“I thought I would go back.”
Neriman Yılmaz
“For three months, I didn’t unpack my suitcase, because I thought I would go back.”
This interview tells the story of Neriman Yılmaz, who was born in Turkey in 1961 and came to Germany as a teenager. The first months were marked by disappointment and homesickness, yet she chose to stay and build a new life.
Without speaking the language, she found her way into the world of work and learned German step by step through everyday life. Over the years, she faced numerous challenges, started a family, and forged her own path, driven by a strong desire for independence and self-determination.
Today, she looks back on her life with pride, especially on having provided her children with a secure future.
Testimony
Origins and departure
Neriman Yılmaz Alp grows up in a village in Turkey. Her life is shaped by family structures, communal work, and rural living conditions. At first, there are no plans for her to move to Germany. It is only her father’s decision that leads to her coming to Germany as a young woman.
Work, language, perseverance
In Germany, she begins her life without any knowledge of the language. She finds her first jobs and acquires the language through everyday life. Her subsequent life is shaped by continuous work, family responsibilities, and challenges within both professional and social contexts, including discrimination as a woman and a migrant.
Arriving between two worlds
Over the years, she builds a life for herself in Germany and finds her place in society. At the same time, she has maintained her connection to Turkey. Her biography represents a life lived between two cultural contexts.
Historical-Political Background
The life story of Neriman Yılmaz Alp is closely intertwined with the history of so-called guest workers in Germany. Following the 1961 recruitment agreement between West Germany and Turkey, hundreds of thousands of people came to Germany as workers – most of them with the expectation of staying only temporarily.
In Neriman’s family, it was her father who went to Germany first, while the rest of the family remained in Turkey. They later joined him through family reunification, a turning point that marked a profound change for many families. For a young person like Neriman, this meant not just moving countries, but starting over in an unfamiliar environment.
Since so-called guest worker programs were originally intended to be temporary, structures for social participation were lacking for a long time. Many people arrived without any knowledge of the language and had to carve out their place in society on their own. Neriman’s experience reflects this: she initially managed her everyday life without speaking German and gradually worked her way into the labour market step by step.
The feelings of uncertainty, disappointment, and homesickness she describes mirror the realities of many migrant lives of that time. At the same time, her story shows how what was once meant to be a temporary stay became a permanent life, shaped by work, family, and the desire for independence.
Today, her biography stands as an example of a generation that helped shape Germany, even though the realities of their lives were not recognized as part of the country’s social history for a long time.
Making of
How and why did you decide to deal with and present this specific story?
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the recruitment agreement between Bonn and Ankara, the Ruhr Museum presented the exhibition “We Are from Here. Turkish-German Life 1990. Photographs by Ergun Çağatay” (2021), as well as “Mustafa’s Dream. Photographs by Henning Christoph on Turkish Life in Germany 1977–1989” (2021-2022).
Both exhibitions combined historical insights with personal stories and aimed to bring greater attention to the long-overlooked experiences of labour migration in Germany, while also encouraging dialogue between generations and communities.
The accompanying programs were also deliberately designed to be participatory. The decision to tell migration history not only from an institutional perspective, but also to actively involve the communities concerned, was based on the idea of making diverse experiences visible and sharing interpretive authority.
In this context, the Ruhr Museum is involved in the European project FeMig.Lab. Through its own interview project, it specifically focuses on the life stories of migrant women in order to raise the profile of female migration experiences, which have historically been less well documented. The focus is on intergenerational experiences of women from Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Its goal is to connect individual perspectives with broader historical and political contexts, offering a more nuanced view of female labour migration.
How did you negotiate and decide about the methodologies and processes in acquiring/giving the testimony?
The project is designed and carried out by the Ruhr Museum (Meltem Küçükyılmaz) in cooperation with the Spanischen Elternverein Essen e. V. (Cristina Fernández-Moser), HistAgoge | Geschichtsforschung (Spiridon Papaioannou), and the mitMach Agentur (Mustafa Mert). The questionnaire and thematic focus areas were developed jointly, and the selection of interview partners was also evaluated together. This participatory approach builds on the Ruhr Museum’s previous work.
In terms of content, the project focuses on two distinct generations of migration: women from the so-called recruitment agreement generation and a more recent wave of migrant women and expatriates who have arrived in Germany since around 2011. The selected interviewees are Anastasia Walden, Ceferina García García, and Neriman Yılmaz, representing the recruitment agreement generation, and Estre, Çağla Diner, and Maria Papadopoulou, representing the more recent wave. With two women from Spain, two from Greece, and two from Turkey, the project combines an intergenerational perspective with a comparative, transnational approach. Since all participants responded to the same set of interview questions, their experiences can be compared systematically. By examining their opportunities, challenges, legal status, employment experiences, and social acceptance in Germany, the project aims to highlight both continuities and changes in women’s migration experiences over time and across national contexts.
