City of migrant workers                                                                      

From Bosporus to Lahn river – the shoe-shine box is a family heirloom that the great-grandfather of its owner had in his shop in Istanbul. The descendant who came as a migrant worker could uphold the family tradition with his own shop in Gießen.

From the 1950s migrant workers came from southern Europe, from the Balkan region and from Turkey to Gießen, where – at first – they lived in dorms on work premises. As time went by, they started moving into private flats, brought their families to join them and enriched the city with their cultures, languages and food.

After their working lives in Germany, many first-generation migrants wished to be buried in their countries of origin. Only slowly, they wished to be buried in their new home country. Since the early 1990s, the Islamic cemetery on the grounds of the new graveyard offers the possibility to be buried in accord with one’s own rituals.