A German Photographer in Poland.

In the current heated immigration debate we forget about the European history of constant migration. Migration was fostered by wars or famine, same as today, and rarely by cultural motives. It is not easy to leave one’s home behind, travel with a couple of suitcases to unknown countries to settle within a foreign culture and language. 

Kids in the 1920s often left their parents and home to attend schools in neighboring, larger towns. My grandmother, daughter of a German landowner in Poland, moved in with her older sister at age ten to attend middle school in town. My grandfather fled as a kid with his family his home in Wolhynia (now Ukraine) during WW1 and left home as a teenager for boarding school.

As a young man, my grandfather immigrated to Poland, learned fluent Polish to his native German and Russian, became first a private tutor then an editor of a journal in Posen (Poznan/Poland), where he met my grandmother before WW2. In his bachelor years, he traveled close and far in his new home country, photographing his new country men and women, other immigrants and the Polish countryside from the Baltic Sea to the mountains. He spent most of his free time traveling, absorbing different cultures, trying to capture it all on film.

A Polish art historian heard that my mother owned pictures of Poznan between the wars and not before long an exhibition of my grandfather’s photographs was curated by Zamek, the cultural center situated in Poznan’s castle, which had been renovated in WW2 with floor-to-ceiling marble as Hitler’s ‘Eastern office’. How remarkable that this center is now dedicated to display cultures from far and near! 

Europe was always a melting pot, as it is now. Medieval trade and exploration brought people to and from the Americas, China and the Middle East. Earlier, during the crusades, Europeans fought the expansion of Islam two thousand miles from home. The medieval, deeply catholic person left their home and family, and traveled for years without comprehensive maps und modern geographic understanding.

Todays migrants also flee wars and poverty. The atrocities of war and hardships in Third World countries can be compared to any hardship in history. Only we in Europe and North America don’t remember what our grandparents fled and the life they’ve lived. Prosperity is toxic for compassionate memory. Instead of sharing what we have with others momentarily less fortunate, we pretend that we have a birthright to our prosperity. Or our denial goes so deep that we cannot see the golden spoon we were handed but then promptly deny it to others.

I am by no means a Christian Democrat (Republican) but I was amazed that Angela Merkel heard the call of Syrians and others fleeing the war zones of the Middle East in 2015 and opened Germany’s borders. The daughter of a pastor, her compassion bridged party lines and alienated her constituency. Too close were in her memory millions of displaced families after WW2 and the refusal of most countries to shelter them. And the refusal of most countries to accept European Jews fleeing the German Nazi regime. Merkel decided that this should not happen again and not under her watch.

The rest of the world was watching and was sitting on their hands, now as during WW2. Nobody can say today that they didn’t know.

In 2017, Germans voted with a right-wing, neo-fascist party running on a segregationist platform into parliament with 12% and made them the 3rd strongest party of 6 parties represented. France, Italy, Hungary and Austria joined the chorus. Right wing individuals and groups are organizing themselves and are threatening and killing foreigners, immigrants and refugees worldwide. New Zealand was chosen for the most recent killing spree of Muslims to show that no country is remote enough. Nationalist movements are sweeping our nations and the last American president won with a ‘America First’ campaign, which sounds to me like ‘Americans First’ and more precise ‘White, Blonde, Blue eyed, Christians First’! What a giant step back for the US who started its existence as a haven for the pursued. 

The world might have changed much from the times my grandfather made his home in a foreign country ninety years ago, and from when I immigrated from Germany to the US thirty years ago, but it seems that we cannot escape a thousand year crusade against difference in belief. ‘My god is holier than your god’ is still the motor and at the base of it all. 

Maybe we all should travel, meet and talk to people, strangers, foreigners, immigrants, migrants and refugees. Maybe we’ll find a common ground over the difference and we can start sharing instead of dividing. And finally live together in one world. ‘And the world will live as one!’

Photos by Katja Negru Perrey and Radu Negru. For reprint please ask for permission.