Vasilis and Soultana Chatzi, Greek immigrants to Munich, 1963-2002

Vasilis Chatzis was born in 1940 in Ermitsi, a village in the Prefecture of Karditsa. His parents managed to provide for their six children by selling goods they produced themselves through agriculture and livestock farming. He remembers the years of poverty in the village where he lived until he was twenty-two:

‘There was no money… we would sell the lambs, the wheat… but we had everything we needed, milk, cheese, meat… well, when I say meat, I mean chicken, there was no beef… we had beef once a year and mutton at Easter and at village festivals…’

He went to elementary school in 1947 at the height of the Greek civil war. From his years in school he remembers the austere, disciplinarian approaches to education which were common at the time, the lack of basic school necessities like pencils and notebooks, and his parents’ inability to help him with his studies. After he completed his primary education at the age of thirteen, Vasilis started working at a cart and plough workshop in Koutsari (today known as Itea), a nearby village in the area of Karditsa. He wanted to learn a craft and actually wanted to become a car mechanic. He worked at that workshop for six years.

‘Then things got tough… factories opened, there were tractors, trucks… Carts and ploughs were practically obsolete by 1959, 1960… I did my army service… I was discharged in 1962 and in 1963 a Greek interpreter I had worked with invited me to go work in Germany’.

He was motivated to migrate by the high unemployment rate in the area and his own personal expectations that a foreign country would offer better employment opportunities and the chance at a better life.

‘I already wanted [to leave]… then an acquaintance, a distant relative, from Mataragka went there, studied, and became an interpreter at the factory… the factory was looking for workers at the time… and they told the interpreter, “Go down to the Job Centre and get whoever you like”… he had already invited me to go to that specific factory… the others [the other immigrants] had to go wherever they sent them… they would send them to Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt…’.

At the age of twenty-three, Vasilis announced to his parents that he would be migrating to Germany. His hope was that he would make some money and come back to Greece soon.

‘No one from my family wanted me to leave… “Mum, Dad, I’m going to make 200 euros, German marks back then, and I will take the train back…” So, I made the decision to leave on my own… I will never forget that journey!’

Before departure, he got all the necessary medical exams in Athens.

‘It took about a week. German men doctors, German women doctors, Greek men doctors, Greek women doctors, they checked everything, even your teeth, to make sure you’re healthy enough to go to Germany… the women were checked for pregnancy…’

After being cleared by the doctors, he collected all the necessary documents and headed, passport in hand, to the port of Piraeus where his migration journey started, first to Italy and then by train to Munich.

‘So I make my way to Piraeus, carrying my few belongings in a single bag… I didn’t have much… they’d given me some corned beef to eat on the boat… I remember on the ship, the Kolokotronis, there were so many Greeks… all of them immigrants going to Brindisi, men, women… The women were obviously going to work for Siemens, Siemens invited a lot of women… So, we made it to Brindisi, it was July… with the little money I had on me, I bought two packs of biscuits and that’s all I ate on the train journey from Italy to Germany’.

According to Vasilis, his extended stay in Athens, the anxiety caused by trying to get all the necessary documents, the migration journey itself, on top of the stress caused by the general situation, made him lose a significant amount of weight, going from 75 down to 60 kilos. It becomes clear that the experience of migration starts taking a mental and physical toll even before the migrant reaches the reception country. At the Munich train station, the immigrants were met by representatives of the factories they would be working for. Vasilis would be working for a factory manufacturing train and boat engines.

‘We made it to Munich. They gave us some coffee and a banana and a representative came to take us to the factory… They took us to the factory buildings, well not buildings, more like the hovels they had to accommodate the workers, just like Siemens… they knew that workers would never find a place to live on their own, so it was all up to the factory. They made sure people coming from foreign countries would have a place to stay without having to look for it…’

On Friday, July 8, 1963, he crossed the factory door for the first time and, despite his initial plans for a quick return, he ended up working there for forty years. He worked at Department 78, the department manufacturing heavy-duty marine engines. On his first day, another factory worker led him to his post after she informed him about the local workers’ union and invited him to join. At his department, he made his first friendships in Germany. He met another Greek there with whom they are friends to this day. Vasilis provides a detailed and vivid description of the manufacturing process. It is evident that he had an ardent love and passion for engines, which probably stemmed from his ambition to become a car mechanic when he was young. His desire to talk at length about the minutiae of his work at the factory attests to his feelings of pride, contentment and admiration for his labour. Every part, every tool, every step of the manufacturing process has been imprinted on his memory. In June 1969, after six years at the factory, he was promoted to foreman in recognition of his diligence and hard work, as he says.

