A Brief History Of The Vietnamese In Germany
To this day, I still remember running across this Vietnamese guy in Berlin when I walked up the steps from one of the numerous subway exits. It was the fall of 1994 and I was on holiday from the university. The man had this look on his face as if he knew me and he proceeded to speak to me in Vietnamese and held out a pack of cigarettes. He had a baseball cap perched on his head, wore a wrinkled blazer and a pair of dark slacks. His face was reddish brown and quite chapped from exposure to the sun and the wind. He was a little shorter than me, but he looked to be twice my age. I stared at him, then hesitated, and finally just brushed him off and walked away; not because I didn’t smoke, but because I had more questions than small talk would allow. By the time I left Berlin, I had seen several of these cigarette vendors standing near subway entrances, trying to sell, sell, sell. I only realized much later that I didn’t just bump into some anonymous Vietnamese guy, but rather someone who had unwittingly played a part in an elaborate story that few people have heard and even fewer have the patience to listen to.
The Vietnamese are worldwide, sometimes tucked into areas of the globe where few people would expect them. I think that’s why I felt such a disconnect when I came into contact with that one guy on a busy sidewalk in Berlin; my mind scrambled for a plausible reason as to why a Vietnamese person could be in the capital of Germany of all places. Not in the least did I find it ironic that someone could have leveled the same accusation I had secretly leveled at the Vietnamese cigarette vendor who tried to awkwardly connect with me: “What are you doing here?”
Vietnamese immigration to East Germany began when, at the end of the war in April 1975, the government of the new socialist republic of Vietnam found itself heavily in debt to several other socialist countries, one of them being East Germany. In order to alleviate some of that debt, the Vietnamese government agreed to send several thousand contract workers to East Germany so they could supplement the East German workforce. “At one time there were almost 100,000 Vietnamese from northern Vietnam fuelling the GDR [German Democratic Republic] economy and making up the largest non-German ethnic group in the country.”(1) Vietnamese scholars and bureaucrats also traveled to East Germany for cultural and economic exchanges all in the name of cultivating “socialist brotherhood.”
However, instead of the East German government rolling out the welcome carpet for this substantial foreign workforce, it did its best to socially isolate these workers and, when their contracts were up, expeditiously see them to the door. Permanent residency was not an option for those who wanted to stay in East Germany longer than their contracts permitted and East German citizenship was also out of the question. Regular relations with the East German population was a rarity, as the Vietnamese were placed in drab, poor quality dormitories where their movements were heavily restricted inside and out. Vietnamese women were not allowed to get pregnant while they were under contract to work in East Germany, and if they did, then they either had to undergo an abortion or be sent back to Vietnam. If the Vietnamese violated any of these measures meant to segregate them from the general population, they would be harassed, or jailed, by the police and more than likely be sent packing. Not only did this kind of social control dampen any enthusiasm the Vietnamese may have had for this little social(ist) experiment, but it also caused a wide rift to develop between the East Germans and their foreign workforce, which served to be the calm before the storm, leading up to several high profile anti-foreigner attacks in the early to mid 1990s after German reunification.
Most of the Vietnamese who came to East Germany weren’t exactly there out of some shared ideal of socialist solidarity either, but primarily for personal economic reasons: the money and the opportunity to work were simply too good to pass up. But, when the two Germanys reunited after forty years of separation in 1990, a substantial portion of the foreign workforce was laid off (14,000 people within the first four months of 1990)(2) with even more to come. Once a vital cog in the East German industrial machine, many Vietnamese found themselves in a virtual no man’s land without a job and without any legal status in the new Germany. The German government eventually offered each Vietnamese guest worker $2,000 and a one-way plane ticket back to Vietnam. An estimated 50,000 Vietnamese took up the offer and left Germany. Those who chose to stay either applied for political asylum or risked residing in the country illegally. Less than 2% of those who applied were granted asylum.
Unemployment and economic instability precipitated the Vietnamese entrance into the illicit cigarette trade in mainly eastern German cities. Polish tourists to East Germany are thought to have been the first group to start selling untaxed cigarettes out in public. While waiting for asylum to be granted or wishing to make some quick money or for the simple fact that they didn’t want to go back to Vietnam, a significant number of Vietnamese men risked their lives by becoming cigarette vendors. They soon took over the business from the Poles and other Eastern Europeans.
At lucrative spots it was estimated that up to 600 cartons of cigarettes could be sold in a single day for a profit of 2 to 4 Deutsche Marks each while vendors in less attractive spots could still sell 10 to 20, and sometimes 100, cartons a day. That would mean the monthly earnings would be between several hundred to several thousand Deutsche Marks.(3)
But, as with any black market activity, the profitable end of the spectrum is balanced out by the horrendous toll it takes on those directly involved and anyone who comes in contact with them. In the mid 1990s, Vietnamese extortion gangs, whose membership was based on regional ties, clans or mutual associations, grew in their influence and control over Vietnamese vendors and the illicit cigarette trade. It became impossible for cigarette vendors to work independently because they were forced to pay a benefactor for the right to sell cigarettes at a certain spot and for protection from rival gangs. In Berlin, murders among Vietnamese cigarette vendors and gang members increased every year from 1993 to 1996. In 1996 alone 15 homicides were recorded within the Vietnamese community which were readily attributable to the illicit cigarette trade. To bring it all home, in May of 1996 six Vietnamese, who were known to the police as illicit cigarette vendors, were executed in their apartment. “As investigators found out later, the killers had tried to learn the whereabouts of a gang leader to take revenge for the murder of one of their own vendors three days earlier.”(4)
Luckily, the German police were largely successful in breaking up two of the biggest Vietnamese extortion gangs by arresting several of the leaders. Later, in the summer of 1997, six more gang members were apprehended. Today, not more than 10 small bands of people are known to extort the rest of the cigarette vendors and none have the influence or power once held by the gangs in the early 1990s.
