Class in German society (Part II), Ich bin Özlem by Dilek Güngör
The second novel in this series is Ich bin Özlem by Dilek Güngör which was published in 2019 (1). In Ich bin Özlem, the narrator, Özlem, tells her story of growing up in the south of Germany as a child of Turkish immigrants. On the surface Özlem has completely integrated into German society. Despite her parents limited education (four and five years of school respectively) she did well academically and is now working as a teacher. Özlem is married to a German and has two children. She and her family live in Berlin, they have no discernible financial problems and her circle of friends – as far as the reader can tell – consists mainly of Germans. However, Özlem clearly doesn’t feel comfortable with her situation in life as she has begun to react strongly whenever she thinks foreigners are looked down upon. When a cashier in her local supermarket makes a throwaway remark about some builders who bought some snacks and have already left (“They are all builders from the building site over there. Foreigners the lot of them.”)(2), Özlem gets so upset she starts to cry. Trying to figure out why she has become so sensitive lately, she describes key moments in her life that have shaped her perspective on the status of foreigners, especially Turkish immigrants, in German society.
Having Turkish roots
Growing up in Germany meant that Özlem had to live with the fact that most Germans don’t hold Turkey and its culture in high esteem. People generally don’t know much about Turkish culture and their view tends to be one-sided and cliched, even when positive. Seen through German eyes, the best aspects of Turkish culture appear to be the food and hospitality. To conform to this cliché, Özlem goes out of her way to bring home cooked food to get-togethers with their friends and tries to be a particularly good and generous hostess. She does this, even though it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to her or is at times more trouble than she would like. Her German friends clearly feel under no obligation to present themselves as good cooks or homemakers. (3)
Even the cooking can quickly be turned into something negative. To smell of cooking or garlic is bad. After being made fun of as a child ostensibly for smelling of garlic, Özlem has become particularly attentive to personal hygiene and takes great care not to smell of food after cooking. (4)
Özlem learnt as a child that other aspects of Turkish culture (e.g. music) are either looked down on or largely ignored. Without meaning to, Özlem got used to adopting the German view (5) or not arguing against it, in order not to ruffle any feathers. Since Turkish culture is either little known or belittled, she tried all the harder to blend in, in order to succeed in Germany. At times she gets caught between trying to embody the positive Turkish stereotype and at the same feeling estranged from Turkish culture. Özlem is fluent in Turkish but all of her education has been through German and she now feels more comfortable speaking German. When talking to people who grew up in Turkey she notices that she has missed some new language trends or that she has a slight accent (6). Initially she wants to teach Turkish to her children, but soon finds it’s too much of a struggle and gives up. She likes her relatives in Turkey, yet is well aware of their diverging views on the role of women, marriage, etc. (7) She enjoys visits to the family but she is in no sense going home. Her life, as well as that of her parents, is firmly established in Germany.
Özlem’s primary school teacher told her once that she is not Turkish but a Swabian, and later her friend Johanna tells Özlem she doesn’t think of her as Turkish. Both, the teacher and Johanna, clearly think they are paying her a compliment. They don’t realize that it is difficult to accept as such, because they are in effect telling her that she has managed either to get rid of or hide her “otherness”. But what exactly does this “otherness” consist of, who defines it and how? And why is some “otherness” deemed not only acceptable, but even desirable and attractive (French accent vs. Turkish accent)? (8). Will she always have to try to get rid of or hide some side of her that might be perceived as being different, because in her case being different is not just different but bad? This uncertainty can throw Özlem into an emotional turmoil, because regardless of how effortless a successful integration might seem, it does take a huge effort. And if others will only accept you if you never slack, you will always have to be on your guard and try to do everything just right. Furthermore, you cannot change your roots and it takes considerable emotional effort to pretend not to notice or care if people think less of your roots than of their own.
No matter how much she has achieved or how far she has come, Özlem repeatedly has to deal with being regarded as an outsider simply because of her appearance. She believes people are now used to regarding someone as English even though they have dark skin, whereas Germans haven’t got used to thinking of people like her as German (9). By succeeding in German society, Özlem also doesn’t necessarily identify with other immigrants of Turkish extraction anymore. (10) Occasionally she resents being immediately regarded as “one of their own”, because yet again she doesn’t get to choose who she wants to belong to. The choice is made for her by her appearance alone.
