, Natives Against Nativism: Antiracism and Indigenous Critique in Postcolonial France (University of Minnesota Press, 2023); Olivia C. Harrison, “Decolonizing the Figure of the Migrant, or What Does Palestine Teach us about the Migrant Question?”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 52.1 (2020): 150-153.

[3] See Jennifer A. Miller, Turkish guest workers in Germany: hidden lives and contested borders, 1960s to 1980s (University of Toronto Press, 2018).

[4] Marios Nikolinakos, Politische Ökonomie der Gastarbeiterfrage. Migration und Kapitalismus (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 1973).

[5] Ernst Klee, Die Nigger Europas. Zur Lage der Gastarbeiter. Eine Dokumentation (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1971).

[6] See following works on art scene reflecting this awakening regarding migration, Burcu Dogramaci, ed. Migration und künstlerische Produktion: aktuelle Perspektiven (transcript Verlag, 2013); Burcu Dogramaci, Birgit Mersmann, eds. Handbook of Art and Global Migration: Theories, practices, and challenges. (Boston: de Gruyter, 2019); Ela Gezen, “The Soundtrack of Migration: Tahsin Incirci and the Türkischer Arbeiterchor West Berlin”, Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur 2, no. 24 (2010): 117-130;  Ela Gezen 2018, Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaptation, and Innovation after 1960, (Rochester: Camden House, 2018); Ela Gezen, “Türkische und Türkisch-Deutsche Perspektiven in der (Re)Konstruktion von 1968’”, Undercurrents: Forum für Linke Literaturwissenschaft 12 (2019), http://www.open-journal-systems.de/index.php/undercurrents/article/view/93; Yasemin Yildiz, “Aras Ören’s What Does Niyazi Want in Naunyn Street. A Partial Translation with a Translator’s Introduction,” Monatshefte 112, no. 4 (2020): 659-674; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3368/m.112.4.659

[7] Rita Chin, The guest worker question in postwar Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

[8] 10 Jahre Berliner Künstlerprogramm (Bonn-Bad Godesberg : DAAD, 1975), 10-13.

[9] Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), Jahresbericht 1976 (Bonn: DAAD, 1976), 128.

[10] Hans Haacke, “Der Bevölkerung (Fig. 1).” Oxford Art Journal 24, no. 2 (2001): 127–43; Mark Terkessidis, “Die Heimsuchung der Migration. Die Frage der interkulturellen Öffnung des Theaters”, in Neue Spieler, alte Städte Quinones, eds. A. & T. Mustroph (Dortmund: Theaterfestival FAVORITEN, 2010).

[11] For further information on Füruzan’s artistic production in Germany, see Burcu Alkan, Nazan Maksudyan (2023), “Children at the Margins of Labour Migration in Füruzan’s Works after Germany,” tuded: Journal of Turkish Language and Literature 63(2), 115–139.

[12]Eleana Stoikou: «Die Arbeitsmigration der 1960er und -70er Jahre im Spiegel griechischer Künstler in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland», in: Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis und Miltos Pechlivanos (Hg.), Compendium der deutsch-griechischen Verflechtungen, 08.07.21, URI : https://comdeg.eu/essay/104593/

[13] After its opening at the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (ngbk) in Berlin (January-February 1975), the exhibition was widely covered in the German media, with articles in Der Spiegel and many newspapers. It was subsequently shown at the Heidelberger Kunstverein, February-March 1975; Kunstverein Ingolstadt, April-May 1975; Museum Bochum, June-July 1975; Kunstverein Hannover, June-July 1976; and documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977.

[14] For detailed information on the works and art of Caniaris, see Michael Fehr, Vlassis Canıarıs: Konkreter Realismus. Skizze einer künstlerischen Strategie Werkverzeichnis 1952 bis 1983 (Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 1991)

[15] 10 Jahre Berliner Künstlerprogramm (Bonn-Bad Godesberg : DAAD, 1975); Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo, “that relation between us, or among us”,  archive journal 6 (May 2018): 1-6.

[16] The documentary is available online, Videobase, “Lottando la vita. Lavoratori italiani a Berlino (1975)”, https://youtu.be/zcQ2w7D-1Zo?si=NGN11I4MbbI_-XAR

[17] Videobase, “a life of struggle”, archive journal 6 (May 2018): 7-8.

[18] Stefanie Endlich, Rainer Höynck (eds.) Blickwechsel: 25 Jahre Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD (Berlin : Argon-Verl., 1988), 154. (italics mine).

[19] The the premiere of Lottando la vita on December 7th, 1975 also took place at the Casa di Cultura Popolare (Stresemannstraße 34, 10963).

[20] It is interesting that BKP used the term “Blickwechsel” (change of perspective) in order to summarize its artist program on its 25th anniversary. Stefanie Endlich, Rainer Höynck (eds.) Blickwechsel: 25 Jahre Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD (Berlin : Argon-Verl., 1988).

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About the Author

Nazan Maksudyan is a visiting professor at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at Freie Universität Berlin and a Senior Researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in the UKRI-funded research project, “Ottoman Auralities and the Eastern Mediterranean: Sound, Media and Power, 1789-1914”. She was a »Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe« (EUME) Fellow in 2009 – 2010 and an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin) in 2010 – 2011 and in 2016 and 2018. From 2013 to 2016, she worked as a professor of history in Istanbul and received her habilitation degree in 2015. Her research mainly focuses on the social and cultural history of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, with special interest in children and youth, gender, sexuality, exile, sound, and the history of sciences. Among her publications are Ottoman Children & Youth During World War I (2019), Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire (2014), Women and the City, Women in the City (ed., 2014), Urban Neighborhood Formations (ed. with Hilal Alkan, 2020).

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Citation: Nazan Maksudyan, Decolonization of Migration in Divided Berlin: Berliner Künstlerprogramm and Artistic Representations of Migrant Subjectivities in the 1970s, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 07.01.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/54104

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