Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức« explores Vietnamese-German migration history and how we remember, narrate, suppress, and silence the past.

At the project’s heart are the memories and experiences of the Vietnamese-German community. These span decades and bear the marks of escape and contract labour, the divide between North and South Vietnam, East and West Germany, and histories of violence and self-empowerment. The Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức« connects experiences that are rarely seen together, despite being deeply intertwined.

Together, these narratives form a memory landscape shaped by Cold War politics and the post-reunification era. Like a compass, this landscape reveals both ideological ruptures and biographical connections.

Curators Dan Thy Nguyen and Nina Reiprich bring together contributions from artists and activists of the younger Vietnamese-German generation. They approach this history from multiple perspectives. Through artistic works, personal texts and interview excerpts, contributors trace the complexity of Vietnamese-German experiences, exposing contradictions, breaks and silences. These stories relate to one another — as memories of a plural community and a plural society. They don’t follow a single, linear narrative, but form a constellation of perspectives.

The Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức« raises essential questions: Who is heard? Which memories are given space? What remains in the shadows? How can we tell a shared, multi-perspective history?

The curators and artists invite us to see Vietnamese-German migration history as part of our shared German and European past. The Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức« opens space for new, multifaceted forms of collective remembrance. It challenges us to question the boundaries of memory discourses and strengthen remembrance as a vital part of a democratic society.

—

31 August 1858
French colonial rule begins over present-day Vietnam with the attack on Tourane (Đà Nẵng)

June 1862
After four years of war, territories are ceded to France; key cities like Saigon (Sài Gòn) are conquered

19 December 1946 – 1 August 1954
First Indochina War

26 April – 20 July 1954
Geneva Conference on Indochina

21 July 1954
Geneva Accords on Indochina signed

1955 – 1976
Vietnam War

1973
US troops withdraw from South Vietnam

1975
South Vietnamese government collapses; Saigon falls

2 July 1976
Vietnam formally reunifies as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

1978
Germany begins humanitarian admission programs for refugees from South Vietnam

1980
GDR begins recruiting Vietnamese contract workers

22 August 1980
Arson attack on Vietnamese refugee housing in Hamburg-Billbrook

17 – 23 September 1991
Hoyerswerda pogrom

22 – 26 August 1992
Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom

June 1997
Nationwide regulation on the right to remain for former contract workers introduced

2011 – 2024
Strategic partnership develops between Germany and Vietnam; agreement signed for targeted recruitment of Vietnamese skilled workers and trainees, primarily for healthcare, hospitality and catering

—

FIRST INDOCHINA WAR, VIETNAM WAR, REUNIFICATION

First Indochina War (1946–1954)

After the Second World War, independence movements emerged across French „Indochina“ in the 1940s. The Việt Minh, a communist-oriented group, led these movements. This anti-colonial mobilisation culminated in 1946 with the First Indochina War, where Vietnamese independence fighters battled French colonial forces.

The war ended with the Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954. The agreement ended French colonial rule in Vietnam and temporarily divided the country along the 17th parallel. In the North, the socialist-communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam formed under President Hồ Chí Minh. In the South, Western-backed anti-communist forces took control. These included groups with monarchist aspirations, strong Catholic influences, and authoritarian tendencies.

The division was meant to last only until nationwide elections in 1956, but these elections never happened. Instead, tensions escalated and in 1955 led to the Second Indochina War, known internationally as the „Vietnam War“ and in Vietnam as the „American War.“

From Decolonisation to the Vietnam War: Division, Intervention and Reunification (1955–1976)

The Vietnam War (1955–1976), known in Vietnam as the „American War,“ became a key Cold War conflict. North Vietnam received military and ideological support from the Soviet Union and China. South Vietnam depended on massive military and financial aid from the United States and its allies. Internal tensions in the South — between Catholic and Buddhist groups, monarchist and democratic forces — created further political instability.

The war featured asymmetrical warfare and devastating weapons like napalm and flamethrowers. Chemical agents designed to destroy agricultural production were also deployed, most notoriously Agent Orange, whose effects continue to cause severe damage to both population and environment today. Because of their catastrophic impact, these weapons were restricted by UN protocol in 1980 and codified in international law since 1983.

The Vietnam War claimed millions of civilian lives and provoked worldwide protests against US intervention. American involvement peaked in the late 1960s but faced mounting resistance from global public opinion and US civil society. This opposition transformed the West: the anti-war protests of the 1960s and early 1970s fundamentally reshaped Western culture by creating precedents for mass protest and youth-led political activism that challenged traditional authority. These demonstrations helped catalyse the broader countercultural movement and influenced everything from music and fashion to attitudes toward government, military intervention and social conformity.

Following gradual US troop withdrawal (1973) and the South Vietnamese government’s collapse (1975), Vietnam formally reunified in 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist leadership. This turning point had far-reaching political, social and cultural memory consequences. Three decades of conflict profoundly impacted Vietnamese society, Southeast Asian geopolitical balance, and collective memory — both in Vietnam and the West, especially the United States.

The war became a symbolic battleground between competing ideologies: decolonisation versus global hegemony, capitalism versus communism, socialist one-party systems versus democratic governance.