This points to a general problem: Özlem often feels defined by others and the people who define her often have no direct experience of being in her position. (11) No matter how much she tries to fit in, it seems that others ultimately decide whether she does or does not, or where she does or does not. This has bred an underlying resentment and a fierce sense of competition. Sometimes Özlem is overwhelmed by feelings of never being able to reach a place where she no longer has to compete: “In my head I’m ploughing through something that has neither a beginning nor an end. Not having to be better. Not having to compare myself to others, to compete, not having to constantly look left and right. […] Not to have to constantly become like, catch up with, run after others. […] What does it need for me to be able to say, I am who I am, no more no less, I am enough? […] I have no idea how it feels to be enough. I only know what it feels like not to be good enough.” (12)
Özlem fought to get where she is today. Yet her ambition has had a detrimental effect on her relationship with others. She castigates herself for being unable to see others as equals: “I never reached a sense of equality, because I was never interested in being on the same level. I only knew first and last, up and down, at the front and at the back. And life always seemed more golden where Stefanie was, where Ebru was. Where Eva is.” (13) She admits: “Because looking up is painful in the long run, I also have to look down.” (14) Her ranking of others stops her from feeling truly close to them: “I don’t know what I should do to improve this. At the moment I’m holding on to the fact that I no longer have to run and catch up. That I don’t have to be better. But wanting to be better and having to be better are so intricately interwoven that I don’t know how to undo the knot. It keeps me in one piece, if I undo it, I fall apart.” (15) Her determination to fit in and succeed has become such an essential part of herself, she cannot let go. At the end of the novel Özlem reaches a sense of peace, of inner equilibrium, but it’s not clear whether that is going to last or is just a temporary relief.
Özlem’s German friends
Özlem’s first introduction to German family life occurred in primary school. Stefanie, her then best friend, invited her for a sleepover. When Özlem shares a meal with the family, she notices that every family member has a cloth napkin wrapped in a wooden ring with their name burned into the wood. This might seem a minor detail, but Özlem’s observation is poignant, because she has identified a distinct social marker. Stefanie’s family belongs to the German upper middle class. The girls’ friendship fizzles out after primary school. True to her class, Stefanie continues her education at a Gymnasium whereas Özlem attends a Realschule. Özlem does well there and later continues her education at a Wirtschaftsgymnasium where she obtains her A-Levels. Interestingly, this doesn’t mean that the negative selection after primary school is forgotten. On the contrary, Özlem states that she never got rid of the feeling that her education was second rate. (16)
Özlem’s closest German friends in Berlin – like Stefanie from primary school – seem to belong to the upper middle class. When Özlem and her children stay at the holiday home of a friend’s parents, she is overwhelmed by their old wealth:
"On the upper floor, beside our room is an old cupboard with neat piles of crisply ironed white bed linen, table cloths with an edging and fabric buttons.
“You’ve got so much linen.”
It’s not the amount that impresses me, but the fact that there’s such a supply of neatly folded linen in this house, which is after all a holiday home and empty for most of the year.
“We got that from the family. Our relatives are glad that we can put it to good use. Look, these here are from the dowry of Johanna’s great aunt.”
He takes one of the bed covers and unfolds it. I feel the cloth and touch the embroidered monogram.
“Take whatever you need. Here are woollen covers, if any of you should feel cold.”
[…] My head sinks between my shoulders as I’m standing in front of these heirlooms, I feel like a hunchback, and when I straighten up again, there’s a pressure in my belly. It makes an impression on me still, if people come from a wealthy background.” (17)
Since Özlem focuses her descriptions of Germans on her upper class friends, she creates the impression that they stand for Germans in general, as if every German family had a cupboard overflowing with embroidered linen and a holiday home to store them in. Her awe at such old wealth is understandable, but her presenting her friends as if they were representative of Germans in general is questionable.
Later on, when her friends discuss the merits of schools in their local area, she secretly rails against them.
