The one millionth
Of people and thwarted plans
The anniversary of the arrival of the ‘one millionth guest worker’ Armando Rodrigues de Sá in 1964 commemorates the economic success story of West Germany and honours the contributions made by migrant workers.
The occasion, which has been chosen for the past sixty years, centres on a number, the million. This number says that migration is measurable. And what can be counted and measured also seems to be controllable. The thesis of the exhibition "The one millionth. Of people and thwarted plans" is therefore that these awards and honours always express the idea that migration can be planned and controlled.
However, from today's perspective, the recruitment policy in the era of the West German ‘economic miracle’ did not go according to plan. Recruitment was intended to be temporary but led to far-reaching social changes: Many people stayed, and Germany became the immigration society we know today.
By confronting small and large, personal and official, well-known and less-known stories, the exhibition tells of the plans of the time – but also of how they were thwarted.
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Other potential ‘guest workers’ in Cologne-Deutz on 10 September 1964. Armando Rodrigues de Sá only became the most famous unknown person in recent migration history by chance. The plan was simply to select a person travelling from Portugal to drive recruitment from this country of origin. -
With a wink, the film Almanya (2011) refers to the situation that could have made Armando Rodrigues de Sá a millionaire: The protagonist, a recruited labour migrant from Turkey, politely lets de Sá go first when he arrives in Germany.