Prior to the interviews, preliminary personal conversations took place, during which the goals, process, and expectations were discussed transparently. The interviewees were actively involved and had a say in deciding which topics and aspects of their stories they wanted to share. The interviews were conducted in a safe environment within the museum and, where desired, in the participants’ native language in order to build trust and reduce barriers.
Sensitive topics were handled in close coordination with the participants; content could be omitted, anonymized, or adapted at any time.
How and why did you decide to publicly present the story this way?
For the presentation, a format was deliberately chosen that preserves the personal character of the stories and allows the women’s voices to be experienced directly. The combination of interviews, images, and personal materials creates a multi-layered approach that makes individual experiences visible and relatable.
The interviewees were involved in decisions regarding publication and were able to have a say in what content would be included and how their stories would be presented. This ensured that the representation reflected their perspectives and respected their autonomy.
At the same time, the project sees itself as a curatorial process that is always shaped by selection and classification. This responsibility is consciously reflected upon in order to present the stories in a respectful and context-sensitive way. In doing so, the project acknowledges existing power dynamics and seeks to reduce barriers through participation and transparency.
Particular emphasis is placed on protecting the participants: issues relating to data protection and publication are communicated clearly and agreed upon jointly. The aim is also to make the content as accessible as possible, especially for the communities involved, and to ensure open access to these stories.
What is the motivation and benefit for the person/community sharing the story? How did you negotiate this and take it into consideration?
Throughout the project, care was taken to ensure that both the cooperating partners and the interviewees benefited from their involvement. The cooperation partners received a fee for their conceptual and organizational contributions, recognizing their expertise and commitment. The interviewees were offered an expense allowance to acknowledge their time, their willingness to participate, and their openness in sharing personal stories.
In addition, the participating associations and institutions benefit from long-term networking with the museum, as well as from the opportunity to make their own perspectives and topics visible and to contribute them to cultural processes. For the interviewees, alongside the financial recognition, the main benefit lies in the visibility of their life stories.
Overall, the project aims to foster a partnership of equals that encompasses both intangible and tangible forms of recognition and strengthens sustainable relationships between institutions and communities.
What questions and challenges arose during the processes?
A key challenge in the project was multilingualism, which is also a major strength. The linguistic diversity of the interviewees reflects their different migration experiences and helped create a trusting and comfortable atmosphere during the conversations. At the same time, it presented practical challenges, particularly in terms of translation and subtitling. This process required a sensitive approach in order to convey meanings as accurately as possible. Thanks to close collaboration with the project partners, this process was successfully carried out as they contributed both their linguistic and cultural expertise.
Credits
Interview
Conducted on 10 February 2026 at Ruhr Museum, Essen. © Ruhr Museum
Texts
Written by Ruhr Museum.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Neriman Yılmaz for sharing her story and memories with us. Together with five other interviewees from Spain, Greece, and Turkey, she contributes to an intergenerational and transnational interview project exploring women’s migration experiences in Germany.
The conception and implementation of the interview project were carried out by Ruhr Museum (Meltem Küçükyılmaz) in cooperation with Spanischer Elternverein Essen e. V. (Cristina Fernández-Moser), HistAgoge | Geschichtsforschung (Spiridon Papaioannou), and mitMach Agentur (Mustafa Mert).
Photos
Privat Pictures © Neriman Yılmaz
Video Transcript PDF here.
Partner involved
Ruhr Museum
An orange-glowing staircase and 6,000 exhibits in a spectacular industrial setting: The Ruhr Museum’s permanent exhibition at the Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site shows the fascinating natural and cultural history of one of the world’s largest industrial regions.
The Regional Museum of the Ruhr Area shows in its permanent exhibition the entire natural and cultural history of the region from the formation of coal over 300 million years ago to today’s structural change to the Ruhr metropolis. Visitors follow the former path of the coal and descend deeper and deeper from the present into the history of the Ruhr region. Over three levels, they pass through windowless bunkers, huge industrial machines, raw concrete walls and conveyor belts. In between, 6,000 exhibits show in often fascinating detail how a formerly agricultural region developed into Europe’s largest coal and steel production area and then became the Metropole Ruhr.