Hamburg museum collects artifacts that document the migration to Americas

Edith Kolb was shuffling through some papers recently when a few postcards dropped out. On the front were paintings of turn-of-the-century steamships chugging through oceans full of whitecaps. On the back of one, in smudged handwriting, was a note from her uncle to her father in Kiel, Germany, informing him of his safe arrival in Buenos Aires.

“It seemed such a shame to throw them away,” said Ms. Kolb, who is in her 70s. So she stopped by Hamburg’s newest museum, the BallinStadt, which opened on July 5, and gave them to a historian there, Jorge Birkner. There they will be added to a paper and digital archive of letters, clippings and passenger lists: the cornerstone of this museum, which is dedicated to the five million Europeans who passed through Hamburg on their way to North and South America.

The museum is named after Albert Ballin, who built a “city within the city” to house emigrants who converged on Hamburg from all over Europe to take his Hapag shipping company’s liners bound for the New World.