Are the Polish Housekeepers ‘willig und billig’?

The films released since the German reunification in which  and Polish characters play a significant role in the narrative range from critically acclaimed films such as Andreas Dresen’s “Grill Point” (“Halbe Treppe”, 2002), Christoph Hochhäusler’s “In This Very Moment” (“Milchwald”, 2003), or Hans-Christian Schmid’s “Distant Lights” (“Lichter”, 2003) to lesser-known TV productions for public and commercial broadcasters. Since the early 1990s, the growing number of appearances of Polish characters and narrative elements associated with Poland, especially shown in a negative light, did not emerge in a historical and discursive vacuum. They can be interpreted as a reflection of the public opinion concerned about the rapid economic transformation across Germany’s eastern border and its impact on the domestic job market and the safety of German citizens. A large segment of the German press, including leading mainstream titles such as “Die Zeit” or “Der Spiegel,” presented the image of post–1989 Poland as a backward country descending into economic and social chaos. The fears of the disorder spilling over the border were amplified by articles in the newspapers that warned the readers against the “barbarian invasion” from ‘the East’ if the visas for Polish visitors were abolished in 1991.1 An overwhelming majority of Germans at the time had a distinctly negative view of Poland and its citizens, associating the country primarily with criminal activities, corruption, bureaucracy, and a lack of efficiency. Studies of German public opinion conducted in the 2000s indicated that Germans still looked down on Poland as an underdeveloped country.2 The long-standing pejorative stereotype of a ‘ polnische Wirtschaft

Polish economy

The stereotype of the Polish economy deeply rooted in the German-speaking cultural area since the late 18th century, which contrasts the alleged backwardness and inefficiency of Poland with the German sense of innovation and order. ,’ or ‘ Polish economy

Polish economy

The stereotype of the Polish economy deeply rooted in the German-speaking cultural area since the late 18th century, which contrasts the alleged backwardness and inefficiency of Poland with the German sense of innovation and order. ,’3 was replicated in the media. 

The country’s depictions were instrumentalized within a particular representation system, creating a false distinction between a supposedly tradition-bound ‘East’ and a modernizing ‘West.’ This plays into the long-standing paradigm in German culture that envisions Poland as a German colonial space and expresses the space and people through an Orientalist vocabulary, which manifests itself in little nuanced depictions of the land as mysterious, dangerous, and alluring, and the women as passionate and sexually attractive but also unpredictable. It is not surprising in this context that several films made in the first two decades after the German reunification include characters or narrative elements associated with Poland’s crime scene, which hinder or jeopardize the chances of protagonists successfully navigating the turbulent times in the new Germany. Polish car mafia, petty criminals, illegal construction workers, prostitutes, and all other kinds of ‘capitalists of the first hour’ populate the screen and paint the image of Poland as a jungle where Western rules don’t apply. Crossing the state border in these films is a journey into terra incognita, promising big wins but also carrying a significant personal risk.

But can we see changes in such orientalist perception as the post-1989 social and economic shockwaves passed, and a new era of intensified contact began after the full opening of the German job market to Polish citizens in 2011? A look at the on-screen depictions of Polish migrant women in the 2010s suggests only a slightly more nuanced image. The decade witnessed a surge in the cinematic representations of the work of female migrants from Poland who perform domestic tasks and care work for children and seniors. 

The housekeeper figure in German popular culture has specific associations dating back to the 1970s. It represents a myriad of low-wage and often socially stigmatized activities executed by migrants from East-Central Europe, such as, for example, the character of a socially ostracized migrant from an unspecified country in the ‘East,’ Yolanda, in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (“Angst essen Seele auf”, 1974). Being a housekeeper became almost synonymous with the experience of a new migrant. In the 2010s, the “polnische Putzfrau,” the Polish cleaning lady, achieved a truly pop-cultural status. Her image was used to criticize the complacency and hypocrisy of the German higher middle class. One of the best examples of such instrumentalization of the Polish housekeeper is Holger Schlageter’s two-part bestselling satire “Under German Beds” (“Unter deutschen Betten: Eine polnische Putzfrau packt aus”, 2010, and “Nicht ganz sauber: Eine polnische Putzfrau räumt auf”, 2012), written under the pen name Justyna Polanska. In “Under German Beds,” the housekeeper Justyna provides an autobiographical account of the exploitation of migrant workers behind the ‘pretty facades’ of German villas: Justyna is overworked and underpaid, employed illegally to clean the houses of judges and lawyers, government officials, and police commanders whose day job is to raid the construction sites in search of “Schwarzarbeiter,” illicit workers, mostly migrants.

