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Abstract
Several exhibitions in recent years – in the ‘Deutsches Auswandererhaus’ Bremerhaven and other museums in Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States – have used suitcases (and ‘the suitcase’) as a central symbol and metaphor for the migration process. Based on a variety of examples, the article discusses the idea and the use of memory containers – and their function as archives – in the context of emigration, transmigration, and immigration. Suitcases are the most obvious material objects relating to these processes and the connected cultural practices. They are concrete objects, but beyond that they have been used as symbols and metaphors for the experience of travel and of dislocation. Suitcases often contained, and therefore are connected to, other items of memory storage: photographs and personal documents (letters, diaries about the migration experience – documents that have been termed, in a different context, ‘Schreibakte auf der Schwelle’ – acts of writing on the threshold); manuscripts, farewell letters (written on the boat, in border stations, in port cities), memorial and yizkor books, songs and poems, self-drawn maps which show the stations of the journey. An analysis of such ‘things’ – material objects which often carried an emotional value – and their representation in museums and exhibitions opens up a wide and rich field of research for the ethnography of migration.
Notes
1. Christian Staas, “Letzte Zuflucht. Die Geschichte der jüdischen Auswanderung nach Palästina,” Die Zeit, February 19, 2009, http://www.zeit.de/zeit-geschichte/2008/04/auswanderung-palaestina (my translation).
2. The book presents ‘a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. … With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment’. See http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html (accessed January 28, 2012).
3. Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma. Geography’s Visual Culture (Milton Park, NY: Routledge 2000), 36.
4. Ibid., 1.
5. Ibid., 36–7.
6. Jan Hinrichsen, “Der Koffer im Museum. Ein Metasymbol für Migration,” in Reisebegleiter, ed. Claudia Selheim (Nürnberg: Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, 2010); see also his unpublished MA thesis “Ausgestellter Zwischen-Raum. Musealisierte Koffer als Symbol des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Untersuchung im Kontext von Flucht, Vertreibung und Migration” (MA diss., Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, 2010).
7. Cf. Joachim Schlör, “‘Alte Wege, die wir wandern’. Vagabondage in Repräsentationen des Jüdischen,” in Das Figurativ der Vagondage. Kulturanalysen mobiler Lebensweisen, ed. Johanna Rolshoven and Maria Maierhofer (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), 143–62.
8. The ‘Preußen-Ausstellung’ of 1981 was curated by Reinhard Rürup, a veteran of German-Jewish history, and my own Doktorvater Gottfried Korff.
9. For the materiality of suitcases and their ‘constructedness’ as material objects, see Andrea Mihm, Packend… Eine Kulturgeschichte des Reisekoffers (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2001); Andrea Mihm, Alle Koffer fliegen hoch! Von der Hartschale zum Weichgepäck; die Ge-schichte der Reisebegleiter (Berlin: Westermann Kommunikation, 1993).
10. For Australia, a promising PhD dissertation is in preparation. Eureka Henrich’s article “Suitcases and Stories: Objects of Migration in Museum Exhibits,” International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 3, no. 4 (2010): 71–82, http://www.ma2010.com.au/docs/ma2010_henrich.pdf, is part of her thesis, supervised by Dr Grace Karskens at the University of New South Wales. Entitled “Whose Stories are we Telling? Exhibitions of Migration History in Australian Museums, 1986 – 2001,” this is a cross-institutional comparative history of immigration exhibitions over the past three decades.
11. http://www.19princeletstreet.org.uk/ (accessed December 4, 2009).
12. http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/about-us/ (accessed December 4, 2009).
13. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nyc100/html/imm_stories/museum/index.html (accessed December 4, 2009).
14. http://www.dah-bremerhaven.de/english/english.html (accessed January 26, 2012).
15. http://www.ballinstadt.net/BallinStadt_emigration_museum_Hamburg/english_Abenteuer_Auswanderung_Hauptausstellung_im_Auswanderermuseum_BallinStadt_der_Leisureworkgroup_Jens_Nitschke_Erlebnisarchitekt.html (accessed January 26, 2012). The exhibition in Ballinstadt has been heavily criticized because the ‘stories’ that the puppets tell are not authentic, but rather compiled out of several testimonies in order to create ‘typical’ stories.
16. http://www.epiz-berlin.de/?Service/Wanderausstellung (accessed December 4, 2009); see also a project http://www.koffer-fuer-berlin.de/text2.htm (accessed January 26, 2012), which refers to the German-Jewish emigration during the 1930s.
17. http://www.migrationmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/100-Images-of-Migration-primary-school-teaching-resource.pdf (accessed January 26, 2012).
18. http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/ (accessed December 4, 2009).
19. http://www.ndr.de/kultur/ausstellungen/hamburg/hamburg76.html (accessed December 4, 2009).
20. Cataldo Perri, Bastimenti. CD, Squlibri Editore, Roma, 2002.
21. ‘Geplant ist eine Ausstellung noch vorhandener Koffer von Emigranten aus aller Welt, mit denen sie während der NS-Zeit Berlin verlassen mussten.’
