Tadesse Söhl

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Tadesse Söhl (* around 1970 in the Wollo province in Ethiopia ; † September 26, 1981 in Michelbach an der Bilz ) was the adopted child of a German couple. Tadesse came from Ethiopia and committed suicide in Germany when she was about eleven years old. In a later published book, the adoptive mother attributed the child's death to everyday racism in the German hometown and the separation from his sister. Individual community members publicly contradicted the experience report.

His fate became known nationwide, to which, in addition to the widely acclaimed book, several media reports and two films about Tadesse contributed.

Life

Tadesse was adopted at the time of the Ethiopian Civil War by the Michelbach couple Irmhild Söhl and Frerich Söhl and came to Germany on May 1, 1976 at the age of about six. His exact date of birth is not known, an age has been set by the authorities for the issue of his Ethiopian exit papers. Through adoption , he obtained German citizenship . His younger sister Nunu was adopted by another German couple because the adoption authorities had not approved the simultaneous adoption by the Söhl couple. Nunu's adoptive parents lived in Bonn and reduced contact between the siblings to a minimum.

View of Michelbach , where Tadesse lived until his suicide

Tadesse came to live with his adoptive parents in the Baden-Württemberg village of Michelbach an der Bilz, where he quickly learned the German language and attended the local elementary school. According to later reports from the adoptive mother Irmhild Söhl, the new fellow citizen found little goodwill in the village community, particularly because of his dark skin ; even primary school teachers would hardly have shown willingness to integrate.

The municipality of Michelbach an der Bilz, located in the district of Schwäbisch Hall , to which the village of the same name also belongs, had a total of 2549 inhabitants in 1976; 89 of these were foreigners , which corresponds to a proportion of foreigners of 3.5%. In 1981 the population was 2702 people; No statistical data is available on the number of foreigners for this period. In 2010 Michelbach had a total of 3375 inhabitants with a proportion of foreigners of 124 people (3.7%).

According to a report in the Hamburger Abendblatt from December 1996, “there was hostility and humiliation that made life difficult for the happy boy. His schoolmates called him 'nigger', 'bush nigger' or 'black pig'. The village barber refused to cut his curly hair and it said on the sidewalk, 'Tadesse is shit brown as shit' ”. Tadesse only seemed to take all of this calmly. After seeing a report by Günter Wallraff about practices that encourage xenophobia in the Bild newspaper , he bought a copy of the newspaper in the local shop and tore it up in front of the dealer.

Furthermore, Tadesse wrote a letter to the editor in 1980 to Die Zeit , which was only published after his death in May 1989:

I am from Ethiopia, 10 years old and adopted into a German family for 4 years. I still remember a lot of police in Ethiopia. That there was always shooting in the streets and that we were all afraid. And if you don't want to keep the asylum seekers here now, they'll have this fear inside them for a long time. And if you don't want them, they don't feel drawn to anyone and that's bad! If one of them flees from one country to the other and no longer belongs to either side, then he can no longer live. That is such a small premonition as with the Jews. That’s why we should be there to help. Tadesse Söhl, Michelbach.

On September 26, 1981, Tadesse was found hanged by his own hand in his nursery. In his suicide note it said:

Dear mom, dear dad, I don't want to cause you any grief, and I'm going back to where I came from.

Effects and remembrance

Tadesse's suicide was processed literarily by his adoptive mother Irmhild Söhl. From Schleswig-Holstein originating psychologist (* 1943), which for many years in youth and home education worked and later mother of six children and a housewife, described the fate of Tadesse in the form of an experience report. In 1991, ten years after Tadesse's death, Herder Söhl's book Tadesse, Why? The short life of an Ethiopian child in a German village . The book was reprinted five times in the first five years of its publication, the seventh edition appeared in 2002, and it was also published as a translation in Italian .

The mayor and a teacher of the village publicly contradicted the experience report. Insults among children are "normal", for example, and Michelbach is "not a racist community". Söhl replied that her presentation of the events was not to be understood as an accusation, but should "show behavior patterns".

