He wanted to escape life as a shepherd and farm worker in Puglia. Nevertheless, his career as a guest worker in Germany began again with work on a farm. It has now been 67 years since his departure. Today Lorenzo Annese is 88 years old. In his spacious house with a garden near Wolfsburg, the first Italian Volkswagen employee makes a completely satisfied impression. He describes the hard times of the beginning with calm: “Back in 1958, the monthly wage on the farm in Germany was 180 German marks, which was 27,000 lire at the time. I was able to get that in Italy for two months of work, but there you always had to chase the money because the farmers were always coming up with new excuses for the future “Life on the farm in Bokensdorf was still full of hardships. He slept in a farm building on the farm. There was no bathroom, the toilet was a wooden house behind the building. But looking for a new employer was hardly possible: Annese had come to Germany on the basis of the German-Italian recruitment agreement of 1955 and was assigned to an employer. Lorenzo Annese got his job in the car industry through a clever trick.Anjou VartmannThe strict official at the employment office who was responsible for Annese and his work stay in Germany threatened consequences if he changed jobs: At least the costs of 62 D-Marks for recruitment and travel costs would have to be reimbursed to the employer, i.e. more than a week’s wages. Annese left the farm when a new immigrant from Italy was found to replace him. There are still traces of the job that followed. His basement resembles a museum – with bunk beds, a dining table and portable hotplates, alongside the 20 or 30 kilogram pumice stones that Annese had to move at the time. Depending on the weight, the piece rate was one pfennig or 1.5 pfennigs for each stone that was taken off the assembly line or loaded onto trucks. “For the two marks that it cost to make a minute on the phone to Italy, I had to carry 200 stones,” he says. Of course, close contact with home was not possible. Despite the tough working conditions, he didn’t want to give up and return home. Otherwise the neighbors would have said mockingly: “The American is back.” And after his work experiences at home, Annese had vowed never to return to his home town of Alberobello. VW was his third stop: Lorenzo Annese took a tour of the plant, left the group of visitors unnoticed, went to the human resources department and briskly asked for the “director”. After he insisted for a while, he was called. He found the approach clever and paved the way for Annese to be hired in August 1961, with her salary more than doubled. Volkswagen was planning to bring guest workers from abroad anyway. VW boss Heinrich Northoff said in October 1961: “It is only a lack of labor that is hindering our further expansion, although 4,800 cars a day are far more than any European automobile manufacturer produces.” Annese actually never wanted to return to his hometown, but today he is at home there as he is near Wolfsburg.Anjou VartmannThe German-Italian recruitment agreement for guest workers of December 20, 1955 made it possible to significantly expand the labor supply for agriculture and industry. There was full employment. Unemployment was particularly high in southern Italy. In addition, Italy – even before the tourism wave – had a high current account deficit with Germany. Workers were able to narrow the supply gap and reduce the current account deficit with transfers to their families. Germany feared that the economy would overheat with rising inflation. Guest workers were supposed to square a circle: If Italians lived in barracks and consumed little in Germany, consumption and inflationary pressure would not increase significantly despite a greater supply of labor. Around 15 million displaced people had ensured a plentiful supply of workers on the German labor market, including in rural areas where they were distributed and even former university professors had to earn a living by mucking out stables. By 1960 it was noticeable that the war had depressed the birth rate and there were no longer as many young school graduates available. With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the flow of refugees from East Germany dried up. The recruited “foreign workers” were intended to act as a labor reserve that would only remain temporarily. The term “guest workers” was intended to allay the population’s concerns about a wave of immigration. But the newcomers could not feel like guests. There was a lack of housing and because of the planned short stay, the newcomers were housed in barracks. Sometimes in settlements with barbed wire fences. The times when Italians helped build the forerunner of the VW plant following an agreement between Mussolini and Hitler in 1938 or when Italians were brought to Germany for forced labor during the occupation (1943 to 1945) were still fresh memories. The guest workers’ pay corresponded exactly to the German collective wages. That was the only reason why unions agreed to the recruitment. Labor costs should not be depressed by the increasing employment of guest workers at low wages. Anyone interested in earning money could increase their earnings by doing piece work or night shifts. Opportunities