Reunification of Vietnam: Founding the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976)

On 2 July 1976, Vietnam officially reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, fully integrating the formerly capitalist and Western-oriented South into the communist political and social system of the North. The Hanoi government implemented comprehensive socialist restructuring, including agricultural collectivisation, economic nationalisation, and political repression targeting former South Vietnamese officials and cultural expressions labelled „bourgeois“ or „reactionary.“

This process involved not only political and economic alignment of the South with communist North Vietnam but also deliberate erasure or marginalisation of South Vietnamese identity markers — evident in banning popular nhạc vàng music, for example. Former South Vietnamese state apparatus members and intellectuals were systematically interned in so-called „re-education camps.“

While the official state perspective celebrated reunification as victory over imperialism and neocolonialism, the South widely experienced it as a loss of cultural distinctiveness and the beginning of a repressive new order.

—

SEPARATE MIGRATION AND CONFLICTS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES

Between Flight and Recruitment

Following Saigon’s fall, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese — including many intellectuals, artists and former military personnel — fled across the South China Sea to escape communism, becoming known as the „Boat People.“ From 1978, West Germany admitted these refugees under humanitarian programs, explicitly recognising them as political refugees from communist persecution. Their reception served ideological purposes in the Cold War and shaped West Germany’s understanding of migration ethics. They received grants and institutional support, yet also faced cultural paternalism and integration policies explicitly linked to anti-communist narratives.

By contrast, from 1980 onward, East Germany recruited Vietnamese contract workers, primarily from North Vietnam, under bilateral agreements. Their stays typically lasted four to five years, with no right to bring family members, settle permanently or participate fully in society. Workers faced systematic economic exploitation, low wages, limited access to education and language training, and close monitoring by both Vietnamese and East German authorities. Many pregnant women were forced either to return to Vietnam or undergo abortions. They lived in isolated dormitories, and everyday social contact with East Germans was heavily restricted.

Divisions Between East-German Vietnamese and West-German Vietnamese Communities

After 1975, profound political and social tensions developed between Vietnamese communities in East and West Germany. In West Germany, refugees from South Vietnam were explicitly admitted as political refugees from communism and often maintained strongly anti-communist self-understanding. Their reception also served foreign policy and ideological purposes: by welcoming the „Boat People,“ West Germany presented itself as a moral counterpoint to the East.

In East Germany, by contrast, contract workers from North Vietnam were recruited under bilateral agreements. Their presence was closely tied to the socialist system, which primarily regarded them as a functional labour force rather than equal society members, despite the regime’s rhetoric of international solidarity.

Traces of these divided life-worlds remain visible today. Nationalist-influenced groups in West Germany, shaped by traumatic experiences of war and flight, sometimes accuse the East German Vietnamese community of complicity with an „unjust regime“ or even bearing responsibility for wartime political violence. Conversely, voices from the Vietnamese-East German community criticise what they perceive as over-assimilation and detachment from cultural origins within the Vietnamese-West German community.

Whether such conflicts persist into the second generation is difficult to determine. Differences today are less about open confrontation than mutual unawareness: life experiences, socialisation forms and political backgrounds are rarely shared, limiting opportunities for exchange and building common remembrance culture.

—

FAR-RIGHT AND RACIAL VIOLENCE

Far-Right Radicalisation and Terror in West Germany (1980s)

From the 1960s onward, far-right extremism in West Germany became increasingly militant. Parties like the NPD initially benefited from political upheavals but later lost influence as the Christian Democratic parties shifted right in the 1970s.

At the same time, parts of the extreme right radicalised further: neo-Nazi groups like the “Deutsche Aktionsgruppen” organised themselves, openly propagated violence, and began carrying out targeted attacks on migrants.

The social transformations of 1980s West Germany — marked by globalisation, growing social insecurity and heated migration policy debates — fueled renewed racist mobilisation. Against this backdrop, on 22 August 1980, “Deutsche Aktionsgruppen” members carried out an arson attack on a residential home for Vietnamese refugees in Hamburg-Billbrook. Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân were killed. The attack is today considered one of the first racially motivated murders in West Germany.

Far-Right Attacks and Pogroms (1990s)

Following German reunification, far-right violence intensified in both East and West Germany, directed primarily against refugees, former contract workers and minorities. Between 1991 and 1993, organised neo-Nazi groups carried out dozens of murders, arson attacks and collective pogroms, often supported by broad sections of local civil society.

From the Vietnamese-German perspective, the murders of former contract workers Nguyễn Văn Tú (April 1992, Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and Phan Văn Toàn (January 1997, Fredersdorf, Brandenburg) deserve particular mention. Both exemplify the deadly consequences of racist violence after reunification.

The Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom from 22 to 26 August 1992 represented a devastating climax. For several days, a furious mob of neo-Nazis and residents besieged the so-called “Sonnenblumenhaus”, which housed both the central reception facility for asylum seekers and a dormitory for Vietnamese contract workers. During the assault, the building was set on fire to hundreds of onlookers‘ cheers, while police withdrew at critical moments and left Vietnamese residents to their fate.

In this extreme situation, many Vietnamese organised their own defence — an act of collective resistance often linked, both biographically and culturally, to earlier Vietnam War experiences. For survivors, the pogrom represented renewed trauma — this time not through colonial or communist violence, but through deeply rooted racism in the new democratic Germany.

