Here to stay: Europe and its migrants

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Europe without Migration? Not, says the head of the virtual migration Museum. In the vault cassettes from Turkey, Newspapers from Hungary, letters from Poland and stories of the store about the arrival in Germany.

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Digital, interactive, exciting: The virtual migration Museum

Sandra Vacca puts on the gloves, stepping on a small stool and opens the zipper. Behind the red signs with professional designations in Turkish: auto mechanics, metal workers, packaging, hang-Anfertiger.”These are original signs from the Central office in Istanbul, where migrants at the time, Labour and migrants has recruited. It has recruited people in their home countries. Here are the professions that have been sought in Germany were sought, with a quantity, i.e. how many persons with these Occupations,” says the graduate museologist.

Sandra Vacca from the Cologne Association of DOMiD e. V.

Vacca is head of the project “Virtual migration Museum” at the documentation centre and Museum on Migration in Germany (DOMiD) in Cologne, Germany. The curatorial Team consists of people with and without migration has interviewed history. Their and other stories from the DOMiD archive will be told in the virtual migration Museum: digital, interactive, and exciting. The User can click through different decades and in the individual life stories of immersion. “We wanted to tell the story of Germany through the perspectives of the migrants, because their experiences have often remained unknown. Every story counts. All of these items that we store in the vault, starting from the jug, about the book to this tape, tell migration stories,” says Sandra Vacca.

Family stories: A mirror image of German society

The exhibits in the virtual Museum, to be stored in the Depot of the DOMiD Association: carefully in boxes and special envelopes Packed. Started the collection work 30 years ago, has established, as the Turkish migrants, the Association in the year 1990. Meanwhile, about 150,000 exhibits from all over the world are stored here.

The custodian of the migration Museum

“Often, people think that they have nothing to tell, but then we have a conversation with you, to watch us together, photos, find items and then they begin to tell the stories behind it, and realize how important, complex, and interesting your own life is.” It items like a passport, on which the first residence permit is stuck, a report card without grades are, because if you spoke no English, not one was graded in the first years of school. They are the stories that Arrive from the. But also of exclusion: “racism and the handling is also an issue for us. We have to resolve, for example, the indictment and demo signs of the Tribunals ‘NSU-complex’, Interviews with Affected people and other objects in our archives that illuminate this side of the story,” says Vacca. Under a glass case on the Radio of the family of Genç, against 1993, in Solingen, Germany, an arson attack was committed is. Five people were killed.

A cassette for the parents, two claws for the youth

Sandra Vacca shows one of their favorite objects. “This is a cassette of a so-called suitcase child. These were children who grew up in the grandma, aunt, or other family members, while parents have worked in Germany – one year turned into two, then three, four, eventually there were ten. You have sent these cassettes instead of letters so you could hear the voice. We have a cassette where you can hear a girl singing. One of many very emotional stories,” says Vacca. Next to her is another piece in the exhibition: a Pair of punching mitts, punch pads for Boxing training is. The leather is abgeranzt, riddled with holes. About a year ago, you found your way here to the Museum depot.

Boro Markovic – guest worker child, a war refugee, FC-a Fan, a bridge-Builder

Boro Markovic, it has caused: “With these claws very many people have trained, no matter whether from the East, West or South, we are all the same,” says Markovic, who operates since many years the sport of Boxing. He came in 1975 as the child of a migrant family from Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of Yugoslavia, to Germany. In 1988, the family returns back in the old country, but a few years later, the war starts – and Boro Markovic back in 1993, back to Germany, this time as a war refugee. Since then, he lives in a small city near Cologne, Germany. On the question of what is now his home, he replies laughing: “FC”, and proudly displays his T-Shirt of the Cologne soccer club. In his work as an integration mediator for the Association BIKUP e. V. Boro Markovic is trying to build bridges: cultural, linguistic, social. Only when these bridges were struck, could Integration and peaceful Coexistence work: in Germany, as well as in Europe.

Memorabilia from the old country

The Museum Tour

Also, the claws of Boro Markovic are seen in the virtual migration Museum, which was launched a year ago. Since then, Sandra Vacca is touring through Germany, in 18 cities, the project will be presented. As a child of Italian immigrants, born in France, and since ten years in Germany, is the theme of heart: “I’m kind of a Europe-child. Migration is a constitutive part of European history, the present and the future, we need more and different to talk about. Many of the migrant children in the second or third Generation can hear and see the exhibition pieces for the first Time in the history of their grandparents, because that was not often spoken in these families a lot about the past, about their own migration experiences. Therefore, it is important that we are able to give through the Interviews and articles, these stories more.”

Their greatest wish is to curate a real Museum. Exhibition pieces there are in the DOMiD enough. The talks with the city currently running. The interest in such a migration Museum is huge. The relevance also. Until then, you can see the exhibition on the side of the virtual migration Museum.