Emigration Center in Bremerhaven
Visitors and experts alike are impressed by the German Emigration Center’s emotional yet informed approach.
It may be only an ordinary albeit beautifully crafted mocha cup. Red painted china with a gold lip, probably manufactured in the 1920s by the company Beyer & Bock. So far, so unspectacular. Yet for Renate Hills, née Dewosch, the cup was something special. Drunk from this cup, her mocha tasted of home – a home that was a long way away.
At the age of 15, Renate Dewosch emigrated with her parents from post-war Berlin to the USA. The family boarded the “SS Homeland” to New York on 7 February 1952 – one of the items in Renate’s luggage was this mocha cup, a gift from her Aunt Martha. Whenever she was visiting her aunt in Berlin’s Tempelhof district, she was allowed to drink from this cup, which she kept as a memento for decades to come.
Renate Dewosch’s story is just one of an infinite number which the German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven is keen to tell – and her mocha cup is just one of many exhibits which bring these stories to life. The museum has been open for more than ten years now; the German Emigration Center Foundation, which supports the museum, celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2016.
7.2 million emigrants went on board here
It was not by chance that Bremerhaven was chosen as the museum’s location: between 1830 and 1974, this was where some 7.2 million people went on board ships that would transport them to the “New World”. Using the very latest technology, the Emigration Center gives visitors an opportunity to immerse themselves in the stories of émigré families, find out more about the historical context and watch moving short films about migration in the museum’s in-house “Roxy” cinema. The Emigration Center is also architecturally interesting: soaring concrete wings represent a stylized kerchief of the kind that was held aloft countless times in Bremerhaven – to wave goodbye.
Visitors and experts alike are impressed by the museum’s sensitive yet informed approach: the German Emigration Center won the 2007 “European Museum of the Year Award”, putting it in the same league as museums like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
