Paper short abstract:

Based on archival research for my doctoral dissertation this contribution examines individual trajectories of African labour college alumni through their exchange of letters with the faculty staff after the students have returned to their home countries.

Paper long abstract:

The wave of political decolonization of the late 1950s opened up new channels of territorial mobility for African actors. For the East German Free German Trade Union Confederation (FDGB), this period marked the beginning of close relations with trade unions and liberation movements on the African continent. As a result, trade unionists from at least nineteen African countries came to study at the labour college Fritz Heckert in Bernau close to Berlin. During their stay they acquired a theoretical-political education in Marxism-Leninism and "tools" for the concrete application of the training to their national (liberation) contexts and trade union work.

Based on archival research for my doctoral dissertation, this contribution examines life situations of educational and social (im)mobilities through personal letters written by the African alumni of the school. This exchange of letters with the faculty staff provides us with exceptional insights into the personal motives, wishes, emotions, goals as well as difficulties and hardships of the trade unionists after they had finished their education and returned to their respective home countries: some alumni quickly climbed the career ladder in their trade unions while others faced refusals towards an education obtained in a socialist country during a time of Cold War rivalries and global system competition. Besides emotional ties with the Fritz Heckert college, many African students tried to utilize their newly gained education and acquaintances at the labour college to secure scholarships for a university education—in the socialist "East" or in the competing capitalist "West".