BallinStadt - Emigrant Museum Hamburg

Wonderful museum that tells a lot of stories about and around immigration - not just from Hamburg - and including legal frameworks and developments through the centuries. The exhibition is carefully and impeccably presented through 3 halls giving a lot of thought-provoking impulses, visual candies and places to sit down, listen and feeling through. Separatly I cannot but mention the children-friendly story that goes through the whole exhibition and presented by the cute little Jette the Rat. My schoolchildren liked it a lot. The only improvement I suggest is adding English texts to the mostly German ones. I am sure foreign visitors who are following the footsteps of their forefathers would greatly appreciate it. The museum grounds are taken good care of too and one can enjoy sitting in the young birch-trees shadows, taking a meal from the museum's cafe outside and savour it in the plaineair or make a picnic on the meadow nearby. We will definitely return here, bit for now - big thanks to the people behind this wonderful museum!

This museum has impressed the great work of the Ballin family, starting in business as an emigration agent and expanding to a full service transportation service for emigrants to travel from Hamburg Germany to other continents and ensuring the level of health required was achieved before sending the persons abroad. Children are addressed through the museum (4 stages) by the mascot mouse and various social activities in each area of the museum. Historical facts for most families!

A very important part of European heritage is being discussed and re-discovered here. Great work everyone! The audio guide was a great support otherwise there would be just too many stations to read and as we all know, concentration goes down after a while. In my opinion the 3rd house could have bit bigger exhibit overall I learned a lot throughout my visit there

Great museum, especially if you're looking for a basic introduction to or a broad refresher of migration issues. If visitors have already learned a lot about migration this might be repetitious, but there's always something to learn, even so. It doesn't appear the items displayed (steamer trunks, personal papers, etc.) are original, rather they look like they're meant to represent items important to migrants, rather than carefully curated originals. It would be nice of that were explained somewhere (and maybe I just missed it), otherwise visitors might be led to believe the items are real, actual items that belonged to migrants. Overall, good museum experience, and probably great to pair with the other emigration museum in Bremerhaven (although we didn't have time to go there yet). One note of caution: There are only three computer terminals with Ancestry dot com access; one in House 1, and two in House 3 by the cafe and small gift shop. If you intend to dig deeply into your family history here, there aren't many terminals and there will likely be lots of people who also wish to use them, and they'll be waiting in line behind you while you search.

The Museum is really cool, but is a bit strange If you go to a Emigrant Museum and the only language avaliable in the exhibition is German. In case you don't know the German language, the only other option to be able to understand what is in the exhibition there is to follow it in a book provided by the museum, however, they only have a single copy available. In addition, the exhibition often gives the impression that German emigrants are wonderful, that they are very well accepted anywhere and adapt easily, but immigrants arriving in Germany are a problem. This could be interpreted as a hint of xenophobia.

Its was good many things to see. Even if you dont wanna listen to the translate

We have visited the museum with 25 Spanish students to practice English. It's an exchange with das Goethe gymnasium in Lurup. Everything was nice 👍 but there was no information in English. German is the only language practically in all places so our students didn't get as much from it as we expected. THINK ABOUT English or audio guides

A great museum, 13 euros for adults (11 for students) and 7 for children. Easily achievable with S3 from the main railway station (a stop Veddel). You need at least 2-2,5 hours to see everything well. Lots of information: texts, paintings, multimedia on the screens, videos etc. I love how this museum combines the past and present: mixes information about emigration/people's stories from 19-20th centuries and from this century, so it's not only historic but telling about the today's situation with migrations. This museum inspires you to travel and makes you think about how many migrations were done in this world since centuries. You can learn a lot here! Exposition is located in 3 different houses (former houses of like "hotel for emmigrates", who were waiting here for their departure to other countries.) One part tells a history of German beer! Also a small souvenir shop and a cafeteria with some unusual beers, café, foods for 5-10 euros.

Unfortunately it's only in German. It feels a little uncoordinated when walking through the museum. There's just a lot of text/information everywhere. It was cool to see and I got a little information brochure in English, still I think such a museum, especially in such an international city like Hamburg, should offer it in both languages, German and English.

The BallinStadt Auswanderermuseum is located close to Veddel S-Bahn Station at the old location where the emigrants stayed before the left for their new lives. The museum explains the lives of the emigrants in Hamburg and shows where they emigrated to. It is also possible to search for ancestors but I was a bit disappointed that there was not a good explanation how to search.

This is a review for the museum cafe: Free parking. No wifi. Nice atmosphere. Very expensive macchiato which I was charged €2.80 for 200 ml. The average price in Hamburg is €2.30 for 400 ml, so to be charged this amount in one of Hamburg's poorest neighborhoods is out of order. If and only if the cafe's money supports the existence of the museum is this ok. This must be the reason this place is nearly empty at prime time (12:35 pm).

Welcome to the Auswanderermuseum BallinStadt in Hamburg aka museum about emigrantion. First of all: I will not join the overall praise for this museum. Now, 3 days after I visited it, I still think the quality of the exhibition is pretty mixed. I visited it with friends, both fluent in English and German, and we switched languages depending on which seemed to get us quicker through, because the museum was pretty crowded on the day of our visit. We both had intermediate to advanced knowledge of German history and emigration waves from Germany. I don't know how much you would get our of the exhibition if you are just searching for information where your ancestors are from. That's because the exhibition is pretty inconsistent. Albeit, the general layout makes sense: Situation in Germany and Eastern Europe Migration waves Destinations - the development of the ships and the ship passage Entering the new country (with a special focus on Ellis Island) Immigration Countries other than the USA/Canada (Brazil, Australia) famous immigrants who've made it. In another building the history of the BallinStadt is told, with the situation which led to the building of the barracks, their short-lived fate from 1901-1914 and the seemingly even shorter time between WW I and WW II. Plus the story about the back-then CEO of HAPAG, the shipping company that invented ship cruises and got big by shipping immigrants over the Big Pond. About the flaws in the concept: English vs. German: Everything is labelled in English in German, but the German label dominate, the English is always a bit shorter and layouted in a smaller font. Bigger picture vs. individual story: In the beginning you are confronted with six individuals, which should guide you through the exhibition and tell you their story. They literally tell you their story, which might be longer with the one and quicker with the other. Unfortunately you cannot skip when you dialled the wrong language, you have to wait until they are finished. On crowded days, you have to stand in line, there are only two earphones per puppet, and you can dial only one language at a time for both earphones. And in the end you find out the six individuals don't really guide you through. You just see them back at the end of the exhibition, then they tell you what their life is like not that they are away from home for a couple of month or years. There is no alternative way to find out about their fate, you either wait and here or you don't find out about them. During the different stages of the migration, there are different individuals who show up and just present one piece of information, you don't get informed what their background is, et cetera. So if they already put such an efford in telling an individual's story, why don't they use it to describe the different stages of emigration better? History of BallinStadt There is a lot of pictures and exhibition objects which are not labelled, and you might only get the meaning of it later on, if you get it. Conclusion: Ok, we learned a lot, and I think for kids it might be funny to run through a ship which changes from early 18th century to early 20th century within a few meters. But there is a lot that is forbidden to touch (not a good idea with kids). The fact that a lot of exhibition objects are not labelled and you might learn to know what it was waaayyy later is annoying. The entrance fee is 12 EUR, which is not cheap. As the museum is not publicly funded, it is heavily sponsored, f.e. by Ancestry.com. This is a bit ironic, because the digitalization of the archieves is publicly funded, so it is a strange kind of private-public partnership.