for promotion were initially rare. The first Italian VW employee, Lorenzo Annese, sees nothing objectionable in this: “If you come from a distance, you can’t expect to be in the front row,” he says. Annese spent most of his life with his wife Frieda in Bokensdorf in Lower Saxony.Anjou VartmannAnnese did not spend long on the assembly line; when the first large group of Italian workers arrived in 1962, he became a liaison officer. His language skills helped. The newcomers learned about the circumstances and rules of the game. He was able to report problems to the VW administration. VW boss Northoff had expressed the wish at a works meeting that the employees would be treated well: “If the Italians come in January, then please be nice to them. They come to a completely foreign country, to completely foreign people and have a hard time.” Annese sees reports of conflicts and a wildcat strike in 1962 and 1963 as exaggerated. The book authors Hedwig and Ralf Richter report a fight after an Italian danced with a German woman. Afterwards, the Turin newspaper “La Stampa”, owned by the Fiat owners, reported, apparently far from the facts, that workers had been whipped and were being discriminated against under labor law. Competition for qualified workers from southern Italy may have played a role here. In Turin, discrimination against people from the south is widespread with the derogatory term “terroni” – and the sentence: “You don’t rent to southern Italians.” In Wolfsburg, a sign was hung up in bars: “No entry for Italians and dogs.” Lorenzo Annese says that he didn’t want to work through that, but instead organized a dance evening with the support of the union and, with the support of the company, an international Christmas party, which took place for the 44th time this year. Flashpoints arose where many guest workers were housed in barracks. 5,000 Italian men without families lived at the “Berliner Brücke”. Annese doesn’t want to downplay problems, but he puts pragmatism in the foreground: When new housing was built, ghettos should not be created. One foreign family was accommodated in every eight residential units. “We have not created an island of foreign guest workers here like in other cities with guest workers from other countries.” His efforts were recognized and, with an exception, he was able to be elected to the works council as a foreigner in 1965. F.A.Z–Editorial photographer Wolfgang Haut recorded this group of men a few years after the recruitment agreement was concluded.Wolfgang HautThe commitment of the Catholic Church in Protestant Lower Saxony also contributed to the integration of the Italians in Wolfsburg. “The first pastor of the Italian community came in the 1960s; he tried to integrate the Italians into the German system,” reports Antonio De Florio, a layman who has been involved in the community for decades. An Italian world has emerged around this community, including a football club and training courses run by the Catholic Italian workers’ association Acli. De Florio is now 75 years old. After graduating from the music conservatory, he was assigned to the VW orchestra. 7,800 of the 130,000 Wolfsburg residents have Italian roots. The Catholic connection apparently also influenced the decision to recruit guest workers from Italy and not from Turkey, as was the case at Ford in Cologne. VW boss Northoff attended a private audience with the Pope in the 1950s and was a member of a papal order of knights. Opinions about the decisions vary. Perhaps there was a contribution through Northoff’s contacts with the VW importer in Italy. Pizzerias and ristoranti or Italian supermarkets later offered a connection to the local culture; initially, German cuisine was a burden for the guest workers. “Gelatieri”, the ice cream parlor owners, had been there for a long time. Almost all of them came from two valleys north of Venice. Many people there lost their jobs in ore mines during the Austrian Empire in the 18th century, and then some learned how to make ice cream while staying in Vienna. They were a role model for everyone who opened ice cream parlors in Italy or Central Europe. His grandfather opened the area’s first ice cream bar in 1951, reports Paolo Gamba in the ice cream parlor in Stuttgart’s Bad Cannstatt district, which also bears the family name “Gamba”. Many from the same village are active in Germany. He has given up the traditional family rhythm – work from March to September, returning home in winter. He only spends ten more days in Italy. “I have my home and my friends here.”Gamba values the traditional way of ice cream production, with real vanilla and fruits, and entrepreneurial independence. “It comes down to sacrifice and determination,” he says. He sees little in common with immigrants from southern Italy. “We are too different.” When the guest workers arrived, Italian ice cream parlor owners were among the few who spoke both languages. However, they found themselves overwhelmed as mediators between cultures. Rodolfo Dolce from Frankfurt is the first Italian to be admitted to the bar both in Germany and as an avocato in Italy. “The attitude towards Italy depends on the level of education of the German counterpart,” he says: people with little to moderate education think of spaghetti