After the signing of the recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey in 1961, a women’s hostel belonging to Telefunken, a technology company, located at Stresemannstrasse 30, became a first home in Berlin for many Turkish women – in a building that had, over a hundred years earlier, served as an educational institution for boys including German statesman Otto von Bismarck.

Among the residents, who worked in piecework assembling radio tube lamps for Telefunken, were die-hard theatre fans who followed Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, and other figures at the forefront of German theatre such as Helene Weigel and Erwin Piscator. Other residents had encounters with German sociologist Rudi Dutschke, whom they found to be quite arrogant, which is why they co-founded the first Turkish socialist association in West Berlin. Many admired Ella Fitzgerald in concert or were horrified to have to come across their screen idol Horst Buchholz, often dubbed as the German James Dean, as a “beat-up bum”.

Some of these pioneers shaped decades of German-Turkish life in Berlin with their socio-political and artistic work. One of the most famous German Turkish writers Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who was also working at Telefunken at the time, created a literary monument to this era with her novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (The Bridge of the Golden Horn).

Making its premiere in Singapore, this exhibition follows the footsteps of these women migrant workers. Their stories about life, love, work, and resistance are accompanied by an intersection of programmes that builds a bridge to present-day Germany.

Initiated by Gorki’s Artistic Director Shermin Langhoff, and researched, compiled, and further collected by Hülya Karcı, Erden Kosova, Tunçay Kulaoğlu, Maral Müdok and Mürtüz Yolcu from works, family archives, estates, interviews, personal conversations by and with Mevhibe Çetin, Nuran Dirlikli, Aysel Göksu, İdil Laçin, Nuran Oktar, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Mefharet Sayınbatur, Güneş Schulz, Filiz Taşkın, Melek Konukman-Tulgan & Nica Sultana Vasiliou and many other contemporary witnesses.