By Brigitte Gisel
His favorite picture is from the capital. It shows remnants of the Berlin Wall, taken in 2019 when he and his wife visited the city that had long fascinated him but was not yet his capital at the time. Mostafa Elyasian was an asylum seeker from Iran at the time. Today, the trained photographer is German. In the glass hall of the Tübingen district administration office, he is showing images of „Hiesigwerden“ until October 4. The exhibition can be visited during the opening hours of the District Office.
24 pictures in the glass hall show what it takes to go from being a foreigner to being at home. The images show portraits of refugees from other countries, pictures of editorial meetings at tuenews INTERNATIONAL, the performance of a music group. They are documentary shots that capture a moment, but also composed images such as the silent portraits of other refugees that tell stories. The images show what it is like to arrive in a new home: Elyasian took pictures of former division manager Werner Walz and HR manager Renate Fischer being escorted into retirement on historic tractors and also captured how the vaccination center was set up during Corona. Those were already work orders. Elyasian has had a German passport for just over a year. At the district administration‘s annual reception in September, he was celebrated on behalf of all new Germans. He was very touched.
Seeing the remains of the Berlin Wall was a matter close to his heart. „In 1989, I saw the pictures of the fall of the Wall in Tehran,“ he recalls. And although as a 10-year-old he had no idea of the dimensions, it was clear to him that something really big was happening. When he arrived in Germany in 2017 after fleeing from Iran, he was determined to travel to the city whose inhabitants had brought down the Wall. The great commitment to freedom impressed the refugee. There were „personal reasons“ for him and his wife leaving their country, as Elyasian says. Out of consideration for family members who remained in Tehran, he does not want to go into further detail. In any case, the reasons were so serious that he and his wife were granted asylum in Germany in 2020.
Looking for work quickly
He had already made a hard cut beforehand. „On my first day in Germany, I thought I was done with Iran,“ says the 45-year-old. „And I had the feeling that Germany was my new home.“ He has done everything he can to gain a foothold here. „I‘m a healthy man, I don’t want to have to get help from the job center,“ says Elyasian. He quickly learns German and looks for work. The photographer, who had also completed an apprenticeship as a goldsmith and worked as a jeweler, would have liked to work here as a gem setter, but there are no jobs. Even his photography degree doesn‘t help him at first. But at tuenews INTERNATIONAL, where he works first as a volunteer, then as a federal volunteer and finally as a mini-jobber, his knowledge is in demand. He takes photographs and translates articles from German into Persian. He also works for a parcel service provider. His German is now excellent. „tuenews was a real miracle in my life,“ he says. „By working there, I got to know the German culture and language much faster and integrated myself into society.“
A process that is ongoing. „For me, the German passport is not the end of the road,“ he said at the annual reception in the district administration office. It is a big step in life and the beginning of a new path. It was often exhausting until he reached this point. Naturalization was a long, sometimes arduous process. „We had all our documents with us, from our birth certificate to our marriage certificate,“ he recalls. They had them translated and notarized in Germany. But the Iranian marriage certificate initially found no mercy at the Tübingen citizens‘ office. Elyasian was referred to the German embassy in Tehran to have the documents legalized. However, the embassy referred him to an Iranian office – to which he would have had to travel to Tehran. As a person entitled to asylum in Germany, this was not possible. In the end, a bureaucracy-friendly solution was found.
Thoughts about home
The fact that he is now German makes him proud. „It shows me that my path wasn‘t wrong and that I‘ve done well.“ Elyasian has thought a lot about home, about the old and the new. „It was as if we had been reborn,“ he wrote down. „We had the chance to start life all over again.“
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Mostafa Elyasian bei der Einbürgerungsfeier im Landratsamt Tübingen. Foto: tuenews INTERNATIONAL / Martin Klaus.
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