Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
June 2022
Journal of Monika Reitzig, 1959
Historical Context
June 12 is the Day of the Diary. The choice of this date harkens back to the birthday of the Jewish girl Anne Frank. On her thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942, she receives a notebook from her father. Anne Frank uses it as a diary. She writes about her family, her friends, the everyday life of a young girl – and how Jewish life, her life, changes increasingly under the pressure of National Socialism. During this oppressive time, she continues to write in the rear annex at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, where her family has been hiding since July 1942. Who gives the decisive tip that ultimately betrays the family is never conclusively clarified, but on the morning of August 4, 1944, the Gestapo appears and arrests the Frank family. Anne Frank dies in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her diary is now part of world literature.
Short Biography
The Breman resident Monika Reitzig travels in March 1959 in tourist class on the ‘Berlin’ from Bremerhaven to New York. The seventeen-year-old wants to spend a year as an exchange student with her host family, the Nimz family, in the USA. Together with her American friend, June Ashley, who was an exchange student in Germany and is now returning to the USA, she experiences a dramatic crossing: the ‘Berlin’ encounters a severe storm, and four sailors are swept overboard and killed while trying to repair a shattered hatch.
As terrible as the journey is for Monika, her return trip after an eventful year in April 1960 is all the more delightful: aboard the ‘Bremen,’ she meets her future husband, Horst Mügge, while playing table tennis. He too was only temporarily in the USA, on a gifted trip for passing his high school diploma.
Significance of the Object
Diaries provide us with a very personal insight into the daily lives of people, their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. The records allow us to hear the voices of living individuals as well as those long gone, and to see past events through the eyes of witnesses. Through diaries, we learn how much a German farmer had to spend on a cow in 1883 in Wisconsin, or how the German exchange student Monika Reitzig experienced her voyage to the USA in 1959. We learn from diaries how a Jewish girl experienced daily life during National Socialism or how soldiers spent time at the front.
Migration researchers can also accompany the establishment of new communities and understand the role of those who were left behind in the old homeland and how contacts are maintained after emigration. Diaries talk about the search for a job or an apartment, worries about sick family members, or gossiping with neighbors. They reflect feelings such as alienation, homesickness, fear, but also joy, love, or pride.
Do You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de