Citizenship for Minorities in 20th Century Germany: A Tumultuous Past

Pictured in Object 9 is a German “Gastarbeiter” from Portugal invited to West Germany to help meet the labor demands of the depopulated factories following the second world war. This guest worker program invited peoples from all over the Mediterranean such as: Portugal, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Whilst many of these guest workers would return to their home countries after their temporary citizenship was fulfilled, it proved Germany was ready to embrace a new future of ethnic diversity. After the reunification of German in 1990, a new wave of millions of Eastern Europeans who had once resided in Germany before the second world war rushed back to Germany, bringing with them a variety of cultures and languages. The pot of German cultural homogony was seriously stirred preparing to enter into the 21st century.