Martina Zaninelli

Brotherland is a visual research about nationalism, racism, violence and broken dreams.


The project reports on facts that are now more than 30 years old. Unfortunately, the rise of right-wing parties and racist demagoguery has made the project more topical than we would have liked.

Here you go to the project’s website.

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and one year later Germany was reunited. For many, it was a celebration, the achievement of freedom and the realization of something long dreamed of. For others, it was the beginning of a time marked by violence and fear. As is often the case, history has at least two sides.

Eberswalde, 24 November 1990. A former contract worker, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, is attacked by neo-Nazis and dies on 6 December. He was one of the first victims of racist violence in the newly reunified Germany. Amadeu Antonio had come to the GDR as a contract worker from Angola in 1987.

To remedy the shortage of labor, the GDR made bilateral agreements with other states for the training and employment of workers from the early 1960s onwards. These socialist countries of origin were defined as ‘brotherlands’. The first contract workers came from Poland and Hungary, then later also from Algeria, Angola, Cuba, Mozambique, and Vietnam.

The ‘foreigners out’ violence after socalled ‘Wende’(1) did not begin in 1992 with the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen nor the arson attacks in Mölln and Solingen(2) in 1993. As early as 1991, a dormitory for contract workers and a shelter for refugees in Hoyerswerda were attacked for days. At times, up to 500 onlookers stood in front of the homes, and it was from this crowd that the attacks took place. In Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the home of former Vietnamese contract workers and the Central Reception Centre for Asylum Seekers were attacked. Stones and Molotov cocktails flew at the buildings and the people inside. Several hundred neo-Nazis and up to 3,000 applauding spectators took part in the pogrom.

Hoyerswerda and Rostock, like all right-wing extremist attacks of the 1990s, were expressions of racist and nationalist attitudes that later led to the murderous terror of the so-called NSU(3).