“They can imagine their children dropping out of university in order to found a company or work for an NGO in Brasil, or that their children become artists, or maybe train as a carpenter but then study architecture later. It’s unthinkable, however, that their child doesn’t get A-Levels, or even attends a school that doesn’t finish with A-Level exams. None of them think that their child might sell shoes in a shop, or that he might become a bus driver, or stack boxes in a supermarket, or deliver packages or shorten trouser legs in a repair business. They don’t even have friends who do such work.” (17)
Again, Özlem neatly describes the mindset of upper middle class Germans. She also makes it sound as if all Germans had the opportunity to get A-Levels or could afford to study, or work as volunteer overseas. This might reflect her perception of German society, but it does not reflect German reality (19). For some reason, Özlem fails to notice Germans who enjoy less opportunities than her friends.
Discussing a school with a bad reputation, Özlem suddenly explodes with pent up frustration:
“For you, everything is easy. You are on the right side. … The money is there, the educational background, the family, you don’t have to worry about anything. I always thought I was like you, it’s only now that I realize that I never really did believe that. I kept telling myself that if I only spoke German well enough, if I study and do everything right, then I will someday belong here to. And now I’m sitting here and have to listen to all this crap about the Karlsplatz-School. It is completely impossible to belong, to change sides at a later stage. You have to be on the right side from the start.” (20)
Özlem makes a valid point here about the difficulties of moving upward socially in German society. She clearly felt she had made it, only to discover that the feeling of not belonging, of not being the same as the others didn’t disappear over time, but deepened.
One of her German friends, Eva, is or was a role model for Özlem. But in order to be like Eva she would have
“to love Bach, go to Sylt on her holidays, buy cashmere jumpers, find out more about the Phoenicians, know what a good red wine tastes like. I cannot be bored by Kafka, and particularly not by Thomas Mann.” (21)
Dark-haired Özlem wants to be like the blonde Eva, yet she can’t and it’s not so much a question of the right hair colour. Özlem thinks she fails on several levels. She wants to be like her friend, she wants to be regarded as cultured and knowledgeable, yet some luminaries of German culture fail to interest her. If she felt she truly belonged, then disliking Thomas Mann wouldn’t be a problem. But since Özlem is full of self-doubt about her position in German society, such minor details are blown out of proportion and become for her a tell-tale sign of not having quite the right mindset, of not quite fitting in.
The way Eva is described shows she does not represent the average German and the reader is left to wonder whether Özlem’s frustration stems partly from her own snobbery. Özlem looks down on her friends for not befriending any bus drivers or shop assistants, but neither does she seem to have any German friends who are postmen or waitresses.
A German colleague of Özlem’s, another teacher of German as a Foreign Language, might be regarded as someone who is on her level. Cecilia, however, is not a role model for Özlem. In fact, she finds her colleague rather trying. Cecilia has lived abroad for a long time and is truly interested in other cultures. During a lunch break Cecilia mentions an open day at a mosque and that she was sorry she missed it. She tells Özlem she would have liked to have seen the mosque and had wanted to ask her to accompany her, because Özlem could have told her something about Muslim traditions. Neither Özlem nor her parents are practicing Muslims and she is immediately offended by the assumption that she would know something about Islamic traditions, simply because of her Turkish roots. Özlem brushes Cecilia off, but later apologizes for her brusqueness. Nonetheless, there’s no more talk about visiting a mosque together or indeed any other activity. Cecilia is never mentioned again and clearly isn’t part of Özlem’s elusive circle of friends.
