Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Center)

Deutsches Auswandererhaus (German Emigration Center) Review

The award-winning Deutsches Auswandererhaus is made to order for those wanting to trace their German ancestry. The museum's Forum Immigration has a room full of computers to access the museum's archive and link to more than a dozen others, including an extensive collection of Bremen passenger lists. The museum is at the spot where 7 million Europeans set sail for the New World. Movie-set makers were called in to build authentic reconstructions of a big, dingy waiting hall and part of a historic steamship. The waiting room is crowded with mannequins in 19th-century costumes and piles of luggage. The "ship" is boarded across a swaying gangway, and once aboard, you can see how miserable life was during the voyage from the cabins and communal sleeping rooms. A theater screens an English-language film about six emigrant generations.