Guenther Wallraff Returns--from WAY DOWN UNDER to BLACK on WHITE
By Kevin Stoda, Germany
About two decades and a half ago, journalist Guenther Wallraff went undercover in his own Western German (BRD) society, i.e disguised as a Turkish guest worker: Levent (Ali) SigirlioÄlu. Ali looked for the many bottom-rung-societal-jobs in Germany which millions of foreigners had undertaken in the Post-WWII Western European miracle years to help empower the West German society to become one of the wealthiest lands in the world.
Wallraff as "Ali" was in Germany working without official papers and visa; therefore, Ali represented an important part of the Turkish-German society and many other foreigners in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, i.e. who were not being welcomed into the German fold despite contributing to its great success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Wallraff
Disguised as Ali, Wallraff took on jobs as laborer in construction firms, on farms, janitorial service, and even as a day laborer in a nuclear power plant. [In the publication of his 2-year adventure as Turk in Germany, LOWEST OF THE LOW, Guenther Walraff later revealed that the Turkish workers at the power plant were not even provided the same amount of protective clothing at the nuclear power plant as were the German employees at the same plant.]
As well as showing how both difficult and easy it was in Germany to find work as a day laborer, Wallraff also demonstrated how difficult it was to find a place to live or rent in Germany, especially if one's skin color was different than the majority of Germans.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganz_unten
In the subsequent Wallraff book, entitled LOWEST OF THE LOW (Ganz Unten), the author as "Ali" also shared of his visits to football matches and to restaurants around Germany. Even though, the Turkish Ali rooted for the German national team against his homeland throughout the match, Walraff "as Turk" was pelted with cigarette stubs and cries of "Sieg Heil" and "Turk, Go Home!" Finally, beer was even dumped on his hair by the German nationalist fans around him.
LOWEST OF THE LOW (Ganz Unten) was first brought out in book form in 1985 and then in a documentary format the next year. By 1988, parts of a new documentary work on this same 1983-1985 Turkish experiment by Wallraff had already been published in 30 languages.
Now, in 2009, Guenther Wallraff is back at it again--putting a mask over what his reality as typical Caucasian-German is in order to de-mask the society in which he lives and works. This next week, his new documentary film is being made public: Guenther Wallraff: BLACK ON WHITE[ Schwarz auf Weiss]".
This new documentary film finds Wallraff dressed and masked most often as a Somali asylum seeker, who has apparently lived in Germany long enough to "speak German very well" and who actually holds a German pass.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/725/491095/text/
Wallraff says he wanted to put on the mask of a black person in Germany for over three decades but he hadn't trusted the skin painting and mask technology until recently. Therefore, only since 2007 has Wallraff been out and about as a black-German in both the former Eastern and Western Germanies, which now make up the Bundes republik deutschlands (BRD).
From these experiences, Wallraff shared recently in DIE ZEIT, "My travels as a black-German are now over. In all these months, however, I have never felt comfortable in my black skin--that is, I felt my skin was the target for feelings or reflections of shame for the most part. It is hard to say which is more difficult--the open aggressiveness of skinheads and full-frontal racism or the behind-the-back racism of the average citizen, who practices being friendly to one's face only to be lying all the time about that supposed respect that is spouting out of their mouths. In the end, I can put my black alter ego down and walk away, but the others in this country cannot."
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