Truly Yours, Mark Twain (2015)
“Truly Yours, Mark Twain”. How a Bremerhaven emigrant relieved Mark Twain of his toothache
Cabinet exhibition centered around a signed first edition of the world-famous author Mark Twain
At the beginning of the year, Gisela Burkhardt provided the German Emigration Center with a substantial collection relating to the life story of her great-grandfather Heinrich Sengebusch as a permanent loan. One item from the family collection is the first edition of Mark Twain’s book.
While Gisela Burkhardt now resides in North Rhine-Westphalia, her great-grandfather lived in Bremerhaven. Since 1873, Heinrich Sengebusch regularly traveled across the Atlantic from the seaside city: He was a ship barber for Norddeutscher Lloyd until he ultimately emigrated to the USA with his future wife Elise in 1885. In 1891, the family returned to Bremerhaven. “After returning, Heinrich Sengebusch resumed his work as a ship barber. During a crossing from New York to Genoa in May 1893, he meets the American author Mark Twain,” says Dr. Simone Eick, director of the German Emigration Center. Twain suffers from severe toothaches during the voyage from New York to Genoa, from which Heinrich Sengebusch relieves him. As a thank you, Mark Twain gives the barber the first edition of his book “The Million Pound Bank Note” along with the personal dedication “Goodbye, Truly Yours, Mark Twain, May ’93”. Born in Florida in 1835, Mark Twain became famous for his stories about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
The German Emigration Center now houses a collection that includes 3,000 family collections from emigrants and immigrants. Their stories, documents, and personal memorabilia have been donated to the migration museum by the families, including Gisela Burkhardt. In the exhibition series “New in the Collection,” the German Emigration Center will future-present individual items that are otherwise hidden from visitors in the museum archive. “We want to showcase the diversity of our collection. Mark Twain’s first edition is a fantastic example of the many very special objects that families make available to us for the museum,” shares Simone Eick.