In 1994 the book Tadesse, Why? by Christian Baudissin , who himself lived in Tadesse's homeland Ethiopia as a child, adapted and filmed for the then Südwestfunk in co-production with Bayerischer Rundfunk as a full-length television play. The staged plot is interrupted by an interview in which Tadesse's sister Esther ("Nunu"), now adult, reports on her relationship with her brother and her life in another German adoptive family. Three years earlier, in November 1991, the ARD had shown the documentary film Ein Bild von Tadesse , which Manfred Bannenberg had created for the Norddeutscher Rundfunk .

The Söhl family has since moved away from Michelbach. Irmhild Söhl regularly travels to the town and visits Tadesse's grave in the Michelbacher Friedhof. Shortly before Christmas 1996 there were again nationwide reports about the boy: A birch had sown on his grave and - meanwhile grown tall - showed visitors the way to the child's tombstone. The community ordered that the birch and its roots should be removed by January 31, 1997, which, according to the mother, would have disrupted Tadesse Söhl's peace and quiet.

Tadesse's fate is seen by some today as a warning example of what racism can do in Germany.

Publications

Publications by Irmhild Söhl

  • Irmhild Söhl: Tadesse, why? The short life of an Ethiopian child in a German village . Original edition. Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991 ( Herder spectrum. Volume 4005); 6th edition 1995; 7th edition 2002; ISBN 3-451-04005-0 . (With a foreword by Gunnar Hasselblatt )
  • Irmhild Söhl: Love of foreigners - made in Germany? Experiences like they are not in the book . In: Namo Aziz (ed.): Strange in a cold country. Foreigners in Germany . Original edition, Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1992 ( Herder spectrum. Volume 4130), ISBN 3-451-04130-8 , pp. 76-91.

Further literature

  • Ina Braun: Günter Wallraff. Life, work, work, method . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3542-5 , p. 81ff.
  • Hartmut Heller (ed.): New home Germany. Aspects of immigration, acculturation and emotional attachment; fourteen presentations at a conference of the German Academy for Regional Studies ..., 22. – 24. 6. 2000 in Nuremberg . German Academy for Regional Studies / University Library Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen 2002 ( Erlangen Research. Series A, Humanities. Volume 95), ISBN 3-930357-44-5 , p. 175.
  • Hans Augustin : Tadesse, or I'll go back to where I came from . Theaterstückverlag Korn-Wimmer & Wimmer, Munich 1993, without ISBN. (Stage manuscript)

Movies

  • 1994: Tadesse - why? , Feature film, Germany, length: 78 minutes, production: Südwestfunk / Bayerischer Rundfunk, script and director: Christian Baudissin
  • 1991: A picture by Tadesse. The short life of an Ethiopian adoptive child , documentary, Germany, length: 30 minutes, production: ARD / NDR, documentary and director: Manfred Bannenberg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Cf. contribution to the television film Tadesse - why? ( Memento of the original from August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at filmportal.de (accessed on September 14, 2009). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filmportal.de
  2. ↑ The death of Tadesse and the "xenophobia" in the village , article by Martin Geier in the Stuttgarter Zeitung of May 25, 1991 (accessed via Wiso praxis ).
  3. ↑ See Baden-Württemberg State Statistical Office: Population status (accessed on August 15, 2011).
  4. ↑ a b tragedy of a student. Swabian village drove “strange” boys to their death - Now his grave is about to disappear ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), article by Kathrin König in Hamburger Abendblatt No. 299 of December 21, 1996, p. 24.
  5. ^ Ina Braun: Günter Wallraff. Life, work, work, method . Würzburg 2007, p. 81ff.
  6. ↑ Cf. contribution to book publication Tadesse, why?  ( 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. in the interactive database “Youth Books” of the Cologne NS Documentation Center , at www.museenkoeln.de (accessed on September 14, 2009).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.museenkoeln.de  
  7. ↑ See racism. Book about the suicide of an Ethiopian boy triggers discussions , SDR 1 radio broadcast from April 18, 1991, at the Stuttgart State Archives (accessed on September 14, 2009).
  8. ↑ See Kürschner's German Literature Calendar 2003 , p. 1153.
  9. ↑ Cf. Our daughter from Africa , article by Wolfgang Lechner in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit No. 11 of March 6, 2008 (accessed on September 14, 2009).
personal data
SURNAME Söhl, Tadesse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ethiopian adopted child of German parents
DATE OF BIRTH around 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Wollo Province , Ethiopia
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1981
Place of death Michelbach an der Bilz