60 Years Assyrian Work Migration to Germany by Abdulmesih BarAbraham MSc. 1 ― activist, writer, historian. | bio | writings Wednesday, January 19, 2021.
Würzburg, Germany – The 60th anniversary of the German-Turkish recruitment agreement (German: Anwerbeabkommen) was officially celebrated in many cities across the country end of October 2021. In his speech at the state commemoration event in Berlin, Germany‘s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, addressed the invited guests, stating that :
You helped building up Germany – You have enriched our country, economically, but above all humanly! Your hard work, your passion and your humanity have made our country what it is today. For this I am deeply grateful to you, who are with us today as representatives of the first generation…
With the recruitment agreement, which was signed with Turkey on October 30, 1961, not only Turks but also members of the minorities arrived in Germany. Thus, in the course of the opening of job opportunities abroad, the first groups of Assyrians arriving in Germany were initially mainly from the city of Midyat.
As Christians, the Assyrians of different denominations lived mainly in southeast, Turkey, especially in the districts of Tur Abdin, Mardin, Şirnak and Hakkari, in a region that was a restricted area for foreigners to enter until the early 1960s. Life was marked by insecurity and discrimination due to the unfavorable legal status as a non-Turkish and non-Muslim minority. Added to this was the difficult economic and social situation in the region.
Until the 1960s, Midyat was the only city in Turkey with a majorly Christian population. Midyat had a strong tradition of craftsmanship and trade. It provided the entire region with important services; at a young age, most young people began to learn a craft profession. Not all craftsmen were able to establish an own business of find permanent employment opportunity in Midyat to support their families. The younger generation dreamed of a better life and often did not want to continue their family's traditional agricultural work. Therefore, some moved to Istanbul or other Turkish cities in the west of the country to find work.
My father for instance, having had a tailor workshop of his own for some time, started working since the late 1950s for US companies in Turkey who owned government licenses for drilling for oil, gas and water.
Germany had a special appeal to Assyrians, not only because of its reputation for quality products, but also because it was considered a Christian country. When Germany and several European countries began to recruit guest workers from Turkey, including Austria (from 1964 on), Holland (1964) and France (1965), many Assyrians saw this as an opportunity to come to Europe. This process of migration, triggered by domestic and foreign policy circumstances (such as the Cyprus crisis or the Kurdish conflict), continued in several waves and over several decades until the end of the 1990s.
Assyrian Work Migrant Pioneers
The very first Assyrian who came to Germany in the course of the recruitment agreement in 1961 from Midyat was Alexander Maksiye; the now 84-year-old lives with his family in the city of Würzburg. He is officially one of the very first 45 people recruited from Turkey to Germany in 1961 in context of the agreement. He was specially honored for this 2011 in the city of Würzburg during the commemoration of anniversary of the agreement. His life story was even presented in a short stage play at the Würzburg’s City Theater.
Alexander and his wife Janet Maksiye in Würzburg (2011) Source: MainPost
With his support, his three brothers Habib, Johann and Sait followed him to Germany in 1962 and 1963. Johann, meanwhile 78 years old and grandfather, lives in his retirement in Würzburg too.
In our conversation over the holidays about the early times in Germany, he told me that “Alexander, as a young man in Istanbul in 1961, worked for his cousin as a tailor; there he learned about the recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey from the newspaper.”
In Istanbul and other cities in Turkey, there were large advertising campaigns for the agreement with Germany. Posters and advertisements in newspapers announced that Germany was looking for skilled workers. Interested people had to apply to the local employment agency (Işçi Bulma Kurumu), undergo an aptitude test if they did not have the necessary qualifications, and pass a health examination. The latter was performed by a German doctor accompanied by an interpreter in Istanbul.
Johann also tells me that Alexander “immediately went to the employment agency in Istanbul and filled an application to come to Germany and work as a tailor. At the employment office, however, he was told that they were looking for carpenters in Germany.”
