You are one of us' The man who wore a mask to unmask racism in Germany

The man who wore a mask to unmask racism in Germany

- Philip Oltermann

Few people have done more to change the way postwar Germany looks at itself than Levent "Ali" Sigirlioğlu. A 1985 bestselling book detailing the inhumane working conditions and everyday racism that the 26-year-old Turkish migrant worker endured at Ruhr valley steel plants, asbestos-infested building sites and fast-food restaurants was the first to expose the dark underbelly of a booming economic revival.

The only catch is that "Ali" was not a young Turk at all, but a then 43-year-old white German.

Günter Wallraff, a journalist renowned for his deep-cover investigative journalism, had spent two years living as "guest worker" Ali, hiding his true identity at the workplace with a black wig and darkened contact lenses.

"Of course I wasn't a real Turk," he wrote in a foreword to Ganz Unten (Lowest of the Low). "But sometimes you have to put on a mask to unmask a society."

Forty years on, a new "docu-opera" asks whether Wallraff's credo would withstand charges of brownfacing and cultural appropriation today, and investigates what drove the reporter's transformation.

"There's something to be asked about why a man of that intelligence spent years with people who were desperate to just stay alive," said Mehmet Ergen, the show's Turkish director. "Something inside told him that he should do this."