There’s a brief episode with a German acquaintance, Vera, and her friend Murat. Özlem knows Vera, because their daughters are friends. One time she and Vera are picking up the children from a party. Vera has brought along a friend, Murat. Vera and Murat enjoy an easy friendship and seem to be on the same wavelength. Watching them Özlem envies them their friendship. Vera has had an unusual childhood in so far as she and her mother moved several times within and outside of Germany. When Vera and Murat arrive to pick up the children, Robert (father of the girl having a party), insists on querying Murat about his origins, although Murat has already told him he was born in Hamburg. While Özlem inwardly rages against Robert, Murat shows no outward sign of being offended. Later in the car, however, Murat pokes fun at the clichéd image of impoverished Turks travelling in huge numbers and taking an infinite number of farm animals and food on the way. Vera and Özlem play along and in the end, both the adults and children are splitting their sides. The potential tension and anger about Robert’s rudeness dissolve in laughter. This episode suggests that it might be easier to befriend Germans like Vera who have some experience of being a stranger themselves or who are not as firmly entrenched in the class system as most of Özlem’s German friends appear to be.
Conclusion
Ich bin Özlem shows that although the German state school system provides opportunities for all children, it is still difficult to bridge class differences later. While Özlem is convinced that this is due to her Turkish background, it might also be a general problem. The difficulties Özlem describes – lack of financial security, lack of social capital provided by a well-connected family, lack of knowledge in matters of taste and high culture – are difficulties that upwardly mobile lower-class Germans also face. This is not to say that Özlem’s problems aren’t real, or that her feelings of not belonging are imagined, but they might be more universal than she realizes.
Özlem’s keen interest in status indicates that a high status is first seen as a sign of integration and then might serve as a substitute for a sense of belonging. As Özlem’s increasing sensitivity in regard to slights and snubs against migrants shows, even a high status is a weak substitute for a true sense of belonging.
Özlem has a strong sense of self, as can be seen from her willingness to confront her friends with her reaction to their attitudes. She has one advantage that not everyone has and that is irrespective of class: Loving, supportive parents (“I can rely on the love of my parents, I am still their baby and they need nothing in return in order to love me forever. How many times did I take a leap, because I knew my mother and my quiet father would catch me. I never told them that. We don’t say things like that in our family, we love each other silently.”)
Having Turkish roots
Growing up in Germany meant that Özlem had to live with the fact that most Germans don’t hold Turkey and its culture in high esteem. People generally don’t know much about Turkish culture and their view tends to be one-sided and cliched, even when positive. Seen through German eyes, the best aspects of Turkish culture appear to be the food and hospitality. To conform to this cliché, Özlem goes out of her way to bring home cooked food to get-togethers with their friends and tries to be a particularly good and generous hostess. She does this, even though it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to her or is at times more trouble than she would like. Her German friends clearly feel under no obligation to present themselves as good cooks or homemakers. (3)
Even the cooking can quickly be turned into something negative. To smell of cooking or garlic is bad. After being made fun of as a child ostensibly for smelling of garlic, Özlem has become particularly attentive to personal hygiene and takes great care not to smell of food after cooking. (4)
Özlem learnt as a child that other aspects of Turkish culture (e.g. music) are either looked down on or largely ignored. Without meaning to, Özlem got used to adopting the German view (5) or not arguing against it, in order not to ruffle any feathers. Since Turkish culture is either little known or belittled, she tried all the harder to blend in, in order to succeed in Germany. At times she gets caught between trying to embody the positive Turkish stereotype and at the same feeling estranged from Turkish culture. Özlem is fluent in Turkish but all of her education has been through German and she now feels more comfortable speaking German. When talking to people who grew up in Turkey she notices that she has missed some new language trends or that she has a slight accent (6). Initially she wants to teach Turkish to her children, but soon finds it’s too much of a struggle and gives up. She likes her relatives in Turkey, yet is well aware of their diverging views on the role of women, marriage, etc. (7) She enjoys visits to the family but she is in no sense going home. Her life, as well as that of her parents, is firmly established in Germany.
Özlem’s primary school teacher told her once that she is not Turkish but a Swabian, and later her friend Johanna tells Özlem she doesn’t think of her as Turkish. Both, the teacher and Johanna, clearly think they are paying her a compliment. They don’t realize that it is difficult to accept as such, because they are in effect telling her that she has managed either to get rid of or hide her “otherness”. But what exactly does this “otherness” consist of, who defines it and how? And why is some “otherness” deemed not only acceptable, but even desirable and attractive (French accent vs. Turkish accent)? (8). Will she always have to try to get rid of or hide some side of her that might be perceived as being different, because in her case being different is not just different but bad? This uncertainty can throw Özlem into an emotional turmoil, because regardless of how effortless a successful integration might seem, it does take a huge effort. And if others will only accept you if you never slack, you will always have to be on your guard and try to do everything just right. Furthermore, you cannot change your roots and it takes considerable emotional effort to pretend not to notice or care if people think less of your roots than of their own.
