His first call was to the head of the local butchers' guild. Butchers all over Germany were having a particularly hard time. It was a sector in marked decline.
From 19,000 small, family-run businesses in 2002, there were fewer than 11,000 left by 2021. Employers were finding it almost impossible to recruit young people to take up an apprenticeship.
"The butchery trade is hard work," says the butchers' guild head, Joachim Lederer. "And for the last 25 years or so, young people have been going in other directions."
Back in India, at Magic Billion, the employment agency that had sent that initial email, it managed to recruit 13 young people, who arrived in Germany in the autumn of 2022 to begin their butchery apprenticeships in small towns along the border with Switzerland. They would spend part of their time at college.
Among them was 21-year-old Anakha Miriam Shaji. Like many of her cohort, it was the first time she had ever left India.
She remembers her excitement. "I wanted to see the world," she says. "I wanted to make my living standard so high. I wanted good social security."
Anakha had come to work for Lederer in the town of Weil am Rhein, in the far southwestern tip of Germany, up against both the Swiss and French borders.
Three years later a lot has changed. Von Ungern-Sternberg no longer works at the chamber.
He has instead set up his own employment agency, India Works, in partnership with Aditi Banerjee, of Magic Billion, to help bring more young Indian workers to Germany.
From those original 13 there are now 200 young Indians working in German butchers' shops.
Germany is suffering a crisis of demographics. The economy needs to attract 288,000 foreign workers per year,
according to a 2024 study. Otherwise the workforce could shrink by 10% by 2040, said the report by the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank.
As the last of the baby boomer generation edge into retirement there are not enough young Germans to replace them, due to a low birth rate. But there are plenty of young people in India.
"India is a country with 600 million people below the age of 25," says Banerjee. "Only 12 million come into the workforce every year. So there's a huge labour surplus."
India Works is preparing to bring 775 young Indians over to Germany this year to begin their apprenticeships. The range of professions they will join is extensive. There are now road builders, mechanics, stonemasons, and bakers, to name four.
It has been easier for skilled Indian workers to be able to work in Germany since the two countries signed the 2022 Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement. Then at the end of 2024, Germany announced that it would
increase the skilled work visa quota for Indian citizens from 20,000 per year to 90,000.
Official Germany figures show that in 2024 there were
136,670 Indian workers in the country, up from 23,320 back in 2015.