and pizza. Culturally educated Germans think of Goethe and the Grand Tour as an educational trip for the children of the German upper class in the 18th century, Italian cities of art and the Italian cultural nation. Rodolfo Dolce is the first lawyer licensed in both countries.Anjou VartmannRodolfo Dolce, born in the late 1950s, came to the country with his father, a doctor, and knows real differences and commonplaces: Germans supposedly spend their money on cars and vacations, Italians on food and clothes. However, Dolce believes that some differences are real, such as that Italian women are dressed more elegantly on average, Italian men wear ties more often and change them more often. What was unthinkable for Italy at the beginning of his career was that he went to the bank with his partner and got a loan of 40,000 German marks without any connections. He often sees Italians torn between Germany and Italy. Returnees built a family home or a business in their home village, which turned out to be a mistake in deserted areas. “Italians often still have one foot here and retain their old citizenship,” says Dolce. Unlike Turkish guest workers, they do not have to worry about residence permits and therefore do not have to apply for German citizenship as soon as possible. European freedom of movement allows this. As a result, in contrast to Turkish guest worker children, Italians cannot be elected here and are hardly visible in German politics. The visibility of Italians in Germany suffers because they do not accept citizenship, notes lawyer Dolce.Anjou VartmannMany Italians have returned. Their motives are hardly researched. According to the Italian embassy, around three million Italians came to Germany between 1955 and 1975. Today, the Federal Statistical Office counts 853,000 residents in Germany with an Italian migration background, of which 463,000 have direct migration experience. Italians, previously the second largest group of guest workers, are now only the eighth immigrant nation in the country. Even with many questions, no resentment can be found. “It would have been even worse in Italy,” was the answer at the Italian regulars’ table in Frankfurt. “It wasn’t easy, in 1970 my family had a family apartment for the first time in a stone house, in the basement with an outside toilet,” says a member of the German-Italian Association. “But we wanted to adapt and integrate, while today’s immigrants get many things without effort.”More on the topicThe picture of Italian immigrants would not be complete without a look at the latest wave of young immigrants, with 5,000 scientists and researchers alone. This time it was not poor and uneducated people from underdeveloped regions who came, but rather the best-educated Italians, whose departure is followed at home as the “flight of the masterminds”. One of these is Michela Mapelli, who has been a professor of astrophysics in Heidelberg for two years. She gives the impression that she has achieved an important life goal with her appointment to Germany. What counts for her is the position as a “full professor,” but also the freedom to organize her research. The university was worthy of a press release when it received European research funding of 2.5 million euros last summer for research into black holes and gravitational waves in space. Michela Mapelli fled nepotism in Italy. Anjou Vartmann There are no institutions like the German Research Foundation in Italy. Mapelli went to Padua twice in her career for several years, but others were appointed to the professorships. “I didn’t want to wait any longer,” she says. She only says positive things about the University of Padua. But in Italy, the grievances in science fill books and satirical programs – secret advertisements with which professors hire their favorites are part of everyday life. To avoid competition, lecturers at Italian universities are required to take a language test. Mapelli, on the other hand, teaches in English. She belongs to the mobile and highly qualified generation who takes advantage of all the opportunities that fast European transport connections offer. In Germany there are a number of institutions that professionalize academic research, says Mapelli.Anjou VartmannLorenzo Annese, the first Italian VW worker, contrary to his intention, repeatedly flies to Apulia, to his hometown of Alberobello, which is a UNESCO world heritage site after a tourist boom. There he owns a “trullo” that is typical of the city, a house with a pointed stone roof. Recently, the former works council at the airport asked a supervisor: How much do you earn? The answer: four euros an hour. For Annese, this is a sign that old plagues of southern Italy have not been eliminated. The center of his life remains in Germany with his wife, daughter and grandchildren. His spacious single-family home in Bokensdorf is just a few hundred meters away from the farm where he once started as a farm worker. He recently bought a historic Porsche tractor from the farmer for one euro and restored it. “I don’t miss anything here,” says Annese. “But I can go to Apulia whenever I want, because a lot of things have become easier in Europe. But we were the first Europeans to do this.”
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