Intersectional and International Solidarity (1990s)

Although media attention focused mainly on Vietnamese victims, Sinti and Roma were actually the first targets of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom — yet their experiences were widely suppressed in subsequent public reckoning. Equally little known is the role of French activists, including “Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France” members, who participated in a symbolic occupation of Rostock town hall as an act of transnational solidarity.

Such acts of intersectional and international solidarity demonstrate that resistance and support weren’t confined to individual ethnic or national communities, but gave rise to broader postcolonial and anti-fascist alliances — ones that remain largely marginalised within hegemonic remembrance cultures today.

—

THE 1990s

Birth Surge among Vietnamese Contract Workers after 1990: Emergence of a Second Generation (1990–1992)

In the 1980s, East Germany enforced restrictive family policies for foreign workers, particularly women: pregnancies frequently resulted in immediate repatriation to Vietnam or forced abortions. Family formation was effectively prohibited, violating the reproductive rights of Vietnamese migrants. With East Germany’s collapse and German reunification, these restrictions were lifted. Many Vietnamese women and couples who had previously lived under such conditions could now have children.

This produced a sudden demographic shift: in the early 1990s, birth rates within East Germany’s Vietnamese communities were significantly above average — marking the visible beginning of a second generation of Vietnamese-German life.

The children of former contract workers grew up in a climate shaped by massive rightward shift, racist violence (such as the 1992 Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom) and widespread social insecurity. Many families lived in precarious circumstances, often without secure residency status. At the same time, the second generation began negotiating questions of belonging, language, education and identity — frequently defining themselves in tension with both their parents‘ culture of origin and German majority society.

Right to Stay Activism by Vietnamese Contract Workers in the 1990s: Between Devaluation, Invisibility and Self-Assertion (1990–1997)

After German reunification in 1990, tens of thousands of former Vietnamese contract workers in East Germany abruptly lost their legal basis for residence and employment. Most had come to East Germany under bilateral agreements with Socialist Republic of Vietnam — contracts that became void with East Germany’s collapse.

This created a precarious situation: many people were unemployed and formally obliged to leave the country, even though they had lived in Germany for years. To encourage departure, the state offered a „repatriation premium“ of 3,000 Deutschmarks.

The early 1990s saw intense right-to-stay struggles, in which Vietnamese migrants fought for permanent residence, labour rights and social security — supported by civil society groups, local alliances, church initiatives and sometimes local administrations. These struggles expressed a fundamental social reality: despite East German state authorities‘ restrictive efforts, former contract workers had long since become de facto society members — as parents, entrepreneurs and neighbours. At the same time, insecurity, institutional racism and economic exploitation continued shaping their everyday lives.

Many struggles unfolded in fragmented, individual and legal forms. Yet collective actions also occurred — such as local and regional protests, recourse to church asylum, or high-profile public appeals from within communities. Expressions of this civic engagement include Berlin-based association Reistrommel e.V. and Rostock association Diên Hồng – Gemeinsam unter einem Dach e.V., both founded in the 1990s in the context of right-to-stay struggles and still active today in counselling, political education and empowerment.

Despite initial political rejection — particularly by the Federal Ministry of the Interior — gradual progress was achieved over the years, also thanks to international pressure: from temporary toleration (Duldung) to work permits and, eventually, residence titles. The struggle for right to stay was thus not only a legal battle but also a symbolic struggle for social recognition, human dignity and participation.

Regulation of Residency Status for Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany: Institutional Recognition after Years of Legal Limbo (1997)

In June 1997, under pressure from the United Nations and following years of civic and municipal right-to-stay initiatives, the Standing Conference of Interior Ministers of the Länder (IMK) adopted decisive residency regulations for tens of thousands of former Vietnamese contract workers. The decision was also shaped by humanitarian and diplomatic pressure from the UN Human Rights Commission. The new regulation established uniform criteria nationwide, including several years of residence, clean criminal record and proof of secured livelihood.

For the first time, tens of thousands of Vietnamese were granted legal, long-term residence permits — a de facto recognition of their social reality after nearly a decade of precarious life in reunified Germany. Nevertheless, many exclusion mechanisms remained — particularly for those with interrupted residence, incomplete employment records or unclear identity documentation. The 1997 regulation therefore didn’t constitute full equality, but rather a limited concession framed by migration policy pragmatism.

—

2010s TO TODAY

Memory-Political Empowerment: The Second Generation of Vietnamese Diaspora in Germany (since the 2010s)

Since the 2010s, a visible shift has emerged in the public presence of Vietnamese diaspora in Germany — primarily through a self-confident second generation, descended both from the „Boat People“ community in West Germany and former contract workers in East Germany. This generation has increasingly begun bringing long-marginalised or depoliticised histories of their parents into the open, reflecting on them critically, and reworking them within a memory politics framework. Central issues include racism, classism, post-socialist experience, intergenerational trauma and questions of belonging in Germany as a country of immigration.

Unlike earlier generations, who often relied on invisibility and adaptation, the new generation uses digital media, art, music and journalism to contribute their perspectives to public discourse. Examples include musician Nashi44, artist Sung Tieu and writer Hami Nguyen, as well as journalistic formats like the podcast Rice and Shine (by Minh Thu Tran and Vanessa Vu) or the work of Nhi Le.