No matter how much she has achieved or how far she has come, Özlem repeatedly has to deal with being regarded as an outsider simply because of her appearance. She believes people are now used to regarding someone as English even though they have dark skin, whereas Germans haven’t got used to thinking of people like her as German (9). By succeeding in German society, Özlem also doesn’t necessarily identify with other immigrants of Turkish extraction anymore. (10) Occasionally she resents being immediately regarded as “one of their own”, because yet again she doesn’t get to choose who she wants to belong to. The choice is made for her by her appearance alone.
This points to a general problem: Özlem often feels defined by others and the people who define her often have no direct experience of being in her position. (11) No matter how much she tries to fit in, it seems that others ultimately decide whether she does or does not, or where she does or does not. This has bred an underlying resentment and a fierce sense of competition. Sometimes Özlem is overwhelmed by feelings of never being able to reach a place where she no longer has to compete: “In my head I’m ploughing through something that has neither a beginning nor an end. Not having to be better. Not having to compare myself to others, to compete, not having to constantly look left and right. […] Not to have to constantly become like, catch up with, run after others. […] What does it need for me to be able to say, I am who I am, no more no less, I am enough? […] I have no idea how it feels to be enough. I only know what it feels like not to be good enough.” (12)
Özlem fought to get where she is today. Yet her ambition has had a detrimental effect on her relationship with others. She castigates herself for being unable to see others as equals: “I never reached a sense of equality, because I was never interested in being on the same level. I only knew first and last, up and down, at the front and at the back. And life always seemed more golden where Stefanie was, where Ebru was. Where Eva is.” (13) She admits: “Because looking up is painful in the long run, I also have to look down.” (14) Her ranking of others stops her from feeling truly close to them: “I don’t know what I should do to improve this. At the moment I’m holding on to the fact that I no longer have to run and catch up. That I don’t have to be better. But wanting to be better and having to be better are so intricately interwoven that I don’t know how to undo the knot. It keeps me in one piece, if I undo it, I fall apart.” (15) Her determination to fit in and succeed has become such an essential part of herself, she cannot let go. At the end of the novel Özlem reaches a sense of peace, of inner equilibrium, but it’s not clear whether that is going to last or is just a temporary relief.
Özlem’s German friends
Özlem’s first introduction to German family life occurred in primary school. Stefanie, her then best friend, invited her for a sleepover. When Özlem shares a meal with the family, she notices that every family member has a cloth napkin wrapped in a wooden ring with their name burned into the wood. This might seem a minor detail, but Özlem’s observation is poignant, because she has identified a distinct social marker. Stefanie’s family belongs to the German upper middle class. The girls’ friendship fizzles out after primary school. True to her class, Stefanie continues her education at a Gymnasium whereas Özlem attends a Realschule. Özlem does well there and later continues her education at a Wirtschaftsgymnasium where she obtains her A-Levels. Interestingly, this doesn’t mean that the negative selection after primary school is forgotten. On the contrary, Özlem states that she never got rid of the feeling that her education was second rate. (16)
Özlem’s closest German friends in Berlin – like Stefanie from primary school – seem to belong to the upper middle class. When Özlem and her children stay at the holiday home of a friend’s parents, she is overwhelmed by their old wealth:
"On the upper floor, beside our room is an old cupboard with neat piles of crisply ironed white bed linen, table cloths with an edging and fabric buttons.
“You’ve got so much linen.”
It’s not the amount that impresses me, but the fact that there’s such a supply of neatly folded linen in this house, which is after all a holiday home and empty for most of the year.
“We got that from the family. Our relatives are glad that we can put it to good use. Look, these here are from the dowry of Johanna’s great aunt.”
He takes one of the bed covers and unfolds it. I feel the cloth and touch the embroidered monogram.
