Objects tell migration stories

They are suitcases, keys or small possessions that people take with them when they leave their homes - either to find a better life far away, or because they are threatened and persecuted or forcibly relocated. These objects are often later tied to memories of their former lives and the path they had to travel. Individual stories like this make migration comprehensible. They can give us a glimpse of great happiness or of suffering we can hardly fathom.

Suitcase Stories

With Grandma's Laundry Basket, Running for our Lives
Object Story
A nondescript woven wicker basket stands in the storeroom of the Martin Opitz Library in Herne. The handles on either side indicate that it might once have served as a laundry basket. With its four rather makeshift wheels, however, the basket tells more than just a family story; it also tells of...
André Wilbrandt
Swimming to Freedom
Gernot Eamandi's Backpack
Object Story
On the night of May 22-23, 1979, 36-year-old Gernot Eamandi swims across the heavily guarded Danube from Romania to Yugoslavia. His destination: the Federal Republic of Germany. With him: a backpack from his army days.
DZM-Team
From Sample Case to Museum Piece
Object Story
Over 100 years, and it's still on the move – despite its rather plain appearance, this old brown case has had a rather impressive "career". It was once a sample case for woolen fabrics, a trusted companion on vacation trips, a means of transportion on the run and a piece of furniture in the bare...
Silke Findeisen
A Doctor and his Military Case
Object Story
In March 2015, a military case from the First World War was donated to the Transylvanian Museum. It accompanied Dr. Wilhelm Hager during World War I to the southern front – to Bosnia and the Isonzo, and then to the eastern front, to Galicia, Bukovina, Bessarabia and, finally, in 1918 to South...
Irmgard Sedler
"What you can carry on your own"
The School Suitcase of Little Elsa Beck
Object Story
On November 18 1944, nine-year-old Elsa Beck flees the Hungarian village of Máriakéménd with her mother and sister. Elsa's mother allows her to take with her what she can carry herself. Elsa decides to take her school suitcase. Today, it is held in the Danube Swabian Central Museum in Ulm.
DZM-Team
Home in a trunk of clothes - the Garlik family's traditional costume suitcase
Object Story
This suitcase has traveled far – not, as one might expect, after the Second World War, but rather in the decades after the flight of the Nessner family. It was used to transport the traditional costumes of a Danube Swabian dance troupe from Baden-Württemberg as they toured to enclaves of Danube...
DZM-Team
Wroclaw - Shanghai - Munich
A Wardrobe Trunk Testifies to the Fate of a Wroclaw Jew
Object Story
A special object was donated to the Silesian Museum on Görlitz in November 2014: a large, solidly built wardrobe trunk. This imposing piece of luggage and furniture bears the markings of long journeys and intensive use. In 1939, it accompanied Herbert Schneidemann on his escape to Shanghai.
Markus Bauer
Edina's beach bag
"I felt the uprooting and horror in Edina's soul."
Object Story
A blue and white striped bag with white handles - at first glance an inconspicuous beach bag. But it tells the moving story of the then 33-year-old Edina Rizvanović's flight from what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina to Ulm.
DZM-Team
A toolbox with a secret compartment
An object in the Museum of Russian-German Cultural History in Detmold is a bearer of secrets in several respects
Object Story
Many museum objects hold secrets: Not infrequently, their origin and maker, their age, or their various owners are hardly known, if at all. Often, one has to rely on assumptions and guesses. A toolbox from present-day Kazakhstan, however, is a bearer of secrets in more ways than one.
Nico Wiethof

Objects tell migration stories

Suitcase Stories

With Grandma's Laundry Basket, Running for our Lives

Swimming to Freedom

From Sample Case to Museum Piece

A Doctor and his Military Case

"What you can carry on your own"

Home in a trunk of clothes - the Garlik family's traditional costume suitcase

Wroclaw - Shanghai - Munich

Edina's beach bag

A toolbox with a secret compartment

Keepsakes – small and large

Moving Piety

A Transylvanian church fur from South Africa

Symbols of enduring hope

Silent witness

Max Mannheimer and his Silver-Gray Tatra 87

Not a Moment to Lose

Down the Danube in the Ulm Box

Farewell after 500 years