This memory-political turn is neither homogeneous nor uniform, but multi-voiced and complex. Different socialisation experiences — depending on whether rooted in West German exile or East German contract worker context — shape it. At the same time, new alliances and formats emerge that bridge community divisions and articulate shared concerns, such as educational inequality, institutional racism and migrant feminism.

Alongside this, more recent migration movements have gained significance — for example, in 2023, when the Vietnamese community recorded the most substantial increase in arrivals for educational purposes. This development links to the „strategic partnership“ established between Germany and Vietnam in 2011, under which bilateral programs for vocational training were set up. Today, Vietnamese trainees in nursing and gastronomy rank among the largest groups of international recruits.

—

INDOCHINA, WAR AND CONFERENCE

The term Indochina refers to mainland territories of Southeast Asia, south of China and east of the Indian subcontinent. Danish–French geographer Conrad Malte-Brun (1775–1826) first coined it in his 1810 work Précis de la Géographie Universelle, published in Paris. Politically, Indochina comprised present-day Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, which from 1887 were incorporated into the French colonial empire as the Union Indochinoise, or “French Indochina”.

First Indochina War, French Indochina War, Indochina War
Designations for the armed conflict between colonial France and the Vietnamese independence movement led by the Việt Minh (Vietnamese Independence League) from 1946 to 1954. The war ended with France’s defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ and led directly to the Geneva Indochina Conference.

The different terms reflect distinct perspectives:
• French Indochina War highlights France’s role as colonial power
• First Indochina War distinguishes it historically from the later Vietnam War
• Indochina War serves as a more neutral umbrella term

Geneva Indochina Conference
An international conference held in Geneva in 1954 to negotiate solutions to conflicts in Indochina (today Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). The resulting Geneva Agreements of 1954 established provisional division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel, with promise of nationwide elections for reunification — elections that never took place. The conference is regarded as a geopolitical turning point in the Cold War, marking the shift from anti-colonial liberation struggle to globalised proxy war. While it ended French colonial rule, Vietnam’s division laid the foundation for the later Vietnam War.

VIETNAM WAR, VIỆT MINH, VIET CONG

Vietnam War/American War
The war in Vietnam between 1955 and 1975 is known by different names depending on historical and geopolitical perspective. Internationally, it’s usually called the “Vietnam War”; within Vietnam, it’s known as the „American War“ (Kháng chiến chống Mỹ). The conflict pitted communist North Vietnam, supported by the Soviet Union and China, against Western-oriented South Vietnam, with the United States as its principal ally.

The divergent terminology reflects contrasting views: the international term emphasises the geographical theatre of war, while the Vietnamese designation highlights the United States‘ dominant role as intervening power.

Việt Minh (Vietnamese Independence League)
Founded in 1941 as a nationalist and communist movement against French colonial rule. The Việt Minh is seen as the forerunner organisation of the North Vietnamese army, but played no direct role in the later Vietnam War.

Viet Cong
A term common in Western usage — often pejorative — for the military arm of the communist guerrilla movement in South Vietnam. Its official Vietnamese name was Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, NFL). The movement’s aim was reunification of the South with the North under communist leadership. Despite negative connotations, the term Viet Cong became the dominant international designation.

BOAT PEOPLE, NGƯỜI VƯỢT BIÊN, CONTRACT WORKERS, RECRUITMENT AGREEMENTS, RIGHT TO REMAIN REGULATION, POLITICAL REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM

Boat People
International designation for Vietnamese refugees who, after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, fled by boat to escape repression, poverty and political persecution.

Thuyền nhân (literally: boat people)
The official term used by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, frequently appearing in state media, also in connection with the ethnic Chinese minority.

Người vượt biên (literally: people who cross the border)
Self-designation used by many boat refugees. Although little known in German-speaking contexts, the term has central historical and autobiographical significance.

Foreign Workers / Contract Workers
The official East German term for labour migrants from socialist partner states such as Vietnam, Angola or Mozambique.

In reunified Germany, the West German term contract workers is often used by analogy with the Gastarbeiter model. Equating the two is problematic, however, as they arose from different political and social contexts.

Recruitment Agreements
Bilateral treaties between East Germany and socialist partner states (e.g. Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique) for temporary deployment of workers. These agreements regulated employment and residency conditions of the so-called foreign workers. They were rooted in socialist state ideology of international solidarity, but also included rigid control mechanisms and granted only limited rights to workers.

Right to Remain Regulation
An administrative transitional measure in the Federal Republic of Germany that granted specific groups of migrants legal residency status — often after years of tolerated stay.

Political Refugees from Communism
A designation used primarily in West German discourse after 1990 to describe persons exposed to repression in socialist states.

In memory politics, the term is often applied indiscriminately and contributes to problematic retrospective moralization of Cold War system rivalry.

In Vietnamese migration to Germany context, it requires careful and critical use, as it politicises individual reasons for flight and simplifies complex migration histories.