22. http://www.koffer-fuer-berlin.de/text2.html (accessed December 6, 2009); see also Andrea Mihm, Packend… Eine Kulturgeschichte des Reisekoffers and Alle Koffer fliegen hoch!
23. Joachim Baur, Die Musealisierung der Migration. Einwanderungsmuseen und die Inszenierung der multikulturellen Nation (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009).
24. Rainer Ohliger has been most active in promoting the idea of a German Migration Museum; see Jan Motte and Rainer Ohliger, “Men and Women with(out) History? Looking for a ‘Lieux de Memoire’ in Germany’s Immigration Society,” in Enlarging European Memory. Migration Movements in Historical Perspective, ed. Mareike König and Rainer Ohliger (Ostfildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 2006), 147–60.
25. See the programme at http://www.domit.de/pdf/Programm_Inventur_Migration_2009.pdf (accessed December 4, 2009).
26. See the programme at http://www.overseaschineseconfederation.org/events/Conference/STADT.doc (accessed December 4, 2009).
27. “Crisis and Imagination,” 11th EASA Biennial Conference, Maynooth/Ireland, August 24–27, 2010, http://www.volkskunde.org/wp/?p=226 (accessed January 28, 2012).
28. “Reading for Child and Youth Care People,” The International Child and Youth Care Network 75 (April 2005), http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0405-suitcaseproject.html (March 22, 2011).
29. Silke Arnold-de Simine, “Das Museum als Vermittlungsinstanz von Migrationserfahrungen,” German as a Foreign Language 3 (2008): 55, http://www.gfl-journal.de/3-2008/arnold-de-simine.pdf (accessed January 26, 2012).
30. “Routes, Roads and Landscapes: Aesthetic Practices en route, 1750–2015,” A KULVER supported research project at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Mari Hvattum, Brita Brenna, Beate Elvebakk and Lars Frers), http://routes.no/the-project/ (accessed March 24, 2011).
31. See for the Jewish experience Barbara E. Mann, Space and Place in Jewish Studies, Key Words in Jewish Studies, II (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012).
32. See Charlotte Fonrobert’s review of three publications connected to the “Makom” project at Potsdam University, “The New Spatial Turn in Jewish Studies,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009): 155–64.
33. Julia Brauch, Anna Lipphardt, and Alexandra Nocke, eds., Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place, Heritage, Culture, and Identity Series (London: Ashgate, 2008).
34. Diana Pinto, “Are there Jewish Answers to Europe’s Questions?,” http://www.paideia-eu.org/PintoAreThereJewishAnswersToEuropesQuestions.pdf (accessed February 23, 2009); Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); see also Jewish Culture and History 9, no. 2/3, “Place and Displacements in Jewish History and Memory,” (special issue) with sections on “Place, Displacement and Belonging,” “Race, Place and Periphery,” and “Place, Migration and Memory Works.”
35. James Clifford, Routes. Travel and Translation in the late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 66.
36. My research paper “Irgendwo auf der Welt: The Emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany as a Transnational Experience” will be published in a collection on German Jewry and Transnationalism, edited by Leslie Morris and Jay Geller. I am also preparing a larger research project on Mapping the Promised Lands that will try to collect and analyze such maps.
37. K. Tölölian, “The Nation State and its Others: In lieu of a Preface,” Diaspora 1, no. 1 (1991): 5.
38. For a discussion of the act of carrying and its cultural meanings, see the work of an interdisciplinary research group at Mannheim University, ‘Homo portans’. Studies in economic and social history as well as a central gender perspective provide information about different aspects of the cultural practice of carrying and transporting objects as a prerequisite for every form of human life, for mobility as well as for stability. See Vanessa Wormer’s report about a conference at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden, May 19–21, 2011, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=3809, and the project homepage http://homo-portans.de/ (accessed January 26, 2012).
39. Gilles Deleuze, “On the Movement-Image,” trans. Martin Joughin, Negotiations: 1972–1990 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Bernhard Waldenfels, Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden I (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1997).
40. Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace, Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and. Imagined Places (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
41. Jonathan Boyarin, ed., Remapping Memory: The Politics of TimeSpace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), Charlotte Fonrobert and Vered Shemtov, “Introduction,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 3, New series (Spring/Summer 2005): 1–8. http://www.muse.jhu.edu/journals/jewish_social_studies/toc/jss11.3.html (accessed December 4, 2009).
42. Michel Foucault, “Of other Spaces” Diacritics, 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1986): 22–27.
43. Bridget Elliott and Anthony Purdy, “Man in a Suitcase: Tulse Luper at Compton Verney” (2005), http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/tulseluper/elliot_purdy.htm (accessed January 28, 2012).
