It is a little-known, almost forgotten story that we can only reconstruct with impressionistic touches. These outline a relationship between two countries, forged in the depths of the Cold War, built in the name of socialist friendship and that has persisted in the hearts of men until today. It is a love story between the image of a nation and the inhabitants of a town in the Algerian highlands, Tiaret, for which destiny has reserved neither opulence nor fame.
In the streets of this city located at the gates of the Sahara, 230 kilometers southeast of Oran, in a wilaya (region) of almost 900,000 inhabitants, people have dreamed of Germany for fifty years. In the stands of the stadium where young people come to support the local team, JSM Tiaret, the German flag is waved passionately. On the fans’ scarves, the blue and white of the city mix with the black, red and yellow of the Mannschaft, the German soccer team.
The imperial eagle has been drawn on a wall in the center. He wears the Algerian crescent moon and star on his chest. In neighborhood stores, televisions broadcast channels in which Goethe’s language is spoken. A unique situation in the country. For the idle youth of this grain-producing region, El Dorado is not French. It’s called Frankfurt, Stuttgart or Berlin.
End emigration towards the former colonizer
Since their earliest childhood, Tiaretians have savored its evocation through the figure of a cousin who comes driving his shiny BMW to spend the summer in the countryside, that of a neighbor whom we have heard praise these regions where “You have rights, you can make your life, have a job and a home”. But also through the words of the elders who tell of this distant past, when it all began and when hundreds of them went to train in steel or chemical professions in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and returned rich from an experience capable of awakening thousand wishes.
At that time, Houari Boumédiène (1932-1978) presided over the young, democratic and popular Algerian Republic. As a non-aligned figure, he aspires to turn his country into an industrial power relying on its oil resources. Determined to establish its economic autonomy from France, it contributes to putting an end to the emigration of labor to the former colonizer, denouncing the climate of racism and the poor employment conditions that reign there. A position that coincides, in France, with the end of the “thirty glorious years” and the establishment of a restrictive immigration policy.
You have 85.53% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