NORTH | SOUTH | DIVISION | REUNIFICATION

North Vietnam/South Vietnam
• North Vietnam (officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), under communist leadership with Hanoi as capital
• South Vietnam (officially the Republic of Vietnam), under anti-communist government with Saigon as capital

The division agreed in 1954 was officially meant to be temporary, yet became de facto long-term separation until reunification in 1976 after North Vietnam’s victory. Both states were deeply embedded in the global East-West conflict, each with distinct ideological, economic and social systems.

Reunification | Peaceful Revolution | Wende
These terms originate mainly from a West German interpretive framework and suggest a linear success story. They often obscure the economic, social and cultural ruptures that accompanied German unification. Uncritical use risks marginalising East German and migrant perspectives.

A similar semantic pattern appears in Vietnamese state discourse: Vietnam’s reunification in 1975 is officially referred to as thống nhất đất nước (national unification), often linked to Ngày Giải phóng miền Nam (Liberation Day of the South). Here too, a state-driven narrative of unity dominates, leaving little room for ambivalences, losses and continuing ruptures. By contrast, South Vietnamese boat refugees — for example, in the USA, Australia or West Germany — speak of Ngày Quốc hận (Day of National Shame), expressing the trauma of flight, defeat and loss of political self-determination.

Recommendation: These terms should be used context-sensitively and critically — both within German-German and Vietnamese memory frameworks.

—

At age five, I begin learning German.

I learn vocabulary and grammar as if reciting Buddhist mantras.

I walk.
You walk.
He, she, it walks. We walk.
You walk.
They walk.

The concept of present, past, and future gets hammered into my head —
Tenses are segments. They are mines you can dig in. But be careful: if you look too far into the past, the whole mine collapses, I am told. Yet it’s important for our industry. After all, we are in Germany, I am told. In Weisweiler. And your dad is a coal worker. In the largest lignite power plant in the area. We all live off coal here, I am told. And you don’t want your dad to lose his job. We are foreigners here. If you want to show your gratitude, don’t say anything against the coal power plant, I am told. And honour the dead. And your family. Do you understand?

It is 6 January 2021, Washington.

American flags are waving. Doors are smashed in, glass shattering — and with it, the hope for humane transfer of power. Images that take over the night penetrate millions — no, billions — of pairs of eyes. There, at the very edge of one of those iconic, media-saturated images, I spot a piece of yellow cloth with three red stripes. The old South Vietnamese flag. And in front of it stands a man. And it feels as though my uncle is standing there — fighting for Trump. My uncle urinating in the Capitol. My uncle shouting for Nancy Pelosi to be raped.

And I am so happy that the whole world will not be able to read this moment. For a moment, I am glad that humanity has almost forgotten the story of Vietnamese boat refugees. If only they knew that we Vietnamese, that we were part of it, that we stormed the Capitol…

Outside, snow. I am in bed in our social housing apartment. I am twelve years old. At night, I dream of a war I never experienced. I dream of tin soldiers, napalm bombs, of screaming people. Of tropical heat, of mandarins and Christmas nutcrackers. Of chemicals sprayed over forests and burning skin on children’s bodies.

Red. Red is the colour of luck. Red is the colour of New Year envelopes, red is the colour of blood, red is the colour of communism, red is the colour of Santa Claus.

As a child I run for my life, in a war I have never lived through — my parents‘ war, about which they remain silent. Sometimes I wake up drenched in sweat, relieved that I have survived the battle of tin soldiers and napalm bombs.

At almost forty, I write this poem:

When my father was crowned King of the Dogs

When my father entered the refugee camp, the new masters seized him
and tore out his tongue
the old tongue
the old tongue
with which he could scream love
even though he never did
even though he never did
to scream out of love.

They crowned him
they anointed him
they adorned him
as a dog
as a cur
as a handsome street dog
as king among all dogs,
the only king among curs.

He chopped the wood
a tree, no, two,
in tears of joy.
He murdered an entire jungle
and thanked the new masters
for his tongueless life
and begged
proud as a king,
marked as a cur
with the haughty laughter
of one not murdered.

When I was born
my father gifted me
his tears of joy
and crowned me his animal.

Since then, I have been his dog.

And he tells me
he is my new master
out of love.

It will take seven lifetimes
before I may kill my father.
So that we both may live.

—

We, who fled from communism, my mother said, cannot side with the Left. The CDU would do, my mother told me. The SPD: forbidden, my mother told me. PDS, or the Party of the Left — no need to even speak of them. And so it was that every red book in the house was forbidden. The Communist Manifesto, of course: forbidden. But also Brecht’s love poems: forbidden. All the red Reclam booklets in the foreign language series: forbidden.

If you understand why you live, if you are grateful for your life, if you love me even a little, then you will never vote left. And you will never meet with the Reds, yes?

Did I ever love my mother?

In my mid-thirties, I write this text:

My mother feared two things: the forest — and the water.
The water, I can understand: she fled over the sea, on a wooden boat. With almost a hundred other people. She was always afraid of drowning.
But she also said, „Don’t go into the forest! For that’s where snakes live. That’s where everything is mined. That’s where the war is. That’s where the communists are. You’ll only find corpses there.“

So I stayed at home. For twelve whole years. I only went outside for school. And if I took too long on the way back, the wooden stick came out and I had to lie down. „I’m beating you because I love you so much. It’s my duty as your mother,“ she said. „I’m hitting you so that you learn the kind of fear that will protect you. This pain is the sweet juice of my love for you. My mother’s milk from centuries of war and generations of unlived dreams.“

Sometimes I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave the industrial town. Tear the pain of my ancestors and forebears from my chest. I wanted to go into the forest — which, in my eyes, was the opposite of heaven. I wanted to go into the forest, the forest turned entirely grey by coal particles.

