browseNowhere Called Home
Peter Bialobrzeski (Photographer)
Original Side Gallery exhibition text, 1992:
In the early sixties, in the village of Agira, in the central Sicilian highlands, pale men are advertising jobs in a country, which is far away, and cold. Germany. Just rebuilt from the ruins of World War II, the sudden economic growth, the Wirtschaftswunder, is calling for labourers.
A lot of young men, fed up with the notorious unemployment in the very south of Italy, sign contracts to leave their homes for good. Their destination: Wolfsburg, the hometown of the Volkswagen factory, where the legendary VW Beetle was produced. Far away from their homes the Sicilian immigrant workers found a community, they stick to themselves, but develop a good relationship towards their German colleagues. There was no sign of racism in the early sixties; the people from abroad were welcomed, not just because they were desperately needed. There was plenty of work in those days, Wolfsburg was a boomtown.
The wages of the so-called guest workers were equal to the wages of the Germans. They made a lot of money, especially compared to the standards they were used to in Sicily. The lifestyles of the Italians abroad were very modest, they sent a lot of the money home to their families or saved it up to buy a house back home. The whole purpose of working in a foreign factory was to make enough money to return one-day home to their own soil.
At the height of the boom, in the early 70s, more than 7,000 Italians were working at the plant. They all shared the same dream: to go back one day as a rich man.
Since the end of the 1970s special trains have left Wolfsburg at the beginning of the holiday period. The immigrant workers use them to return home to see their families. The train is a microcosm of immigrant lives. Some workers go back for good, some of their children go for the very first time to the country, which is their home by passport, but which they have never seen before. If you sit down during the 42 hours of the journey from Wolfsburg to Central Sicily and listen to the stories people have to tell, you will hear about the problems, which never occurred to them when they left home. A lot of them have children now, they were educated in Germany, their friends are German, they speak German better than Italian. Their home is Germany. It never crossed their minds to go and live in Italy. The parents are torn between their desire to retire back in Sicily or to stay on in the country which their children call home.
Back home on the island of Sicily those who stayed on call the immigrants ‘The Germans’. Prices are rising in the village shops as soon as the train enters the station. ‘The Germans’ have money. Most of them own big houses now. But they only spend their holidays there. They became strangers to the villages where they once lived. After four weeks with their extended families they return to Germany. Where they are called ‘The Italians’. They are strangers. Everywhere. The train is the place where their two worlds merge.
Note: Peter Bialobrzeski was a participant in the Unclear Family photographic workshops in Crook (County Durham), Amiens (Northern France), Luby (Czechoslovakia) and Borbek, Essen (Germany). ‘Nowhere Called Home’ was produced in 1989 and acquired by Side Gallery in 1992.