“Take whatever you need. Here are woollen covers, if any of you should feel cold.”
[…] My head sinks between my shoulders as I’m standing in front of these heirlooms, I feel like a hunchback, and when I straighten up again, there’s a pressure in my belly. It makes an impression on me still, if people come from a wealthy background.” (17)
Since Özlem focuses her descriptions of Germans on her upper class friends, she creates the impression that they stand for Germans in general, as if every German family had a cupboard overflowing with embroidered linen and a holiday home to store them in. Her awe at such old wealth is understandable, but her presenting her friends as if they were representative of Germans in general is questionable.
Later on, when her friends discuss the merits of schools in their local area, she secretly rails against them.
“They can imagine their children dropping out of university in order to found a company or work for an NGO in Brasil, or that their children become artists, or maybe train as a carpenter but then study architecture later. It’s unthinkable, however, that their child doesn’t get A-Levels, or even attends a school that doesn’t finish with A-Level exams. None of them think that their child might sell shoes in a shop, or that he might become a bus driver, or stack boxes in a supermarket, or deliver packages or shorten trouser legs in a repair business. They don’t even have friends who do such work.” (17)
Again, Özlem neatly describes the mindset of upper middle class Germans. She also makes it sound as if all Germans had the opportunity to get A-Levels or could afford to study, or work as volunteer overseas. This might reflect her perception of German society, but it does not reflect German reality (19). For some reason, Özlem fails to notice Germans who enjoy less opportunities than her friends.
Discussing a school with a bad reputation, Özlem suddenly explodes with pent up frustration:
“For you, everything is easy. You are on the right side. … The money is there, the educational background, the family, you don’t have to worry about anything. I always thought I was like you, it’s only now that I realize that I never really did believe that. I kept telling myself that if I only spoke German well enough, if I study and do everything right, then I will someday belong here to. And now I’m sitting here and have to listen to all this crap about the Karlsplatz-School. It is completely impossible to belong, to change sides at a later stage. You have to be on the right side from the start.” (20)
Özlem makes a valid point here about the difficulties of moving upward socially in German society. She clearly felt she had made it, only to discover that the feeling of not belonging, of not being the same as the others didn’t disappear over time, but deepened.
One of her German friends, Eva, is or was a role model for Özlem. But in order to be like Eva she would have
“to love Bach, go to Sylt on her holidays, buy cashmere jumpers, find out more about the Phoenicians, know what a good red wine tastes like. I cannot be bored by Kafka, and particularly not by Thomas Mann.” (21)
Dark-haired Özlem wants to be like the blonde Eva, yet she can’t and it’s not so much a question of the right hair colour. Özlem thinks she fails on several levels. She wants to be like her friend, she wants to be regarded as cultured and knowledgeable, yet some luminaries of German culture fail to interest her. If she felt she truly belonged, then disliking Thomas Mann wouldn’t be a problem. But since Özlem is full of self-doubt about her position in German society, such minor details are blown out of proportion and become for her a tell-tale sign of not having quite the right mindset, of not quite fitting in.
The way Eva is described shows she does not represent the average German and the reader is left to wonder whether Özlem’s frustration stems partly from her own snobbery. Özlem looks down on her friends for not befriending any bus drivers or shop assistants, but neither does she seem to have any German friends who are postmen or waitresses.
A German colleague of Özlem’s, another teacher of German as a Foreign Language, might be regarded as someone who is on her level. Cecilia, however, is not a role model for Özlem. In fact, she finds her colleague rather trying. Cecilia has lived abroad for a long time and is truly interested in other cultures. During a lunch break Cecilia mentions an open day at a mosque and that she was sorry she missed it. She tells Özlem she would have liked to have seen the mosque and had wanted to ask her to accompany her, because Özlem could have told her something about Muslim traditions. Neither Özlem nor her parents are practicing Muslims and she is immediately offended by the assumption that she would know something about Islamic traditions, simply because of her Turkish roots. Özlem brushes Cecilia off, but later apologizes for her brusqueness. Nonetheless, there’s no more talk about visiting a mosque together or indeed any other activity. Cecilia is never mentioned again and clearly isn’t part of Özlem’s elusive circle of friends.
