Restorations: Saving tangible history
The Deutsches Auswandererhaus Foundation enables the restoration of selected collection pieces from the Deutsches Auswandererhaus in the coming months.
It is a detailed work that requires not only knowledge about materials but also a lot of experience, and there are only a few experts nationwide: the restoration of objects made of wood, fabric, metal, or leather.
Some objects from our collection – which have been formally owned by the city of Bremerhaven for several years – require costly care to be preserved. Now, funding from the Deutsches Auswandererhaus Foundation allows us to preserve two exhibits for museum visitors and researchers. Former State Councillor Jörg Schulz, board member of the foundation, states: “The collection pieces of the Deutsches Auswandererhaus are touching testimonies of personal migration stories. Securing these for future generations and keeping their stories alive is a central concern for us at the Deutsches Auswandererhaus Foundation. We are therefore pleased that we can enable the preservation of these two exhibits.”
The first exhibit, which recently returned to us from the restoration workshop of Bettina Heine from Hamburg, is a children’s stroller, which a mother presumably used in 1945 while fleeing from the Soviet army from East to West and can be found in the museum’s immigration building.
Our collection manager Dr. Tanja Fittkau is pleased about the cooperation with the restorer: “As sensitive as they are: these objects make history tangible for us. And since the traces of use are part of the history of the object, we need a restoration procedure that does not simply restore the stroller visually, but preserves the “patina.”
On the same day, another object with a completely different story left the exhibition heading to the workshop: the sacrament house, carved by a young gardener’s son. Through his talent, he was able to attend the Maryland Institute, a school for art and design in Baltimore, in 1906, but unfortunately passed away in 1908. The house will return to its place in a new shine over the coming months.