Ger­man Emig­ra­tion Cen­ter Bremer­haven

Learn about emig­ra­tion and fol­low in the foot­steps of those long gone at the Ger­man Emig­ra­tion Centre in Bremer­haven.

At what is now Haven­wel­ten Bremer­haven, there once stood an im­port­ant port of de­par­ture where men, wo­men and chil­dren took to the sea with all of their be­long­ings. Sadly, it was not love of ad­ven­ture, but rather pure ne­ces­sity and hope­less­ness that brought over sev­en mil­lion people to Bremer­haven between 1830 and 1974, a peri­od which defined the city: in 1850, Bremer­haven had a pop­u­la­tion of 4033, but saw over 50,000 emig­rants pass through its port every year. Driv­en from their homes as a res­ult of in­suf­fi­cient land, un­em­ploy­ment and in­equal­ity, people came here in droves to leave the coun­try by sea.

This ex­act dock is now the loc­a­tion of the Ger­man Emig­ra­tion Centre, which casts light on the era in which Bremer­haven served as Ger­many’s largest emig­ra­tion port. An ex­ten­ded area of the mu­seum also presents the his­tory of im­mig­ra­tion in­to Ger­many in an equally en­thralling and in­form­at­ive style.

The Ger­man Emig­ra­tion Centre does not fit the usu­al defin­i­tion of a mu­seum. There’s ad­ven­ture at every turn to leave a last­ing im­pres­sion. This is a place of re­flec­tion, re­mem­brance, learn­ing, ex­per­i­ence and awe in equal meas­ure. Liv­ing his­tory is presen­ted as a time­less ex­per­i­ence which at­tracts vis­it­ors to Bremer­haven from as far away as the USA.

You can find more in-depth in­form­a­tion on the mu­seum’s web­site.