Love, Deutschmarks And Death

Around 60 years after the first arrival of workers from Turkey in Germany, director Cem Kaya lets early immigrants tell their stories - in parallel, he shows the diversity of German xenophobia by using TV footage from the time. The special approach of his film, however, is that he concentrates on the music in exile. On the one hand, this creates a sub-history of the proletarian Federal Republic, seen from the immigrants' point of view. On the other hand, Kaya examines a cultural phenomenon. With concert excerpts, interviews and great archive pictures, he documents Turkish music in Germany, its path from the former entertainment at home evenings to today's pop culture.

The German Federal Republic’s 1961 recruitment agreement with Turkey not only brought "guest workers" to Germany but also their music. Cem Kaya’s dense documentary film essay is a tutorial in Turkish-German recent history that tells a tale of assembly line jobs, homesickness and family reunification, the bazaar in the elevated railway station at Berlin’s Bülowstraße, xenophobia and racism, the wistful songs of the early years and the hip-hop of the post-reunification period. 

The contemptuous attitude towards the Turks is documented in detail in old radio and TV reports; "a necessary evil" is still the kindest description for the workers who were urgently needed for the economic miracle of the Federal Republic. In the archive material you can see the harshness of the conditions the Turkish workers had to cope with. They had the worst jobs and the lowest pay, they didn't know German, so they couldn't defend themselves. In the archive material you can see the harshness of the conditions they had to cope with. They had the worst jobs and the lowest pay, they didn't know German, so they couldn't defend themselves. 

Music was the only thing accessible to everyone, so there were home evenings every weekend with improvised concerts, singing, dancing. Turkish songs emerged in Germany, they sang about false promises, about work, soon also about protest. In the 1970s, the economic recession caused mass layoffs, by then you see the Turks already colourful and militant, there were strikes, demands, also solidarity from German colleagues. Kaya lets immigrants tell this story of immigration and the workers' movement and has musicians of the time comment on it. Some of them became pop stars, they gave concerts on a huge scale, were famous in Turkey and among the Turks in Germany - only the German population knew nothing about it. There was no overlap of culture although its influences can be felt even in contemporary German rap and pop culture.

With "Love, Deutschmarks and Death" ("Aşk, Mark ve Ölüm"), documentary filmmaker Cem Kaya has created a rhythmic and vividly narrated cinematic encyclopaedia of Turkish music in Germany.

Image © filmfaust, Film Five