Text Michael Siedenhans and Hannah Weber ––– Photography
“This is Germany”, Eyobel G. and Khaibar F. were told when they arrived. Since the welcome was in German, they didn’t understand the words – not at that point, anyway.
Eyobel G. (bottom left) was 24 when he left civil war-ravaged Eritrea in 2013 and arrived in Germany without speaking a word of the language. The people where he grew up speak Tigrinya, a rare language. There’s no such thing as a German-Tigrinya dictionary. However, his colleagues and trainers helped him learn German. He also attended a language course at the Wetzlar Adult Education Centre. Khaibar F. (right) also had problems with the new language to start with – especially the grammar and the huge number of specialist terms: “If I didn’t understand one of the technical terms, I asked a colleague and they explained it to me.”
In 2015, the brothers Hussein and Yousef A. fled Syria – their home city had been reduced to ashes. They left behind their parents, their sister, their brother and Hussein’s tailoring business.
There came a point when Hussein (top left) and his brother Yousef, who is 15 years younger, could not take life in their homeland any more. They headed for Turkey, and from there took a boat to Greece. Then they travelled on foot, by bus and by train to Germany. Now that they are here, they live their lives in peace and freedom, and have permanent jobs as machine and system operators. This is Hussein’s second profession – he used to be a tailor, making made-to-measure suits. His brother Yousef learned welding in Syria, but only completed his training once he was in Germany.
He fled the war in Afghanistan in 2015, arriving in the Lahn-Dill district without being able to speak a word of German.
When Mohibullah left his family and home in Afghanistan, one thing was certain from the start – there was no going back. He would have to fight for his new future, and he has been doing so since he arrived in Germany. Initially, he didn’t speak a word of German. To learn the language, he worked and studied day and night, doing night shift after night shift so he could attend German courses during the day – courses he paid for himself. He reaped the rewards of all these efforts. He now has a permanent contract with LKH as a multiple machine operator. And the best thing is, “I learn something new here every day – especially from the people who support me as colleagues and friends.”