After twelve years of my life, no longer entirely a child, I dared to take my bicycle into the nearest forest. And there I discovered, after some time lost, a hobby historian searching for old, spent rifle cartridges from the Battle of Hürtgen Forest.

„There’s a great deal of German history buried in the German forest,“ he said. „If you only dig deep enough, you’ll find a lot.“ Here in the forest, the Nazis had been. And here was one of the worst battlefields. Here, in the German forest, lay a sea of corpses.

When I came home, I received a thousand blows, spread over ten days. 33 in the morning. 33 at midday. 33 in the evening. My mother feared I might otherwise faint from pain if she beat me endlessly. I wasn’t allowed to go to school so the teachers wouldn’t see my bruises.

After those ten days, I knew that, out of pure love, I could never be a child again.

—

First, they toiled in factories, in industrial complexes, producing.
Then they sold flowers, fruits and vegetables, gifts, and clothing. They fried rice and noodles. Sweet and sour duck.
I am one of their children. Daughter of a male contract worker and a female contract worker. The second generation.
When asked how I identify, I say Vietnamese-East German.
For two reasons.

First, because my parents came to East Germany in the 1980s, as young adults, to work. This was based on an agreement between the „socialist brother states“ Vietnam and the German Democratic Republic. This agreement was explicitly East German. Without the contract, my parents would never have met in Chemnitz. I would never have existed.

Second, because I carry defiance within me. When people think of East Germans, they hardly think of young Vietnamese men and women. Yet we are here.

I grew up in a restaurant. Our China restaurant, to be precise. We served our guests Peking soup and spring rolls. The staff had Vietnamese food after work.

Our place was typical for the area, typical for the time. Vietnamese people, selling what was supposedly Chinese food in restaurants, bistros, or snack bars. A type of small business through which Vietnamese people became self-employed in the post-reunification period, to stay in Germany after their work contracts were terminated.

Today, given the popularity of Vietnamese cuisine, it seems absurd that we didn’t serve our own food. My father once said there were two reasons for choosing Chinese food: familiarity and supply. East German customers could more easily imagine Chinese dishes, had fewer inhibitions, and the ingredients needed for Vietnamese dishes were hard to obtain. And so our menu was dominated by Chinese dishes. In the 2000s, sushi was added. Before the hype around Vietnamese food reached the small town, in the 2020s, my father had already moved on.

I had a happy childhood. My parents were separated, yet a German family — the family of my day-care provider — also cared for me.
Through them, I gained East German everyday wisdom and perspectives. Yet, by adolescence, I wished to live in a big city. In the small town of Thuringia, I felt suffocated and out of place. My parents had met in Chemnitz. If only they had stayed there. Then I wouldn’t have had to chug along by regional train on weekends to experience something, wouldn’t have been verbally harassed by Nazis at the station, wouldn’t have been the only non-white person in my grade. I would have felt freer.

„Why do you speak so little of your time in East Germany?“ I once asked my father. Until then, I would have never really cared to ask. Is there a certain silence between the first and second generation, or did we simply not know for a long time how to ask the right questions?

The first generation accomplished a lot and often suffered.
I could write about the difficulties — the work, the rules, the living conditions, the uncertainties, the violence, the racism. Hoyerswerda, Halle, Rostock.
But I want to start elsewhere. Namely, with us, the second generation.

„Why do you focus so much on the hurdles of the past?“ was one of the questions my mother asked after seeing my report on Vietnamese-East German life. In the film, I spoke with a contemporary witness, asked him about his experiences as a Vietnamese contract worker in East Germany, about the many problems. I just wanted to hear all the facets.

I will never forget how a witness of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom told me the attacks did not frighten him. After all, he had survived the war.

Vietnamese people are brave, resilient, good at looking forward. Very good at not getting stuck in the suffering of the past. When I look at the East German past of our parents‘ generation, I see a lot of injustice. Yet it is not my right to project pain onto our parents‘ generation.

I cannot demand that our parents be more demanding or express their wishes, dreams, and disappointments in a way that suits me. What I am entitled to, however, is to feel anger and draw strength from it.

I am determined, and so are my friends of the second generation. We don’t have to prove ourselves, we don’t have to integrate — we are part of society, part of the East.

It makes me happy to know that we are becoming louder and more visible, that we network, organise, build new things on the strength of our parents, and tell overlooked and hidden stories in the most diverse spaces.

We are actors, authors, filmmakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and even members of the state parliament. At home in art, culture, politics, every aspect of life.

We are Mai Duong Kieu, Vũ Vân Phạm, Hami Nguyen, Quang Paasch, Sung Tieu, Hanh Mai Thi Tran, Mai Trang Nguyen, Claudia Tuyết Scheffel, Nam Duy Nguyễn, Linh Tran, Trong Do Duc, Phuong Tran Thi, Anh Tran, Paolo Le Van. Quite a few names? Oh, there are so many more of us.

