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.
May 2016
Newspaper graphic “At the Emigrant Station in Ruhleben. Drawn from life by W. Zehme.”, Published in: “Die Gartenlaube” 1895, No. 9, p. 137.
Historical Context
Since the 1880s, emigration from Eastern Europe has increased significantly – Germany turned from an emigration country into a transit country. Soon, travel routes for the “transit wanderers” from the Tsarist or Habsburg Empire were established, with the journey strictly organized and controlled from beginning to end. At the borders with Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two German shipping companies HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd set up a network of control stations that all emigrants had to pass. The Ruhleben station near Berlin also served as one such control station since 1891.
Here, all arriving transit migrants had to register, be disinfected, and undergo a medical examination. The reason for this was that the shipping companies wanted to prevent the outbreak of diseases in the emigration halls at the ports, and also wanted to ensure early on that the arriving emigrants met the strict entry requirements for overseas. After passing through the control, the emigrants boarded special trains that took them directly to Bremen or Hamburg.
Short biography
After dedicated citizens from Bremerhaven came together in 1985 with the goal of advocating for the establishment of a museum dedicated to migration history at an authentic location, Bremerhaven entrepreneurs and politicians founded the “Initiative Circle Experience World Migration” in 1998 to give this purpose increased political emphasis. When the German Emigration Center opened in 2005, the now-renamed association “Initiative Circle German Emigration Center e.V.” handed over to the museum a comprehensive and significant graphic collection that had been accumulated over twenty years. It is now permanently on loan in the museum’s collection.
Significance of the Object
“Die Gartenlaube – Illustrirtes Familienblatt” was the first successful German mass magazine and the most widely circulated periodical in the German Empire. When the magazine dedicated a richly illustrated report to the emigrant station Ruhleben in 1895, it did not cater to the information needs of the emigrants but rather to the entertainment desires of those staying behind. The text accompanying the images focuses not on the alarming procedures of control but on the sympathetic life expressions of various emigrant groups: the chaos of shouting, conversation, and singing as well as the coexistence of the “East German peasant family,” the “Russian muzhik and his kin,” and the “Russian Jew.” In this way, a portrait emerges of a “holiday atmosphere” that allegedly shows on all faces in Ruhleben: the emigrants saw themselves “without exception in golden jewelry and with pockets full of jingling dollars” returning from their stay in America. The hope that is painted on foreign faces seems to always have a touching effect – and that is exactly what the “Gartenlaube” aims for.
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