If you’ve ever visited Ellis island, you’ve probably seen images of the thousands of new arrivals moving through the U.S. immigration center. And if you’ve ever wondered how they began that journey, here’s the story of the other end, a kind of Ellis Island reverse.
Emigrants from Europe traveled from many ports, but the two that saw off the largest numbers in the 19th century were Liverpool and Hamburg, with Hamburg handling the largest number of people leaving mainland Europe.
The Auswanderer Museum, or Emigration Museum in Hamburg shines a light on the process, and takes a serious look at the world’s history of emigration. It’s located in buildings that were part of a large and highly-organized system set up and operated by one shipping company, Hapag.
At its emigration center, set up on an island at the edge of Hamburg’s port, thousands of emigrants arrived, registered, got medical exams and had their belongings disinfected, and then spent a week or more in company dormitories, eating in company dining rooms, attending church or synagogue, and waiting for their turn to board the company’s ships headed for America.
The whole system was the idea of Albert Ballin of Hapag, or in full the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt AG, Germany’s largest passenger shipping company. The name popularly given to the emigration center, Ballinstadt, means Ballin City.
Before the center was built, starting in 1901, emigrants found their way to Hamburg on their own, or through agents who worked with shipowners and sold tickets. On arrival, they were jammed into boarding houses and hostels near the port, often with no indoor plumbing or access to kitchens. Ballin himself, before joining Hapag, had run an emigrant agency.
The extent of the Emigration Center at its full development before 1914
A cholera epidemic in various parts of Europe in the 1890s almost killed the business. Hamburg and many other places banned emigrants and other visitors, and ship owners were wary because sick passengers arriving in America had to be returned to Europe on the company’s dime.
Under Ballin’s system, Hapag’s agents in various parts of Eastern Europe and Germany itself sold tickets, and did a preliminary health inspection. When the emigrants arrived in Hamburg, they went directly to Ballinstadt, where they bathed, underwent medical exams again, and had their luggage disinfected and stored. Because of the constant supervision, the health concerns were relieved, and few emigrants were forced to return.
The slogan above the doorway: My Field is the World
As the number of emigrants grew, Ballinstadt was expanded several times in its first years, with over 30 housing units as well as huge kitchens that churned out three nutritious if basic meals a day. Two kitchens were needed; one produced kosher meals for Jewish emigrants, the other served Christian travelers.
Emigrants paid 2 German marks a day for room and board, the equivalent of about $10 in today’s funds; before Ballinstadt, emigrants had to pay considerably more, especially for food. Single emigrants slept in 20-bed rooms, while families stayed together in other smaller rooms. Children were half-price but had to sleep two to a bed.
The system continued more or less unchanged until the start of World War I. On the first day of German mobilization, the emigration center closed and was turned over to the German Navy as a military hospital. It resumed its role after the war, although on a smaller scale, in part because most of Hapag’s fleet was confiscated as reparations.
Its role stopped again in 1934; after a hectic year of sharing the site between mostly Jewish emigrants anxious to leave Nazi Germany and the headquarters of an SS military division, the SS took over the whole site. During the war it was used as a prisoner-of-war camp.
At the end of the war, it was used briefly by British forces, and then turned over as emergency housing for bombed-out families. The last of them left in the early 1960s after the site was declared unfit for living. The site was largely abandoned.
In 2004, the city decided to reclaim most of the site for other uses, and most of the buildings were demolished, but a group were set aside to develop the museum, which opened as a public-private partnership in July 2007.
A bit more about Albert Ballin. Ballin was born to a family of Danish Jews who had settled in Hamburg; he was one of thirteen children, and at 17, he inherited his father’s emigration agency, which worked mostly with a British shipping line. It was so successful that Hapag bought the agency, and put him in charge of its emigration business.
Eventually, he became the head of the company, and an important figure in Hamburg despite prejudice against him as a Jew, especially after his marriage to a Christian woman. Among his other innovations was finding an off-season use for the company’s ships: He sent them on cruises to the Mediterranean, the origin of the whole cruise industry.
A reconstruction of Albert Ballin’s office at Hapag
He also became an influential counselor and friend to the German Kaiser Wilhelm, and worked hard at convincing the Kaiser to avoid the war, which he correctly feared would be bad for business. On November 9, 1918, the day the Kaiser was forced to abdicate and a republic was proclaimed, Ballin committed suicide.
Beyond the history of the emigration center itself, the museum examines the topic of emigration in a broader way, pointing out that while the ‘long 19th century”—roughly 1789 to 1914—is the most discussed period, it is not the only one. The centuries before that saw people leaving Europe for the Americas or being forcibly moved there from Africa, and the period since 1914 has seen more mass migrations, sparked by numbers of different circumstances.
Several panels highlight statistics about emigration, including the 5.6 million who passed through Hamburg between 1850 and 1938. Other exhibits look at people’s motivation for moving, and some of the obstacles and restrictions they face.
The first image below quotes a number of anti-immigrant slogans, and highlights a passage from the U.S. immigration act of 1924 that says “The White character of the population must be secured.” The second illustrates the endless questions and qualification required for U.S. entry.
Advertising posters for emigrant ships, and a variety of posters advertising opportunities in North America, sometimes in rather exaggerated tones. Below that, an audio wall allows visitors to listen to stories of fairly recent immigrants and their experiences.
At the end of the trail, there are exhibits and computer terminals that allow visitors to look up family members in the recorded arrival lists from the U.S. and Hamburg’s lists of departing emigrants. Unlike the arrival lists, the Hamburg lists also include where in Europe the emigrant had most recently lived. Albert Tobias, listed on the screen below, was my great-grandfather.
The museum is not in the center of Hamburg, but is a quick 15-minute ride on the S-Bahn or regional trains from the city’s main rail station. There’s a restaurant on premises, as well (of course) as a gift shop.
Unfortunately, for a museum likely to be of great interest to people from other countries, all of the signage in the museum, once past the introductory area is only in German. There’s a very extensive audioguide in English and French that can be used with a smartphone, but the signs give much more detail. There is an introductory video that plays in multiple languages.
