Mongolia
Saruul Fischer
In her heart she is Mongolian; in her head, German. The fashion designer likes to quote her small daughter when she describes herself as a ‘Germanian’. One thing Saruul Fischer knows for sure is that belonging to two cultures is something special. Continue
MONGOLIANS IN GERMANY
At least 30,000 Mongolians speak German. There are historical reasons for that. Communist East Germany had a special relationship to the former socialist Mongolian People’s Republic. Thousands of Mongolians came to East Germany to attend university or get vocational training. Many East Germans studied the Mongolian language at the university in Ulaanbaatar. East Germany provided aid to modernize Mongolia’s farming sector and to construct what was one of the largest meat processing plants in Asia at the time.
A JOURNEY THROUGH MONGOLIA
Today’s Ulaanbaatar has little in common with the place Saruul Fischer remembers from her childhood. The Mongolian capital is undergoing a lot of changes and has become a lively and more colorful metropolis. Most of Saruul’s relatives live here and she visits them regularly. It is also home to the knitting factories where the fashion designer’s products are made. Saruul says that in her heart she is a nomad, like all Mongolians. She loves the country’s wide-open spaces: the steppe, the desert, the velvety green hills. When she travels to the countryside she also stays in nomad yurts. They represent a way of life that may not exist much longer.
