Work 13

Spaniards should not only help alleviate the general shortage of people; they should above all relieve the many women on whom the Post [German Federal Mail] has had to rely for months. Of the 1700 core Post Office staff, more than half – exactly 900 – are female. Chief Post Office Director Kröpf: ‘Our work is often very hard and we shouldn’t let this harm women. This is where the Spaniards are to step in – primarily in the loading service at the train station.’

Quote: Quoted by Ceren Turkmen. Original source: Local daily newspaper: Rheinische Post from November 16, 1962. Without page indication. Picture: pics.de

Unknown journalist for the German daily newspaper Rheinische Post.

The history of the “Gastarbeiter” (migrant worker) discourse has been told mostly through dominant sources, as in this quote from the Rheinische Post, which emphasizes the poor German language skills of migrants workers. It also represents an attitude that was widespread in West Germany in the 1960s: that German women should not pursue waged work. While there has been resistance from migrants since the beginning of “guest worker recruitment” (e.g. the strike at the Ford factory in Cologne in 1973), criticism from migrant workers started to be “heard“ by dominant society only in the last two decades (e.g. with Feridun Zaimoğlu's book Kanak Sprak from 1995).

*Ceren Türkmen (2017). Gastarbeitsgeschichte zwischen Migrationsregime, Staat und kommunaler Befreiung. In glokal: Connecting the Dots. Lernen aus Geschichte(n) zu Unterdrückung und Widerstand. *Tom Cheesman (2003): Akçam – Zaimoğlu –‘Kanak Attak’: Turkish Lives and Letters in German. In: German Life and Letters 55(2): p. 180 - 195

1962