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BALLINSTADT IMMIGRATION MUSEUM
The Journey Port for Many Families in North Amerca
If your family heritage goes back to Northern or Central Europe after 1850, it is very possible your ancestors many have traveled through Hamburg, seeking more religious freedom, an escape from the depredations of war, persecution, or opportunities for a new dream. Before the mid-19th Century much of the immigrant ships which carried the huddled masses from Germany and Eastern Europe departed from ports in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Bremen. In 1847, the “Hamburg American Packet Company” or HAPAG Line was founded in the northern Germany port city of Hamburg, just in time for news of the gold rush in the west two years later. Hamburg was easy to reach by the Elbe River from the east and the growing railroad system in Germany, and rapidly became the most important port in Germany for the emigrating masses from 1850 up until 1934 and the packet company with its named changed to the more direct Hamburg-America Line in 1893, became one of the most successful.
Located on the Veddel Island of Hamburg's Harbor,the buildings of the former Immigration Halls of the Hamburg-America Line are now a museum named for company’s managing director Albert Ballin. The BallinStadt Emigration Museum is an offreing recreated rooms, interactive and photographic displays, dedicated to this immigration history. For those seeking their ancestral history from a European past whose ancestors left Europe from Poland, the Baltic states, Russia and even Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland between 1836 until 1934, may discover relatives passed through the portals of Ballinstadt
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