“From the time they are children, Afro-Germans realize that their biracial background is seen as unusual.”
-Showing Our Colors, May Ayim
During the time that May Ayim grew up and lived in Germany, there was political and social unrest unfolding that shaped her world and defined the woman that she became. In 1961, one year after Ayim’s birth, the Berlin Wall was constructed. This wall established division between East and West Germany. At this time, she was still in foster care or had just been introduced to the Opitz family, who would raise her in Westphalia with their biological children. The Opitz family was white, so adopting Ayim, a black child, was considered progressive for the time. Germany was still a place of many prejudices and injustices, and anyone with a minority background was treated differently than the white, German majority.
The sixties in Germany were a time of tension and change. The Cold War neared its culmination and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) sealed access from East Berlin, which would last for the next twenty-eight years, until 1989. U.S. President John F. Kennedy famously affirmed America’s guarantee of freedom for West Berlin in a 1963 speech. Germany was in a state of disrepair after World War II and needed to rebuild the nation. In order to do so, labor shortages were filled with “guest workers.” This was an opportunity for the working classes from Southern European countries such as Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Greece to earn money to send to their families back home. Nearly two million of these guest workers were recruited, and many of them decided to stay and bring their families to Germany. This influx of immigrants began to shape Germany as a whole, especially Berlin, but not without controversy. Today, Germany boasts the third largest immigrant population in the world, primarily because of the swell of immigrants who were instrumental in rebuilding the country during the sixties.
As May Ayim entered her teenage years in the 1970s, Germany too entered a new era. In 1971, the Four Power Agreement of Berlin was signed, and West Germany was recognized as belonging to the Federal Republic of Germany. The United Kingdom, the USSR, the United States, and France entered détente, meaning a thawing out of their cold relations, reestablishing friendlier ties between the two sides of Berlin and improving travel and communications. In 1972 a basic treaty between West and East Germany was signed, and West Germany hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Two years after the Four Power agreement was signed, in 1973, both German states were admitted to the United Nations.
The next decade, the 1980s, a new political force appeared in Germany. The Green Party rose as a challenge to the established political parties. The most important piece of German and world history, however, does not occur until later in the decade. It was not until 1989 that the Berlin Wall fell, and the following year that the eastern and western blocs of the city were reunited. Ayim lived through this monumental event, and well into the following decade. Reunification and its implications were fully realized, including economic and political consequences. However, May’s experience was not like the typical white German’s through these events, an important note and a marker of how race and background still played a major role in one’s place in German society, even well into the 20th century.
When the future of Germany and its strides since the fall of the Berlin Wall are discussed, cost and societal differences between the East and West are debated. What it means to be a German, who is a German, and where a person comes from are important conversations, and there are often assumptions made about people that affect how they are classified. May Ayim’s life and work was deeply affected by assumptions made about her and underlying prejudices because she was considered a foreigner from the color of her skin. Ayim was not an immigrant to Germany; she was raised by a German family and her birth mother was a German as well. However, the color of her skin dictated how Germans interacted with her. The city of Berlin is commonly known, but not commonly discussed, as being anti-foreigner and anti-Black, although it was entirely rebuilt with the help of foreign guest workers who became Germans when they stayed to make Berlin their permanent home.
It was not until the year 2000, four years after May’s death, that Germany passed a law granting citizenship rights more easily. The new law enables citizenship to those that have at least one parent who has been a permanent resident for three years or to those who have lived in Germany for eight or more years. Prior to this law, only children of German citizens were automatically granted citizenship, and many had to wait years before they could even apply. This demonstrates an aspect of German society that creates an environment where someone like May, is treated as a outsider and has difficultly fitting in, simply because her father was not German so she was not considered truly German.
The DNA of Berlin is composed of people from all over the world, but Ayim, her fellow Afro-Germans, as well as immigrants and non-Caucasian Germans, felt the prejudice of white Germany as they constantly were treated as outsiders in their home. This was the Berlin and the Germany that Ayim knew, and what prompted her to pioneer the issue of Afro-German history and to truly delve deeply into what became her life work and passion.
Sources
Gonzalez, Daniel. “Guest Workers Become Issue for Germany.” AZCentral. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2015.
“History of the Federal Republic of Germany.” History of the Federal Republic of Germany. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.
“May Ayim.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.
Morris, Jamie Christopher. “The Black Experience in Postwar Germany.”University of Connecticut DigitalCommons. N.p., 5 June 2012. Web. 23 May 2015.