BallinStadt Emigration Museum

It is a place of feelings and big emotions - and the memory of more than five million people who emigrated via Hamburg to follow their dreams in the wide world.

On historical ground, visitors to the new emigrants' adventure-world "BallinStadt" can re-experience the travels of the people and their life lines.

One preserved original emigrant pavilion as well as two similarly constructed buildings that were re-built according to old construction plans are the stage for the prize-winning concept of the LeisureWorkGroup GmbH, showing the life at that time as well as the motivations, wishes, dreams and hopes of the people from this era.

With the help of the latest exhibition and presentation techniques, all the reasons leading to these incredible streams of emigrants to the whole world in the era of the big European emigration are highlighted in an entertaining and exciting way. The exhibition is bi-lingual, in German and English. A great number of modules was specially developed for children and integrated into the exhibition for parents and children or school groups for joint experiencing.

The biggest genealogical data base in the world with more than 600 million entries makes it possible to search for traces of the own family. Furthermore, with the preserved passenger lists of the more than five million people who went to the New World from BallinStadt, BallinStadt owns a treasure that is singular in the whole world.

The emigrant town in the Hamburgian quarter Veddel, founded by the shipping company HAPAG (later also "Hamburg-Amerika Linie") under their director general Albert Ballin in 1901, was an important interstation on the way to a new life. Up to 5,000 emigrants could be housed in the about 30 buildings of the emigrant halls at the same time in order to wait for their embarkment and to complete the necessary formalities. A trip full of hopes, wishes and fears - it started here.