Gani Bilir’s Payslips

In 2020, long after the death of my grandfather, Gani Bilir, I came across his payslips in a box at the home of my grandmother, Vehbiye Bilir, in Mersin. They span the period from December 1976 to February 1983. In all the years from 1962 to 1988, Gani Bilir’s wages from the Triebwerkfabrik engine factory in Kiel remained the same, while those of his fellow workers who were non-migrant Germans increased. The more than one hundred pay slips are fragmented testimony to over twenty-five years as a migrant worker in Germany.