In 1989, over 90,000 contract workers from other socialist states were living in the GDR. Around two thirds of them came from Vietnam. The contracts that defined the working and living conditions of these people lost their validity with the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the end of the GDR, colleagues suddenly became competitors for jobs. The former contract workers lost their jobs, the hostels canceled their rooms, racist acts of violence increased. Solidarity and fraternity, mostly empty words even in GDR times, remained little in reality.