As it happens, Alexander Maksiye had a small carpenter’s workshop in Midyat, knew the profession and thus had the qualification. So he applied as a carpenter and, after completing his papers, passport and health examination, travelled to Stimpfach, a small town of 2500 south of Crailsheim in southern Germany with about.
After a year Alexander moved to Aalen in Baden-Württemberg, south of Crailsheim and about half an hour from Stimpfach, to work as a tailor in his dream job. There was the main factory of the Greiff-Werke. It was one of the well-known German manufacturers of men's and industrial clothing at the time, founded after the Second World War.
Johann Maksiye 1963 in Germany
In 1962, Alexander initiated an invitation (work assurance) from the German company to his then 17-year-old brother Johann, who was still learning the tailor profession in Midyat. Johann made his way to Istanbul to take care of the necessary papers to leave for Germany.
"When I arrived in Istanbul, my cousin, who had been living and working in Istanbul for some time, helped me with the formalities. At the passport office I was told that as a minor I could not get a passport without my parents' permission. So I wrote a letter to my father in Midyat to send me an officially certified permission. This took several months; during that time I worked as a tailor to earn my living expenses," Johann continues.
"I had the invitation from the Greiff-Werke in Aalen, which confirmed that I could work for them as an apprentice. Therefore, I did not have to go through the procedure of the Turkish Employment Agency, nor did I have to go for a health check," adds Johann.
“Finally, in February, I was able to complete my documents and board the train to Germany at the Istanbul’s Sirkeci Train Station. The journey to Germany on the Orient Express, at that time the locomotive was coal driven, took two days. The route led via Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia, and Austria to Munich. Arriving in Munich on a Sunday, February 28th, I changed the train to Ulm in order to travel from there to Aalen/Württemberg, my final destination,” concludes Johann.
People who arrived via the Işçi Bulma Kurumu were received by a German team in Munich and got guidance and support to get to their destinations.
"When I arrived in Aalen, I was surprised that my brother was not waiting for me at the train station, because I had sent him a letter about my arrival before my trip," notes Johann. It turned out that Johann's letter had not yet arrived from Istanbul.
Other Assyrians joining from Midyat
The group of Assyrian men from Midyat in Aalen grew over the next few years. In addition, my own father Ibrahim came to Aalen in the middle of the 1960s with other friends, most of whom also worked as tailors at the Greiff-Werke. According to Johann, the Assyrian group made up about a quarter of the 40 or so workers from Turkey who were employed at Greiff-Werke, most of whom were women.
During the holiday season in the summer months, many traveled back to Midyat to visit their families; others used the opportunity to get married. Through marriage and family reunification, the first small diaspora community of people originating from Midyat came into being in Aalen.
In the course of family reunification in 1967, my own family settled in Aalen too. My younger sister and myself were the only Assyrian children in Aalen at that time. We were immediately registered by my father to schools nearby in Aalen. Independently, it may not be a coincidence that the group in Aalen came from the same quarter of Midyat, and most of them were related to each other.
Assyrian worker group from Midyat in Aalen/Württ. mid 1960s. Standing from left to right: Ibrahim Abraham (author‘s father), Iskender Türker, Hanna Aydin, Konstantin Aydin and Johann Maksiye. Sitting from left to right: Alexander Maksiye and Ishak Mourike.
A few years later Alexander and his brothers, Ishak Mourike, and Iskender Türker moved to Würzburg, a city in northern Bavaria. So did my family in 1969 too. Most members of the Aalen group continued to work for a subsidiary of the Greiff-Werke in the region and used to live with their families until early the 1970s in the same apartment complex.
According to Johann Maksiye, in the mid-1960s there were in total about 35 Assyrians from Midyat working in different countries in Europe, among them Austria, Holland and Switzerland; Johann knew most of their names. One can speak of them as the pioneers of work migration to Germany.
In fact, the residence permit for guest workers coming from Turkey was initially limited to two years. Accordingly, the employment contracts had to be also limited. In the sense of a rotation principle, the foreign workers were supposed to return home and be replaced by new workers. In contrast to Germany’s other recruitment agreements with Italy or Spain, there was no provision for family reunification for the workers recruited from Turkey initially.
