German couple behind vaccine are immigrant success story

The couple behind the coronavirus vaccine breakthrough are among Germany’s biggest immigrant success stories. While the search for the vaccine has been bankrolled by Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical giant, the groundbreaking technology behind it is the work of BioNTech, a German company founded by a married couple who are both the children of Turkish immigrants. Prof Ugur Sahin was born in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Iskenderun, near the border with Syria. He moved to West Germany when he was four years old. His father was a Gastarbeiter, or migrant worker, at a Ford car factory in Cologne and his mother brought the rest of the family to join him. West Germany discouraged immigration at the time. Gastarbeiters were seen as temporary workers and they and their families had little prospect of German citizenship. Yet today Prof Sahin and his wife, Özlem Türeci, are among the richest 100 people in Germany. They sold their first business for $1.4bn (£1bn) in 2016, and BioNTech’s value has soared to $21bn (£16bn) in the wake of the vaccine breakthrough. As a young man, Prof Sahin battled against the odds to pursue his dream of a career in medicine — a longshot for the son of a migrant car worker. He studied medicine in Cologne and Homburg and specialised in cancer treatment. It was while working as an oncologist in Homburg that he met his future wife, Dr Türeci. Although she was also the child of immigrants, Dr Türeci had a somewhat more conventional path to a medical career. Her father was a doctor who immigrated from Istanbul and she was born in Germany.

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