Bremerhaven makes a triangle with Hamburg and Bremen and was an important port-city with key access to the North Sea. Between 1830 and 1974, 7.2 million people departed from the Bremerhaven harbor, emigrating from Europe and looking for a new life.
We came to Bremerhaven to visit the Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Center). It is the largest exhibition on emigration in Europe, and stands on the exact location where so many people said goodbye to their families and their countries forever.
The museum recreates the journey from Europe across the Atlantic for visitors, even giving you the name of an emigrant that you track throughout the voyage. There are so many mannequins and “real-life” displays that while I was standing and waiting for Joe, an old German guy asked me, “Sind Sie echt oder Puppe?” (Are you real or a puppet?!) His eyesight was obviously on the way out!
A recreation of the Harbor in Bremerhaven.
At the end of the journey, you actually “arrive” at Ellis Island and then make your way to Grand Central Terminal. In the 19th century, 90% of the people emigrating from Bremerhaven departed for the US and 70% of those arrived through Ellis Island. There was a map in the museum, which I found really interesting and quite surprising.
If you can’t read it from the picture, the title of the map is “Descendants of U.S. Immigrants in 2000”. Green is the overwhelming color. Guess what green represents: a majority of the descendants in these states come from Germany. Crazy huh?!