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, this 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 in 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

Keepsakes – small and large

Object story

Moving Piety

History of a Silesian crib
The family crib was so important to his father that he took it with him when he emigrated to the USA. The report of a donor reveals what happened between its production in Waldenburg and the return to Europe, which made its donation to Haus Schlesien in Königswinter possible.
Silke Findeisen
Object story

A Transylvanian church fur from South Africa

Among the numerous pieces of traditional costume at the Transylvanian Museum in Gundelsheim is one whose change of ownership and the resulting journey render it a fitting symbol of the collective fate of entire families, indeed entire Saxon village communities from northern Transylvania in the 20th...
Irmgard Sedler
Object story

Symbols of enduring hope

A bunch of keys from Marienburg
When they fled, many refugees hoped that they would be able to return later. A bunch of keys from Marienburg, which has been preserved in the West Prussian State Museum, bears witness to this hope.
Martin Steinkühler
Object story

Silent witness

A baby's cardigan and two certificates
Nothing is more closely connected with the circumstances of flight and expulsion than the experience of loss. Three touching objects from the years 1944/1945, which are now in the East Prussian state museum with German-Baltic department in Lüneburg, bear witness to this.
Jörn Barfod
Object story

Max Mannheimer and his silver-gray Tatra 87

Max Mannheimer (1920-2016) was an institution, as a painter and storyteller, as a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Dachau Camp Community.
Peter Becher
Object story

Not a Moment to Lose

A whole village flees
In 1944, the entire German-speaking population of the village of Novo Selo in Yugoslavia flee for their their lives as the Red Army approaches. Among them is the Neuburger family, who travel by horse-drawn wagon via Hungary to Austria.
DZM-Team
Object story

Down the Danube in the Ulm Box

A flat-bottomed wooden boat with a hut on top, sides painted in black and white stripes, and two very long oars at the front and back – that's an "Ulmer Schachtel" (Ulm box). This vessel, which seems curious today, was once an important means of transport on the Danube.
DZM-Team
Object story

Farewell after 500 years

The Niebelschütz family flees Gleinitz
A document in the Silesian Museum in Görlitz testifies to the acquisition of the village of Gleinitz by the brothers Nikolaus, Georg and Ladislaus von Niebelschütz in 1446. It was only by chance that the descendent of the Niebelschütz family, Harald von Niebelschütz, then 15 years old, saved the...
Markus Bauer