—

Playbacks, 2025
Minh Duc Pham
Installation
Music box, printed punch cards

Playbacks explores memory as a selective and malleable process. The punch card becomes a medium in which history is encoded, filtered and rendered legible. It inverts the logic of archiving: holes mark presence; closed spaces signify absence. The work draws attention to exclusions within memory politics. Through repeated playback, a constantly shifting fragment emerges.

Saigon Calling. Between Berlin, Saigon and Mua Xuan tren thanh pho Ho Chi Minh
Khanh Nguyen, 2025
Sound piece

With Saigon Calling, Khanh Nguyen engages artistically with conflicting musical and memory-political legacies of Vietnam. At the work’s centre are two songs about the same city, emblematic of two contrasting worlds of sound and ideology:

Sài Gòn (c. 1965, Trúc Mai), from the repertoire of so-called nhạc vàng („yellow music“), which was popular in South Vietnam but banned after 1975; and excerpts from the socialist anthem Mùa xuân trên thành phố Hồ Chí Minh (1978, Văn Dung), an example of state-sponsored nhạc đỏ („red music“).

Nguyen interprets both songs in performative form, creating a dialogic space of resonance between the unspoken and a quiet sense of belonging, beyond origin and partisanship.

The artistic gesture is a search: for belonging beyond heritage, for expression of what has remained unspoken, for a place where what was once deemed incompatible might continue to reverberate.

MTG: Mor(t)al Strife Archive
„KI“ Bui, 2025
Installation
UV print on PVC hard foam, lacquer

This work is part of the series MTG: Mor(t)al Strife Archives, an ongoing project that engages with censorship in photography and the artist’s personal experiences. Inspired by Magic: The Gathering mechanics, the series bridges fantasy and reality. The game’s colour-coded mana system is adapted to represent various factions and powers from real-world historical and contemporary conflicts. The artwork acts as commentary on how conflict is waged not only on battlefields, but also through images and information, subject to control and regulation by state institutions.

—

Nhạc vàng and Nhạc đỏ

Nhạc vàng (“golden music”) is a popular Vietnamese music genre that originated in South Vietnam before 1975 and continued to thrive in the diaspora, especially in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

Nhạc đỏ (“red music”) refers to songs with revolutionary and patriotic themes that played a central role in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Today, both genres are undergoing a renaissance: for example, the label Saigon Supersound releases newly remastered nhạc vàng tracks, while artists such as Viết Thu continue the tradition of nhạc đỏ and reinterpret it for a younger audience.

—

Curators

Dan Thy Nguyen is a freelance theatre director, actor, writer, and singer based in Hamburg. He has worked on various productions, including at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Kampnagel, Mousonturm Frankfurt, MDR, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. In 2014, he developed and produced the play “Sonnenblumenhaus” about the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom. The radio play version won the “Hörnixe” award in 2015 and continues to be performed at various institutions today. Since 2020, he has directed the Hamburg-based festival “fluctoplasma – 96h Art Discourse Diversity” through his production company Studio Marshmallow. He also serves as deputy board member of the Hamburg State Association for Children’s and Youth Culture (LAG Kinder- und Jugendkultur Hamburg). In 2021, he and the entire ensemble received the German Radio Play Award (Deutscher Hörspielpreis) for his performance.

Nina Reiprich is an independent project developer, networker, dramaturg, producer, and moderator, focusing on post-migrant, anti-racist, and diversity-oriented perspectives. After intensive years on Hamburg’s Elbe Island of Veddel, where she led the cooperative and neighbourhood project NEW HAMBURG together with three colleagues and curated the SoliPolis Festival, she threw herself into self-employment. She has supported productions such as Lara-Sophie Milagro’s “Decolonized Glamour Talks” and has been part of the fluctoplasma Festival leadership team since 2021.

Contributors

„KI“ Bui, aka Mai Phuong Bui, is a multidisciplinary artist based between Hamburg and Saigon. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Her artistic practice focuses on social structures and hierarchies, along with image research. She explores the intersections between human experience, cultural production, and how we process and interpret conflict, memory, and social phenomena.

Nhi Le is a journalist, moderator, and author. Her work focuses on digital media culture, the intersections of pop and politics, and East Germany’s immigrant society, with particular focus on Vietnamese diaspora. ZEIT counts her among the 100 most important young East Germans. In 2021, she was named one of the country’s Top 30 Journalists under 30 by Medium Magazin.

Duy Long Nguyen was born in Ha Tinh, Vietnam, and came to Rostock in 1984 as a contract worker. He worked as an interpreter for a Vietnamese work group at the Port of Rostock and at the Neptun Shipyard. Since 2011, he has served as chairman of Dien Hong e.V. and has been active as a member of the Migrants‘ Council of the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock since 2005.

