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

Here you go to the project’s website.

The focus of the project is on the experiences of former contract – Vertragsarbeiter – workers from their arrival in the GDR until the 1990s.

In November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and one year later Germany was reunited. For many the achievement of freedom, for others a time marked by violence and fear.   For days, dormitories and refugee shelters were attacked in Hoyerswerda in 1991 and in Rostock in 1992. Stones and Molotov cocktails flew at the buildings and the people inside. Hundreds of onlookers - neighbors and former colleagues of the contract workers - stood in front of the dormitories, clapped, and it was from this crowd that the attacks occurred.

 We interviewed and portrayed former contract workers from Angola, Mozambique and Vietnam. We also spoke with Germans who lived in Hoyerswerda, Eberswalde and Rostock during the Wende. They tell us about the realities of their lives during this time.

All in all, Brotherland is intended to illustrate the atmosphere in which the attacks took place and in which they were legitimised by a broad mass of the population.