Europe, Headlines, Human Rights, Migration & Refugees

GERMANY: Recreating the Experience of the Uprooted

Maricel Drazer

BERLIN, Nov 18 2008 (IPS) - The lighting is dim. The murmur of water can be heard, the ship’s horn blows and the gangway unfolds. The long journey of the German emigrant is about to begin.

Today, this scene is merely a recreation staged by the German Emigration Centre in Bremerhaven, a theme museum that opened on Aug. 8, 2005, following 20 years of efforts by a group of people from various fields. The scene is enacted in the exact location where over many decades, spanning two centuries, millions of souls embarked on a journey to their promised land, the “New World.”

The greatest number of emigrants set sail from the German coast of Bremerhaven, on the North Sea, with a total of over seven million leaving between 1830 and 1974. And nearly five million set off from the neighbouring port of Hamburg, on the Elbe river.

The Centre, which stands at the old port of Neue Hafen, in the city of Bremerhaven, is the largest museum in Europe devoted to emigration. Only two years after opening its doors, this hands-on museum received the prestigious European Museum of the Year Award in 2007.

The museum offers visitors what it describes as a “real-life” experience, immersing them in an environment that recreates the saga of the voyagers, and stimulating all of their senses to help them connect with how emigrants felt.

The admission tickets are designed like boarding passes, each containing biographical information on an actual emigrant – name, date of birth, date of departure, and destination.

Through their boarding passes, visitors “assume” the identity of a specific individual, going through the various stages of their character’s trip. The passes are electronic cards that visitors can use to interact with audio stations and computers to access immediate information from the museum’s vast database.

Between fiction and reality, the atmosphere created is overwhelming. Visits start at a reconstruction of the 1869 waiting hall of Germany’s largest emigration port. Visitors then climb on board an exact replica of an original steamship that transported millions of Europeans away from their homelands.

From the ship’s rail, visitors can look back to see what they are leaving behind: life-size statues fashioned as relatives who have come to bid them farewell, and whose voices can be heard speaking the different languages of the European emigrants, through a recording activated on demand.

As they tour the museum’s rooms they go through the different stations of the voyage, entering the crammed third-class compartments in which emigrants crossed the ocean and reliving the traveler’s experience, surrounded by the sounds, sights and smells of the journey and hearing the many stories of emigration.

The statues are dressed in clothes of the period. “If those skirts got wet, they would weigh 12 kilograms,” historian and guide Karin Hess explained to IPS. The scene is completed with suitcases, gear and other original belongings donated to the museum, which are displayed with descriptive captions.

“Emigration is something very abstract,” museum director Simone Eick, who holds doctorates in history and philosophy, told IPS. “Hope or melancholy, for example, can’t be put on display in an exhibit. Which is why by reconstructing historical situations and combining them with specific life stories, we try to make people feel and experience these emotions for themselves.”

In this way, visitors to the museum can retrace the lives of the protagonists of Germany’s migration history, setting off with them to Ellis Island in New York harbour, the top destination for European emigrants, followed by Brazil and Argentina.

“We try to show the relationship that exists between the history of Germans who were lucky enough to be taken in by countries like the U.S. or by South American nations, and immigration today, in an effort to raise awareness among the population about the issue” of modern-day migration, Eick said.

A task, however, that is apparently not that simple. “I’ve noticed, when I take visitors through the guided tours, that when the word ‘emigration’ is mentioned it produces a joyful, romantic, and pleasant sensation in everyone,” she said.

“But when visitors hear the words ‘migrant’ or ‘immigration,’ you can feel them withdrawing, even mentally. What I mean is: emigration has a positive image, but when we shift to the present, that’s when fears and prejudices arise,” Eick added.

In line with the rest of Europe, Germany is implementing increasingly strict migration policies. As of Sept. 1, for example, in order to be eligible for a German passport, immigrants must pass a “citizenship exam” that tests their knowledge of the country’s culture, history, society, geography and politics.

Germany is currently home to more than seven million foreigners – almost nine percent of the country’s total population, making it one of the countries with the highest proportion of foreign nationals in the European Union.

Despite this large number of foreigners, the integration of immigrants is still an unresolved challenge for this country. And it is in this sense that the museum sets in motion one of its main purposes.

“To contribute to the current debate on immigration in Germany, we feel that it is important that people become aware that we too were immigrants in other countries,” said Hess.

Millions of Europeans left the continent in the past, fleeing hunger and the horrors of war, in search of a better life in the Americas. In the Gallery of the Seven Million, the museum provides the historical context of emigration, explaining the reasons why millions of Europeans decided to undertake the journey abroad.

The exhibit describes five waves of emigration, each with their specific characteristics, but all marked by the desire to escape economic hardship and religious, political or social persecution. This historical process is illustrated by several more detailed life stories.

The permanent exhibit at the German Emigration Centre is dedicated to the nearly 45 million people that are estimated to have left Europe in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It focuses especially on Germans, providing information that allows visitors to follow their footsteps, based on updated biographical data, photographs, and even audiovisual material, in some cases.

The centre’s offering is rounded off with statistics documenting waves of migration throughout history, portions of relevant human rights declarations, and the Migration Forum, where visitors can attempt to trace their personal roots in an extensive database.

As of Jan. 20, 2008, the main exhibition was expanded to include the story of German emigration to Buenos Aires, with German-Argentine biographies and a documentary specially produced for the Centre by Argentine filmmaker Ciro Capellari. And starting in January 2009, visitors will also see a special exhibit on migration flows triggered by climate change.