Khanh Nguyen was born in 1985 in Koblenz and works as a singer, musician, and music educator. She studied Jazz/Rock/Pop vocals at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. In 2014, Nguyen played the lead role of Princess Oanh in Karsten Gundermann’s composition „Drachensöhne und Feentöchter“, directed by Julia Haebler. In 2016, she composed the music for „Fischer und Frau“, a co-production between tjg. theater junge generation Dresden, the Goethe-Institut Vietnam, and the State Youth Theatre Hanoi, directed by Dominik Günther. Nguyen is the singer of the Lao Xao Trio, which sets Vietnamese folk songs to music influenced by contemporary genres. In 2019, she performed as singer and actress in “Danke Deutschland, Cảm ơn nước Đức” at the Schaubühne Berlin. Nguyen also performs as singer with khanhmusic, together with Raphael Klitzing. In 2021 and 2022, she performed as singer of the Song Lua Trio with Tri Nguyen on Vietnamese zither, Dan Tranh, and Gerhard Krause on cello and Viola da Gamba. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Minh Duc Pham is an artist and performer. Pham studied Exhibition Design and Scenography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design as well as Performance Studies and Design Theory at the Berlin University of the Arts. His artistic practice bridges visual and performing arts, exploring identity at the intersection of gender, race, and class. Pham’s works have been exhibited at the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig, Stadtmuseum Dresden, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, and most recently at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He has been involved in productions at HAU 1 Berlin, HELLERAU, Cloud Gate Theatre Taipei, and Mousonturm Frankfurt. He has received scholarships from multiple art and cultural institutions such as the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, the Fonds Darstellende Künste and Stiftung Kunstfonds.

Thi Kim Thoa Ngu grew up in Bến Tre and fled Vietnam in 1989, where the Cap Anamur rescued her. In 1979, the German couple Christel and Rupert Neudeck initiated a private sea rescue operation for Vietnamese refugees, using the chartered freighter Cap Anamur, which saved over 10,000 people at sea. After completing training as a dental assistant, she continues to work as a train driver today.

Thoi Trong Ngu was born in Cần Thơ, fled Vietnam in 1980 and was also rescued by the Cap Anamur. Since arriving in Germany, he has worked as a train driver.

Thi Kim Thoa Ngu and Thoi Trong Ngu survived the racist arson attack in Hamburg’s Halskestraße in 1980, which has since been renamed Châu- and Lân-Straße in memory of Đỗ Anh Lân and Nguyễn Ngọc Châu.

T. H. Minh Voll, born in 1992 in Forchheim, is a German-Vietnamese illustrator and graphic designer whose creative work engages with themes of migration, intergenerational relationships, intercultural exchange, and broader societal and philosophical questions. In early 2024, she published her debut book, “Western Water Spinach–Interviews from the Asylum Seekers‘ Residence in Forchheim”, a collection of narratives that traverse cultures and explore the search for personal identity. In 2025, the publication was honoured with a Bronze Nail at the Art Directors Club Talent Award.

The Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) is a collaborative network and productive platform of around 95 artists, academics, journalists, and activists working on and researching pluralistic cultures of remembrance through a broad range of approaches. The network’s goal is creating artistic, civil society, and educational policy concepts for pluralistic remembrance.

The composition of its membership unites and makes visible diverse activist, academic, and artistic perspectives on remembrance cultures. At the heart of this work is the conviction that those who seek to shape the present and future in a way that recognizes society’s pluralism must also provide a new telling of the past. It brings together, among others, the remembrance policy concerns of Sinti*zze, Rom*nja and many other communities, plural-Jewish, postcolonial and antiracist discourses, as well as migrant-diaspora and queer-feminist perspectives.

The CPPD uses a variety of event formats and interventions (panel discussions, readings, workshops, conferences, etc.), supports the remembrance politics projects of its members through micro-grants, and advises institutions active in Germany and elsewhere in Europe working to modernise their cultures of remembrance so they reflect contemporary societies. The network forges connections to relevant remembrance policy actors and builds on prior achievements of civil society actors in Germany and across Europe. The CPPD is now working within a network of more than 200 initiatives, institutions, and organisations.

—

Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức«
Vietnamese-German Migration Hi|Stories

Curators
Nina Reiprich
Dan Thy Nguyen

Contributors
KI Bui
Nhi Le
Dan Thy Nguyen
Khanh Nguyen
Duy Long Nguyen
Minh Duc Pham
Thi Kim Thoa und Thoi Trọng Ngu
Wiebke Enwaldt (Translation into Easy Language)
Michael Kohls (Photography)
Hang Nguyen (Vietnamese translation)
Minh Thu Tran and Vanessa Vu (Rice & Shine podcast)
T. H. Minh Voll (Illustration)
Dr. Thanh Van Vu (Content consultancy)

Architecture and Exhibition Design
Jan Bodenstein
Yair Kira

CPPD Curators
Max Czollek
Jo Frank
Johanna Korneli

CPPD Team
Hannah Blumas
Viridiana Cortes
Angela Mani
Francisco Schellert

We would like to thank Diên Hông – Gemeinsam unter einem Dach e.V. and Lichtenhagen Archive Rostock for their conceptual and content-related advice and support.

The opening of the Dynamic Memory Lab »Nước Đức« is part of the decentralised heimaten festival. The heimaten network is an initiative of the House of World Cultures within the framework of heimaten, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media based on a resolution by the German Bundestag.

The Dynamic Memory Lab is a concept of the Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse (CPPD) and is implemented by DialoguePerspectives. Discussing Religions and Worldviews e.V.

©CPPD, Berlin 2025

cppdnetwork.com