‘Madgermanes’ is what the Mozambican
workers once contracted out to East Germany are called today. At the end of the
1970s, some 20,000 of them were sent from the People’s Republic of Mozambique
to the GDR to labour for their socialist sister country. After the Berlin Wall
fell, almost all of them lost their residency status. Decades later, they are still
waiting for most of their wages to be paid.
Birgit Weyhe depicts their search for belonging
and a place to call home, caught between two cultures and two states that no
longer exist. Based on extensive interviews, she creates three fictitious
narrators and transforms their stories into a visual language that skilfully
interweaves African and European narrative traditions.
Winner of the Berthold Leibinger Foundation
Comic Book Prize and the Max and Moritz Prize for Best German Comic
‘The book is a great document and a
monument to the injustice that befell me and other contract workers in East
Germany.’ Emiliano Chaimite, Dresden
‘Birgit Weyhe traces emotions and
situations, translating them into overwhelming images by entering into an
artistic dialogue between European and African culture.’ Max and Moritz Prize