Susanne Christiansen
“I would love to go to Germany.” This was the response from Susanne Christiansen to the question from her school days about whether she had a dream in life that she wanted to fulfill. In 1981, she fulfills her dream and migrates to Bremerhaven for love. When a request about a women’s soccer tournament from Bremerhaven by the former FC Siedlerfreunde, later ESV Bremerhaven, is received by the Danish football club Glostrup IF 32 in 1974, nobody yet suspects that this will lead to a friendship lasting over half a century. The players were accommodated in host families, where they engaged in joint activities such as “shopping, playing soccer, having great parties.” One of the Danish players is the then 17-year-old Susanne Christiansen, who, through the annual soccer tournament, not only forms friendships in Bremerhaven but also meets her future husband, Bernd. In 1981, she decides to move to Bremerhaven with her young daughter. “Since I already knew people here from the football club, I had friends and acquaintances in Bremerhaven. So it wasn’t as foreign as it is for some immigrants; we already knew each other. It was actually like moving to another city in your home country, but still having all your friends around.” In Bremerhaven, Susanne Christiansen works for the US Army for over eleven years until the closure of the base—a wonderful and formative time that she misses. Meanwhile, she works as a commercial employee in Hamburg. After fulfilling her first life dream with Germany, she plans as her next goal “to take a great train journey through Andalusia or to go to America for twelve weeks to travel around there—I’m still working on that.”
A portrait of Susanne Christiansen is one of the faces displayed on the facade of the new German Emigration Center since June 2021. Prior to the opening of the extension building with its artistically designed facade, the Nordsee-Zeitung introduced the individuals behind the faces. You can watch the corresponding filmed portrait of Susanne Christiansen here.