ProtagonistMai-Phuong Kollath

Born in Hanoi in 1963, Mai-Phuong Kollath came to the GDR in 1981 as a contract worker. Following a two-month language course in Rostock, she began her vocational training as a cook in the port of Rostock. Her work contract was extended after four years and a short period of stay back in Vietnam. She lived in lodgings for foreign workers in Sunflower House in Rostock-Lichtenhagen.. In order to be able to stay in the GDR, she hid her pregnancy for as long as possible. In 1989, she married a GDR citizen, and this meant that she had to buy her way out of her contract, with Kollath and her husband having to pay 8,060 marks. She has been involved in the German–Vietnamese society Dien Hong in Rostock since 1994, and is also an intercultural advisor in migration policy for public bodies, parties, and institutions. She completed her studies in education at the University of Rostock in 2005.
Mai-Phuong Kollath now lives in Berlin and works as a coach and intercultural advisor. She is also an actor in the Maxim Gorki Theatre and the Berliner Schaubühne.