When East Germany’s government and economy were dissolved and incorporated into the greater Federal Republic of Germany, many of its major industries and services either folded or were bought up by investors and entrepreneurs from western Germany and elsewhere. Countless workers and bureaucrats were left without a job and they soon found out that their skill sets were either unwanted in the new economy or wholly inadequate to fulfill the needs of a more high paced and technologically savvy economy. This mass unemployment, coupled with the shock of the melding together of two different societies and national histories after 40 years of separation, caused much resentment and fear among the population in the eastern territories. Added to this economic/social instability were still thousands of foreign guest workers who were also scrambling for a living in this new country. It didn’t take long until the tension and resentment among the German citizenry became palpable. In the early 1990s, right wing extremist political parties attempted to take advantage of the growing disaffection and disillusion felt by many Germans, and actually made inroads in some local elections. However, it was the actions of neo-Nazi youths that garnered the most attention on the evening news around the world.
Who could ever forget watching on TV the images of skinhead mobs stomping in unison through narrow streets in numerous German cities, saluting the ghost of Hitler and carrying big red flags with a swastika in the middle? Vietnamese immigrants, along with other non-white immigrants, in Germany were caught in this maelstrom of xenophobia that seemed to have washed over the country. The event that most graphically illustrated the culmination of extremist violence toward foreigners occurred in the coastal city of Rostock on August 24, 1994. That night hundreds of people gathered around a housing complex where asylum seekers were staying and eventually the inhabitants had to be evacuated by the police because of the charged and anger-filled atmosphere. Unfortunately, near that complex was a building that housed about 150 Vietnamese guest workers. Without the aid of the police, who, for some unexplained reason, momentarily pulled back from the vicinity of the building, the inhabitants could only watch on helplessly while skinheads attacked the building and threw Molotov cocktails into it, trapping the people inside. Nearly 100 of the building’s residents were killed in that melee.
One had to wonder what it would take for Vietnamese immigrants to leave Germany, especially considering the fact that they were targeted for being a foreigner no matter how long they may have been living in Germany. Well, in 1995, the Vietnamese and German governments agreed to repatriate 40,000 Vietnamese immigrants who were either denied asylum status or were living illegally in Germany. By the year 2000, Vietnam was to have repatriated all 40,000 of them and Germany would have paid out $72 million US to assist with the process.(5) But, this plan of action soon fell apart when the Vietnamese government proceeded to put up barrier after barrier in front of Vietnamese immigrants by imposing certain conditions on their lawful return. For instance, the overseas Vietnamese in Germany had to demonstrate that they did not have dual citizenship, that they lived in Vietnam and they were being sponsored by economic or social organizations or individuals. The government of Vietnam also refused to repatriate those Vietnamese who did not accept Germany’s original offer in 1990 of payment and a one-way plane ticket back to Vietnam. This left the majority of the 40,000 immigrants who were due to be repatriated up a creek without a paddle. No wonder so many Vietnamese immigrants who came to Germany as contract workers, guest workers or asylum seekers feel as though they live in a no man’s land: they neither feel completely comfortable in Germany and their home country of Vietnam seems to have shunned them.
In spite of the hardships and uncertainty, many of the Vietnamese living in Germany have accepted their lot in life and have begun growing roots in their adopted country. Because of relaxed immigration rules put into effect in 2003, the German government has allowed more and more immigrants to become permanent residents and is slowly altering the definition of what it legally means to be a German citizen, doing away with the centuries-old blood law, wherein one could only be a German citizen if one could demonstrate exclusive German lineage in their family.
In eastern Berlin, the Vietnamese have established and developed the Vietnam-Handelszentrum (Vietnamese business center), a place where their small businesses thrive, and where people can congregate and reconnect with something more familiar. It can be assumed, as with any other immigrant population, that the children of Vietnamese who immigrated to Germany during the 1970s and 1980s have already assimilated to the dominant culture. They probably mix and match Vietnamese and German culture according to their own individual whims and prejudices, dreams and ambitions. Year after year, and decade after decade, these two cultures will learn to live side by side, if not intertwined. There’s no going back.
The inevitability of cultural assimilation and grudging social acceptance of immigrants in Germany reminds me of a quote from a Vietnamese immigrant named Thanh, who was a contract worker in East Germany during the 1980s, then accepted the German government’s offer of money to go back to Vietnam in 1990, but then due to a desire for a better standard of living for his family decided to leave for Germany again. He said, “As time goes on, I know I cannot settle again in Vietnam. My children are now German, not Vietnamese.”(6)
Footnotes:
1) Trapped in the twilight zone: A Vietnamese asylum seeker in Germany tells Kieran Cooke how he was once invited to work in Europe but is now unwanted by both the east and west, Kieran Cooke, FT, 09/22/01.
2) Foreign “Contract Workers” of the Former GDR Unwanted in the United Germany, FECL 21, 12/93 / 01/94.
3) The Nicotine Racket: Trafficking in Untaxed Cigarettes: A Case Study of Organized Crime in Germany, Dr. Klaus von Lampe.
4) The Nicotine Racket: Trafficking in Untaxed Cigarettes: A Case Study of Organized Crime in Germany, Dr. Klaus von Lampe.
5) Employment and Asylum in Germany, Immigration Laws, 07/95.
6) Trapped in the twilight zone: A Vietnamese asylum seeker in Germany tells Kieran Cooke how he was once invited to work in Europe but is now unwanted by both the east and west, Kieran Cooke, FT, 09/22/01.