‘What can I say, that crank was something else! Putting it in a 16-cylinder engine, having it work on 16 cylinders! I wanted to become a car mechanic but I became a cart mechanic… [he laughs]. It’s all about wanting to work and loving your work… I loved my work from the start’.

Life outside the factory, entertainment, and recreation were restricted to the weekend and only involved other Greeks, mostly at Greek entertainment venues.

‘We would go out, go for coffee downtown, there were Greek venues there… there was entertainment on Saturday, live bouzouki music and the like…’.

The Greek Community Association of Munich was another place where the immigrants could congregate, but also turn to for any problem that might come up during their stay. Even though Vasilis never needed help, he was aware that the association was a reference point for the Greeks in the city, alleviating the feelings of loneliness, alienation and marginalization that the new-comers undoubtedly experienced. The Greek immigrants of Munich constituted a separate community with distinct characteristics. It appears that constantly comparing and contrasting themselves with other ethnic migrant groups in the city based on their recreation, entertainment and consumption choices was one way, among others, to preserve their shared identity and establish a sense of belonging among the community. Awareness of how ‘They’ were different functioned as the foundation for the construction of a collective ‘We’.

‘…the Yugoslavians arrived in Germany and were drunk for a week! They were finally able to drink as much as they wanted. The Greeks, we jumped at the chance to work at a factory, make the money we made, and buy a new car for 50,000 marks. What the hell are you doing, buying a 50,000-mark car when you live in a hovel? You can’t go around doing things like that…’.

Vasilis’ single life ended when he married Soultana Petrou in 1971. She was born in Grizano, near Trikala, in 1940 and went to Munich in November 1964. She recalls:

‘I was living in a village and then, along with other young women, we got our papers and left… So many young women… Someone was collecting our papers, they were expecting a lot of women and they were waiting for us… we went to Germany… that’s where we met, we got married and then we came here [to Volos]’.

She started working at the Siemens factory where she worked for six years until she gave birth to her first child.

‘There were a lot of women leaving together on the train… the journey lasted about two days… They were waiting for us there, they knew we were coming… and we went straight to work… some of us at Siemens, others wherever they were needed, wherever there had been a request for workers…’.

In Munich, she met Vasilis, they got married and had three children who grew up in the city. Even though Soultana claims that her memory has grown weaker lately, she still has vivid memories of that time; images of everyday life, but also memories of the people who helped her when she first settled in Germany.

‘Our friends were all Greek… we would also hang out with Germans, they would tag along, but it was mostly Greeks… There were some good people who helped us out when we first got there, because we didn’t know what to do. First, a teacher who had already been living there for ten years when we arrived, so she knew everything there was to know. We didn’t speak the language, we didn’t know anything… But even after living there for all these years… Vasilis’ German is quite good but the women, we didn’t really pay attention to these things… Those years are over now, gone…’.

Vasilis and Soultana’s family originally lived in the accommodation facilities provided by the factory where Vasilis worked and then in the Siemens facilities where Soultana worked, at one of the houses leased out to the employees by the company. When Soultana stopped working, the family moved into social housing sponsored by the state for natives and immigrants who met the relevant criteria. According to Vasilis:

‘We submitted our papers to… how should I call it… welfare, social housing… we called them “sozialer Wohnungsbau”… I make an application, I have three kids, an unemployed wife… and they sent us to the house where my kids have been living to this day… A large house near the factory which would have been very expensive to just find on our own… These are apartment buildings outside of Munich, built in the 1970s… it’s a multi-ethnic neighbourhood, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Yugoslavians, everybody…’.

Taking stock of the years he spent as an immigrant in Germany, Vasilis Chatzis seems to focus only on the good moments, the happy times. Even though he acknowledges that there were racist behaviours and instances of discrimination against immigrants, Vasilis himself cannot recall having had such an experience himself. He is being sarcastic when he says that maybe he was shielded by the fact that he was blond, tall and blue-eyed, which made him look German, but this implies that the people who didn’t share these features were probably more prone to be the victims of hatred and discrimination.

 ‘I would like for my life in Germany to start over, to live all those years again, the years I spent at work, with my wife and children, watch them walk, grow, go to school… I don’t regret leaving, absolutely not!’

However, Vasilis Chatzis ends this short life history with a grievance, which is perhaps indicative of the way Greek immigrants experienced their repatriation to Greece.

 ‘When I went to Germany, the Germans would say, “Here comes the Greek”. When I come to Greece, they say, “Here comes the German”. This is not very nice. And if you start talking about Germany, they avoid talking to you… I am Greek in Germany, I am greeted with “Here comes the Greek” and here in Greece I am greeted with “Here comes Vasilis the German…”’.