By the mid-2010s, the success of Schlageter’s “Under German Beds” was accompanied by a changing tone of the German press and television in reporting on the consequences of the opening of the German job market. Newspapers and the TV news noted that the feared influx of cheap labor had not occurred. Instead, workers from Poland had become desirable providers of services suffering from labor shortages, including health and childcare. German television productions capitalized on this turn in perception. Holger Haase’s “And Then Came Wanda” (“… und dann kam Wanda”, 2014) tells the story of the single father Karlheinz who is facing bankruptcy in the construction business. The viewer cannot describe him as “ausländerfreundlich,” open to migrants: he blames the unfair competition from Polish undeclared workers as the cause of his troubles. He has a last chance to complete a big contract but the job requires that someone take care of his two children. A coincidental encounter with Wanda (played by Karolina Lodyga), who is seeking employment, seems like a win-win situation. Wanda’s spontaneity, improvisation skills, and investment in spending time with the kids initially bothers the rigid father, but the woman wins him over by becoming an irreplaceable help. A happy end ensues after many complications: Karlheinz follows Wanda to Poland and asks her to live with him and his children in Germany.

Similarly, the life of a German family is changed by a Polish female in RTL’s 4-season series “Magda Is Gonna Do It!” (“Magda macht das schon!”, 2017-2021), created by Sebastian Andrae. An equally accidental encounter brings together a family of five and a young woman Magda (played by Verena Altenberger). Magda is supposed to help the family care for the recently incapacitated senior, Waltraud. Waltraud, similar to Karlheinz in “And then Came Wanda,” is not eager to accept the Pole (who enters the household with a very forward attitude), or any migrants, for that matter. As the audience learns at the outset of the series, Waltraud experienced expulsion from Silesia as a child, and her traumatic memories, along with her nostalgia for Germany’s lost territories, have defined her perspective on Poland and its citizens. Like Wanda, Magda becomes indispensable: each of the 46 episodes depicts Magda’s assistance in resolving smaller or bigger family emergencies, to name just a few: a renovation, Tobias’s midlife crisis, Conny’s abusive boss, the teenage daughter’s stalker, the departure of the younger son to the US on a high-school exchange, etc. Essentially, Magda, in her own words, “can cook, clean, do laundry, care for old and young people – [she] can do everything.” 

Now, what image of the Polish female worker do the two TV productions offer to their audiences, considering the wider acceptance of economic migrants from Poland in Germany after 2011? Is the colonial perspective on Poland still present in these shows? Judging by their popular reception, both productions were successful.4 This indicates that the rendition of Polishness proposed by both shows was welcomed by the target audience. But, it cannot be overlooked that “And then Came Wanda” and “Magda Is Gonna Do It!,” despite their titles and the apparent focus on Polish women, both reduce the female characters to a few facets in order to advance the transformation of the German characters, the real protagonists of the story. Wanda serves as a catalyst to sort out the life priorities of the main male character. Magda also delivers a much-needed structure in the chaotic life of a multigenerational family, creating conditions for understanding Otherness. Yet, the audience knows little about the women’s lives outside their employers’ households, past, and aspirations. Their existence is merged with the lives of the German families, and their labor goes beyond the conditions of their employment: they help just because they care, inserting themselves fully into the private spheres of their respective employers. To quote a popular phrase, they are eager to assist and cheap (“willig und billig”), like a cinematic flip image of the threatening Polish migrant from the 1990s. This is particularly striking in “Magda Is Gonna Do It!:” the viewer does not know anything about Magda: she does not have a history or a birthplace, and she seems to be assisting the German family in a timeless limbo while they are allowed to go through their own nostalgic revisiting of their youth, and realizations of aging, sickness, and recovery. One of the most telling moments of the show is the season 2 finale when Magda maps their first-ever trip to Poland. She does not use the opportunity to offer the family more information about herself: she is fully attuned to their wishes, drawing their dream route on Poland’s map that culminates in visiting the “Polish Himalaya: the ”, in Waltraud’s beloved Silesia. The discovery of Poland as a gateway to a better understanding of Magda never occurs; their beat-up minibus does not even make it to the border.

