Hasan Özen

Hasan Özen (* 1940 in Turkey ) is a former Turkish migrant worker in Germany , who was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in 1994 for “great service to the common good” .

Life

Özen's immigration from Turkey to the Federal Republic of Germany began at the end of 1963 via the employment agency in Istanbul , when he was recruited as a guest worker by the Bundesbahn repair shop in Duisburg-Wedau . Until then, the worker had lived in the small Turkish village of Kavak in the province of Sivas . Özen changed jobs twice. Eventually he became a shunter at Mannesmann in Duisburg , where he stayed until he retired. In 1995 Özen applied for and received German citizenship.

Özen lives with his wife in Duisburg. The couple has five daughters.

Union and volunteer activities

In 1964, Özen joined IG Metall . In 1975 he was elected to the Mannesmann works council. A year later he joined the SPD .

Outside the trade union area, Özen also showed social commitment. In 1981, for example, he organized vigils to protect the asylum seekers' home in Duisburg-Neudorf from neo-Nazis . After an earthquake disaster in Turkey, he collected 100,000 Deutsche Mark to help rebuild his former home. When the former Mannesmann guest worker settlement in Duisburg-Hüttenheim , one of the most run-down areas of the city, which was almost exclusively inhabited by Turks , was about to be demolished, Özen founded an initiative to promote the renovation of the dilapidated houses. Today Germans and Turks live there.

Award

On March 25, 1994, the then Turkish citizen received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , according to the press text mainly for having “made great contributions to the common good through his voluntary work in the trade union sector”. Özen was proposed by IG Metall.

In 2007, Özen's award "for a courageous, powerful life" was remembered by an invitation from his family to the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament , which was also attended by Josef Krings , the long-time mayor of Duisburg. After this meeting, politicians once again emphasized Özen's particular willingness to integrate and his ongoing commitment to “dialogue and cooperation”.

Movie

In 1995 the Ruhr Media Center in Essen (Realization: Cengiz Ural-Münch and Jörg Keweloh) produced under the title Getting old - be strange? a thirty-minute documentary with Özen, which aims to portray the realities of life of the first generation of migrant workers from Turkey who are now retired in Germany.

Single receipts

1. ↑ ^{a b} Stefan Willeke: Life in must-land. In: Die Zeit 52/1995. Retrieved November 13, 2009 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} www.spd-duisburg.de, archive 2007, section SPD boss Ralf Jäger honors medal winners, May 7th 2007  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ http://www.videowerkstatt.de/?page=2&event=2&key=43

Web links

• Stefan Willeke: Living in a must-land. In: Die Zeit 52/1995. Retrieved July 17, 2011 (detailed portrait).