Connecting the Dots of My History at the Deutsches Auswanderhaus

Since I first learned of its existence, the Deutsches Auswanderhaus (Museum of German Emigration) has been at the top of my list of things to see in Germany. This year, knowing it would be my last running an exchange program, I knew I must pay a visit. The Corpus Christi holiday weekend gave me a perfect opportunity.

Since I could remember, my dad has told me that his grandfather and grandmother had been born in Germany. The names of their home towns have stayed in the family: the village of Diedelsheim (between Karlsruhe and Pforzheim) for my great-grandfather, and the city of Ulm for my great-grandmother. I visited both cities during my first trip to Germany in 1990, and have revisited several times over the years.

I had also studied my grandparents’ lives after they immigrated to the United States: both migrated around 1895 and worked menial jobs until 1905, the year that they married and my great-grandfather opened a grocery store/ deli in the Bronx. (In his application for US citizenship, he related that he had apprenticed as a clerk at a store in Nuremburg before emigrating.)

What the Auswanderhaus offered me was a bridge between those two immigrant experiences, a frank look at the conditions that encouraged them to leave, an understanding of the journey from Bremerhaven (or Hamburg) to New York Harbor, and an idea for what they might have faced once they arrived.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The museum really tried to recreate the emigrant experience, from the sets that I walked through, to the background noises piped in through speakers.

The tour began in a waiting room, where one might wait for a train or a ship. Then, after a brief introduction, the doors opened, I climed a steep, wooden stairway, and found myself on a dock among an array of costumed mannequins, looking at the riveted, steel sides of a ship with glowing portholes.

When I bought my ticket, I had been given an ID card for an immigrant. At five or six places on this “dock” I could tap the card to an icon and listen through a handheld speaker. (The card cleverly called the English translations, saving me from overworking my limited German.)

In the next room, the reasons for departure were made clear. One wall was filled with small drawers. Each drawer had the name of a mogrigrant and the year they migrated. Some you could pull out to read more about the immigrants. I'd say there were almost 20 different stations in the room with photos and stories of migrants. At some benches, one cold listen to contemporary essays about migration or about conditions in Germany during that specific era.

At the end of the Room of Files there was a "Critical Thinking Station" that let me answer questions about immigration policy. Then I returned briefly to the "dock" set, but this time I walked up the plank and entered the ship.

This had been the part I had most looked forward to: life onboard a ship. There were three smaller sets in this part of the exhibit, one showing the quarters for migrants in the 18th Century, a second room showed 3rd-class quarters in the late-1800s (the era my great-grandparents migrated), and a final room showing living and dining conditions in the mid-20th Century.

There was so much detail. A man in a middle bunk was snoring. The room seemed cramped, and the thought of spending 3-4 weeks living there was claustrophobia-inducing. Separate displays covered the diet on board the ship and other details.

From the ship sets, the tour led to immigration (to America, mostly). It felt like the museum catered to German-Americans like myself. Almost every exhibit had details in English as well as German. There were specific displays about migration to Australia and South America, but the focused was on Germany to America migration.

I found myself in a mock Ellis Island waiting room, then on to another room made to resemble Grand Central Station, where choices must be made: would the migrant find relatives in the "Klein Deutschland"
area of New York City, or would they take a train headed west. (There were acknowledgements, too, that the "free land" available to Minnesota and Dakota migrants had only recently been appropriated from Native Americans.)

Just beyond the Grand Central set were smaller rooms: a bar, a convenience store, and a sweat shop that showed how German-American migrants made their way in life. (My great-grandfather, Gotthold Christian Dittes, owned a series of New York-area groceries from 1905 until the late 1950s.)

This ended the "recreation" part of the tour, but there is so much more to the museum than that. Descendants of migrants, like me, will enjoy a room with artifacts that families had brought from Germany and passed down the generations. There was also a room with a series of computer stations, where I looked up ancestors on Ancestry.com.

In addition, there is a focus on the migration debate that has roiled Germany in recent years. Do humans have a right to migrate? This being Germany, there was a library--even a parade of costumed protestors holding signs related to migration--from several different era. A theater in the museum plays short films from countries all around the world that inform the viewer on the immigrant experience.

The Deutsches Auswanderhaus, I realized, has something to teach Germany itself about migration, not just curious descendant of migrants like me. It seems like an awfully grand mission, but it had drawn me to Bremerhafen, and it will certainly draw many more.

Outside the museum, I walked along the port of Bremerhafen. A statue nearby is dedicated to "The Emigrants." A father looks ahead (that's the father's job) with resolution reaching out for a new opportunity. The mother looks back to Germany and home. Two children, caught between, a boy and a girl. They are the real future. They will learn English quickly, they will get better jobs, and their children and grandchildren--well, they will be people like me, who "wander" back and forth to Germany to find the waymarks of their own history.


Photos: all mine