At Emigration House, a Bremerhaven museum, mannequins depict emigrants gathering to board the ship
that will carry them abroad. Seven million emigrants left Bremerhaven for "an unknown world."
Posted on 09/02/2005 6:20:48 AM PDT by OESY
...Why so many did undertake it is one of the questions that the museum, known in German as Auswanderer Haus, or Emigration House, which opened in this busy port city a few weeks ago, is intended to answer. The spacious, modern building, framed in latticed wood, overlooks Bremerhaven's Old Port, created in 1837 in large part to take advantage of the wave of emigration to America that began around then....
If the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbor tells the story of arrivals, the museum in Bremerhaven tells the story at the opposite end of the experience: the departure, not just to the United States but to Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia as well. But why a museum just now, so many years after large-scale European emigration to North America stopped?....
"In our global village, people are looking for their roots," said Lisa Kosok, the museum director in Hamburg.
While people look for roots - not a simple matter in Germany, where the search for roots, at least until recently, meant almost exclusively the roots of the country's Hitlerian disaster - cities look for identities....
In all, some 12 million people departed from Bremerhaven and Hamburg for the Western Hemisphere between the mid-19th century and 1974, when seaports as points of departure were entirely replaced by airports. Many of them were Germans, motivated by poverty, ambition, adventure, family quarrels and, especially after the Nazis came to power in 1933, by persecution. But many millions more were from the East - Russia, Poland, and the Baltic States - lured to Germany by what could be called entrepreneurs of emigration....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"A second nativist tradition was fear of foreign radicals. Many of these were German Forty-Eighters whose liberal ideas had fomented revolution in the fatherland. Brought here, those ideas were incorporated into documents such as The Louisville Platform, a political tract that opposed slavery and favored women's equality. To conservatives, these "foreign hordes in our midst" could not be trusted to vote, for in the ballot lay the "preservation of the Union," wrote Prentice.
"When the polls opened at 6 a.m., the lines were already long. Know-Nothings were given yellow tickets to expedite their voting, permitting them even to enter by alternate doors. Meanwhile, foreigners languished in ever longer lines in increasing heat. Reuben T. Durrett, attorney, editor and historian, recalled having no "difficulty in voting . . . although it was extremely hazardous for a foreigner, a Catholic, or a Democrat to get near the polls." In the German First and Second wards and the Irish Eighth, examination of naturalization papers slowed the process. To harken a contemporary problem, as many as 90 percent of the voters in those wards were disenfranchised. By noon, increasingly frustrated foreigners avoided the polls, while Know-Nothings went on to elect a governor and U.S. representative. By that time, gangs of Know-Nothings roamed the streets.
"..What is known is that Louisville's streets were filled with gangs of boys and men, some masked, drunk on whiskey, with firearms and clubs, out to kill foreigners.
"... In this German area, people were beaten and killed, windows broken, buildings burned and taverns destroyed...
"At the Courthouse, where there was much brawling, another mob formed. Taking a cannon from the grounds, the crowd followed Capt. D.C. Stone up Main Street to the head of Jefferson. Joined there by rioters from Shelby Street, their objective was Armbruster's Brewery, at the triangle formed by the intersection of Baxter Avenue, Jefferson and Green streets, from which shots were reportedly fired at passersby. After "liberating" the liquor, the building was burned. No one could escape without being shot, and seven or eight burned to death in its cellar. Indeed, by mid-afternoon 20 buildings were torched in that area.
"As day waned, attention turned to the Irish and the Eighth Ward. By 7 p.m., the mob was centered on 11th and Main streets. From a tenement house on Main's north side, Irish shot from the upper stories. In addition to several buildings, 12 structures owned by Francis Quinn were set ablaze. Here, too, no man, woman or child was permitted to escape (Quinn was shot while attempting to flee). Many burned to death as fire brigades were instructed to save only the surrounding properties. Continuing into Portland and to Cedar Grove Academy, legend has it that the appearance of St. Benedict halted the mob's advance. At midnight, the inky sky glowed crimson as fires burned themselves out. Meanwhile, the stench of death hung over the city.
"A new day brought to view the full horror as the August sun "drank the vapors from literal pools of blood that stagnated in our familiar streets," one newspaper reported. That morning, remains were taken to the coroner's office for the inquest. Among them were "a man and woman locked in each other's arms -- her head thrown between his breast and arm, as if to protect her face from the devouring flames." Two-thirds were foreign born. For these heinous acts, there was no justice done, with each inquest reporting, "Came to death at the hands of persons unknown."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.