However, the principle of rotation could not be maintained in the long term. German companies particularly spoke out against letting semi-skilled workers leave after two years. A new version of the Agreement with Turkey dated from May 19, 1964 repealed therefore the principle of rotation; the ban on family reunification was also lifted.
Shortly after the start of the oil crisis in 1973, the then German Social Democrats-led government under Willi Brandt decided to stop further recruitment, which affected all recruitment countries. Until then, according to official statistics, around 800,000 (680,002 men and 150,000 women) people from Turkey were living in Germany.
In 1973 the Assyrian community living in and around the city of Würzburg and originating from Midyat and villages of Tur Abdin grew to around 50 Assyrian families.
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Abdulmesih BarAbraham is native of Midyat and migrated in the course of family reunification as a young teenager 1967 to Germany, where he completed his secondary education and high school. He has a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Erlangen/Nürnberg., where he gained knowledge in Near Eastern history and languages (Syriac, Turkish and Arabic).
From 1979 to 1983, he was the 1st state certified interpreter for modern Assyrian-Aramaic language to translate Asylum appeals at Germany’s Central Emigration Office in Zirndorf near Nürnberg; he translated more than 2,000 cases.
In his professional career he worked for an international German Corporation in Munich, Germany and Santa Clara, California in different management positions.
As an independent researcher he has published numerous articles including book chapters in different languages on Assyrian related topics, such as the minority situation in the Middle East, genocide, migration, and diaspora.
Abdulmesih is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of both, the Yoken-bar-Yoken Foundation and Mor Afrem Foundation, Germany. He is also founding member and secretary of the Suryoye Theological Seminary in Salzburg.
Assyria
\ã-'sir-é-ä\ n (1998)
1: an ancient empire of Ashur
2: a democratic state in Bet-Nahren, Assyria (northern
Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and eastern Syria.)
3:
a democratic state that fosters the social and political rights to all of
its inhabitants irrespective of their religion, race, or gender
4: a democratic state that believes in the freedom of
religion, conscience, language, education and culture in faithfulness to the
principles of the United Nations Charter —
Atour synonym
Ethnicity, Religion, Language
»
Israeli, Jewish, Hebrew
»
Assyrian, Christian, Aramaic
»
Saudi Arabian, Muslim, Arabic
Assyrian
\ã-'sir-é-an\ adj or n (1998)
1: descendants of the ancient empire of Ashur
2: the Assyrians, although representing but one single
nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire, are now
doctrinally divided, inter sese, into five principle
ecclesiastically designated religious sects with their corresponding
hierarchies and distinct church governments, namely, Church of the
East, Chaldean, Maronite, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic.
These formal divisions had their origin in the 5th century of the
Christian Era. No one can coherently understand the Assyrians
as a whole until he can distinguish that which is religion or church
from that which is nation -- a matter which is particularly
difficult for the people from the western world to understand; for
in the East, by force of circumstances beyond their control,
religion has been made, from time immemorial, virtually into a
criterion of nationality.
3:
the Assyrians have been referred to as Aramaean, Aramaye, Ashuraya,
Ashureen, Ashuri, Ashuroyo, Assyrio-Chaldean, Aturaya, Chaldean,
Chaldo, ChaldoAssyrian, ChaldoAssyrio, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu,
Kasdu, Malabar, Maronite, Maronaya, Nestorian, Nestornaye, Oromoye,
Suraya, Syriac, Syrian, Syriani, Suryoye, Suryoyo and Telkeffee. —
Assyrianism verb
Aramaic
\ar-é-'máik\
n (1998)
1: a Semitic language which became the lingua franca of
the Middle East during the ancient Assyrian empire.
2: has been referred to as Neo-Aramaic, Neo-Syriac, Classical
Syriac, Syriac, Suryoyo, Swadaya and Turoyo.