The differentiation of the Poles from the German characters is not only expressed through less or more heavily accented language (or Polish phrases) but is also marked visually: Wanda and Magda perform their femininity in a way that ‘others’ and exoticizes them to the German audience. Magda works in her high heels, tight outfits, and full make-up, and she wears a sizable pendant with a cross on her chest. When her sister Aga surprises her with a visit from Poland, she looks like Wanda’s exact copy, which suggests a prevailing way Polish women dress up. Conversely, Wanda has a weak spot for leopard-spotted jackets, accessories, and jewelry. 

They are appealing through their Otherness, yet they do not pose a threat: the Polish characters are conveniently not career-oriented, so there is no competition with their German counterparts. Instead, they are interested in roles that support and benefit the German characters. Both women are not readily categorized as a visible minority but are still a product of discursive practices of Orientalism. Whiteness, a characteristic shared with other East European women, defines their position between familiarity and Otherness. Together with the emphasis on heterosexuality, readiness for relationships with German men, and belief in traditional family values, they construct notions of the Polish women on screen.5 

And then Came Wanda and Magda Is Gonna Do It! are not the first TV productions that show the Polish female character using cinematic practices of Othering. Both works follow the path (and utilize the same visual cues) of Douglas Wolfsperger’s TV comedy My Polish Maiden (Heirate mir!) from 2001, with a Polish woman who finds love (and employment) in Germany. The film was sarcastically credited by the German film scholar Bernadetta Matuszak–Loose for gifting the history of German cinema with “the motif of the Polish cleaning lady regularly returning eversince.”6 And indeed, the motif of the low-wage working woman from East-Central Europe keeps coming back, with one modification: as the job market and media in Germany normalize the labor of the Polish migrants, Ukrainian help has taken the place of the Pole in films. This is the case of the recent production made for ARD, The Forgetfulness of Squirrels (Die Vergesslichkeit der Eichhörnchen, dir. Nadine Heinze and Marc Dietschreit, 2021). At least on screen, Ukraine is now, using Kris Van Heuckelom’s phrase, “peripheral in space and backward in time”.7 This may be a sign that the Orientalization of Poland the Orientalization of Poland The term ‘Orientalization of Poland’ refers here to the representational practices of Poland as the “Other” in West European artistic and political discourses since the late 18th century. Poland, especially in the German context, was often bundled together with other lands of East-Central Europe, and imagined a backward, inferior, and less civilized counterpart to the Western Europe. The discursive processes of the Orientalization of Poland included constructing an overreaching narrative that emphasized the notions of German social, cultural, and political dominance over its chaotic and irrational neighbor to the East. These narratives resembled in many aspects the constructed system of thought and representation of the ‘Orient,’ that has been used to create a distorted and stereotyped image of Middle East and Asia in the Western European colonial discourses of the time. A particular role in establishing the Orientalizing images of Poland played 19th-century and early 20th-century German Ostmarkenromane (novels of the Eastern Marches) that depicted the Polish lands under German administration as a landscape of colonial conquest. They laid the groundwork for narrating the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and portraying the Other as a potential object of (benevolent or violent) colonial intervention. As a lasting legacy of political divisions of Europe in the 20th century, the representational practices of the Orientalization persisted in German culture until today, and are visible in Poland’s portrayals as mysterious, exotic, and sensual, especially in depictions of women. and the Poles is slowly receding.8