44. See Kerstin Poehl’s paper “Beyond the Suitcase: On the Musealization of Migration,” presented at the conference “Crossings: The Nexus of Migration and Culture,” Queen Mary, University of London, July 1–2, 2010, and her article “Zeigewerke des Zeitgeistes. Migration, ein ‘boundary object’ im Museum,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 106, no. 2 (2010): 225–46.
45. Shirli Gilbert, “Buried Monuments. Yiddish Songs and Holocaust Memory,” History Workshop Journal 66, no. 1 (2008): 109; Marie Gibert has organized a conference “Music and Migration” at the Centre for Transnational Studies, University of Southampton, in October 2009.
46. “Editorial,” Musicology, Belgrade, no. 3 (2003).
47. Fred McCormick, Review of “Voice of the People, Vol. 4,” http://www.mustrad.org.uk/vop/654.htm (accessed December 4, 2009).
48. Sergio Piovesan, “I canti dell’emigrazione,” http://www.coromarmolada.it/I%20canti%20dell'emigrazione.htm (my translation; accessed December 4, 2009); for Mexican immigration, see Maria Herrera-Sobek, Northward Bound: The Mexican Immigrant Experience in Ballad and Song (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993).
49. Mark Slobin, Tenement Songs. The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (Urbana, Chicago and London: The University of Illinois Press, 1982).
50. Seattle’s Experience Music Project published an “Elementary Teacher’s Guide” to immigration and migration: http://www.empsfm.org/documents/education/13A_Elementary_teacher_guide_English.pdf (accessed December 4, 2009).
51. Arbeitsgruppe Exilmusik, Lebenswege von Musikerinnen im “Dritten Reich” und im Exil (Hamburg: von Bockel, 2000); C.D. Krohn et al., eds., Aspekte der künstlerischen inneren Emigration 1933–1945, Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch Bd. 10 (München: Edition text+kritik, 1994); Hanns-Werner Heister, Claudia Maurer Zenck, and Peter Petersen, eds., Musik im Exil. Folgen des Nazismus für die internationale Musikkultur (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 1993); Horst Weber, ed., Musik in der Emigration 1933–1945. Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Rückwirkung (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1993); Habakuk Traber and Emil Weingarten, eds., Verdrängte Musik. Berliner Komponisten im Exil (Berlin: Argon, 1987).
52. Ulrich Meurer and Maria Oikonomou, “Fremdbilder – Aspekte geographischer und medialer Bewegung,” in Fremdbilder. Auswanderung und Exil im internationalen Kino (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 9–33 (my translation).
53. Johannes Moser and Daniella Seidl, eds., Dinge auf Reisen. Materielle Kultur und Tourismus, Münchner Beiträge zur Volkskunde, 38 (Münster etc.: Waxmann Verlag, 2009).
54. Doerte Bischoff and Joachim Schlör, eds., Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, Band 31/2013: Dinge des Exils (München: text + Kritik 2013); see also Peter Jackson, “Commodity Cultures: The Traffic in Things,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 24 (1999): 95–108, and Jane Webster, “Looking for the Material Culture of the Middle Passage”, Journal for Maritime Research (December 2005), http://www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk/server.php?show=conJmrArticle.209 (accessed December 4, 2009).
55. Joachim Schlör, “‘Take down Mezuzah, Remove Name-Plates’: The Emigration of Material Objects from Germany to Palestine,” in Jewish Cultural Studies, vol. 1: Jewishness: Expression, Identity, and Representation, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Oxford: The Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008), 142.
56. See Mariane Brentzel, Nesthäkchen kommt ins KZ. Eine Annäherung an Else Ury (Berlin: edition ebersbach, 1993).
57. Jüdische Zeitung, February 2008, http://www.j-zeit.de/archiv/artikel.970.html (accessed March 8, 2014).
58. Hana Nermut, “My Private Holocaust Memorial,” AJR Review (February 2008), http://www.ajr.org.uk/index.cfm/section.journal/issue.Feb08/article=1032 (accessed December 4, 2009).
59. Bernhard Siegert, Passagiere und Papiere. Schreibakte auf der Schwelle zwischen Spanien und Amerika (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006).
60. There are some rare occasions where not only the suitcase as an object has been preserved but also its contents. The regional German daily Siegener Zeitung reported that the contents of a suitcase, found at a garage sale or bulk trash and brought to the local archives at Hilchenbach, are now being scrutinized by a local history teacher. She met historian Gideon Greif during a trip to Israel, and he told her that he, as many others, would be interested in every little bit of paper that could help us reconstruct the history of the Holocaust. The small suitcase with the Lloyd label, bears the initials ‘C.W.’ and belonged to a Jewish lawyer, Dr Curt Waldmann from Breslau. It contains documents and papers relating the story of a man, born in 1883 to a well-established Jewish family, who was married to a non-Jewish wife. Waldmann was banned from his profession and had to work as a street cleaner, his plans to emigrate were unsuccessful, and in February 1945 he took his own life. His widow moved to Hilchenbach as a German refugee from the East and brought the suitcase along. http://www.siegener-zeitung.de/a/398347 (accessed January 26, 2012).