There’s a brief episode with a German acquaintance, Vera, and her friend Murat. Özlem knows Vera, because their daughters are friends. One time she and Vera are picking up the children from a party. Vera has brought along a friend, Murat. Vera and Murat enjoy an easy friendship and seem to be on the same wavelength. Watching them Özlem envies them their friendship. Vera has had an unusual childhood in so far as she and her mother moved several times within and outside of Germany. When Vera and Murat arrive to pick up the children, Robert (father of the girl having a party), insists on querying Murat about his origins, although Murat has already told him he was born in Hamburg. While Özlem inwardly rages against Robert, Murat shows no outward sign of being offended. Later in the car, however, Murat pokes fun at the clichéd image of impoverished Turks travelling in huge numbers and taking an infinite number of farm animals and food on the way. Vera and Özlem play along and in the end, both the adults and children are splitting their sides. The potential tension and anger about Robert’s rudeness dissolve in laughter. This episode suggests that it might be easier to befriend Germans like Vera who have some experience of being a stranger themselves or who are not as firmly entrenched in the class system as most of Özlem’s German friends appear to be.
Conclusion
Ich bin Özlem shows that although the German state school system provides opportunities for all children, it is still difficult to bridge class differences later. While Özlem is convinced that this is due to her Turkish background, it might also be a general problem. The difficulties Özlem describes – lack of financial security, lack of social capital provided by a well-connected family, lack of knowledge in matters of taste and high culture – are difficulties that upwardly mobile lower-class Germans also face. This is not to say that Özlem’s problems aren’t real, or that her feelings of not belonging are imagined, but they might be more universal than she realizes.
Özlem’s keen interest in status indicates that a high status is first seen as a sign of integration and then might serve as a substitute for a sense of belonging. As Özlem’s increasing sensitivity in regard to slights and snubs against migrants shows, even a high status is a weak substitute for a true sense of belonging.
Özlem has a strong sense of self, as can be seen from her willingness to confront her friends with her reaction to their attitudes. She has one advantage that not everyone has and that is irrespective of class: Loving, supportive parents (“I can rely on the love of my parents, I am still their baby and they need nothing in return in order to love me forever. How many times did I take a leap, because I knew my mother and my quiet father would catch me. I never told them that. We don’t say things like that in our family, we love each other silently.”)
- Ich bin Özlem was published by the Verbrecher Verlag in 2019. The following text contains translations of quotations from the novel. All translations of the original German have been made by me. The page numbers reference the first edition of the novel. -- Dilek Güngör kindly granted the right to publish the translations on this website.
- P. 57
- P. 9/10
- P. 5,8,15,17
- P. 111
- P. 13/4 and 64/5
- P. 38,41,69
- P. 76
- P. 54
- P. 55
- P. 35/6 and 127/8
- P.141/2
- P. 145
- P. 144
- P. 145
- School system: The school system within Germany shows considerable variation and the three-tier secondary education favoured by the southern states tends to cement existing class structures. (This is relevant here, because Özlem went to school in the South, in Baden-Württemberg.) At the age of ten the children are selected according to their grades. Students going to the Gymnasium qualify for university, Realschule students can train for white collar work whereas students from a Hauptschule are expected to do vocational training. While it is perfectly possible to make a good living if you’ve got vocational training, the jobs generally don’t carry much status unless you have your own business. Over time the Hauptschule has fallen into disrepute and students who don’t make it into either the Realschule or the Gymnasium tend to be regarded as failures. Thus, most parents try everything possible to avoid their children attending a Hauptschule. Although it has become much easier than it used to be to continue your education after the Hauptschule or Realschule, many students who manage to continue end up feeling as Özlem does.
- P. 87
- P. 93
- In 2022 almost 84 000 school leavers in Baden Württemberg didn’t get A-Levels, or the Abitur. For the exact figures, see https://www.statistik-bw.de/BildungKultur/SchulenAllgem/abgaenger_mehrjaehrig.jsp
- P. 102
- P. 145