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September 19, 2006
Ever Think About Your Ancestors? Here's A Possible Solution
Faithful readers of my blog might remember a post about two years ago on the Edelman family's journey from Russia and Poland, through Hamburg to New York City. I discovered that my paternal grandparents, Selig Edelman and Selma Pfeiffer, came separately to the United States as children. My grandfather, Selig, was a six year old who left his home in Minsk, Russia accompanied by his mother and his two sisters, leaving Hamburg on the ship Warrington in 1888. His father, a rabbi, Abraham Isaac Edelman, had gone ahead to earn money to fund the trip across the Atlantic. My grandmother, Selma, three years old, came with her entire family from Kalisch, Poland, including her musician father Heinrich, landing in New York in 1890. This was a great revelation to my father, who had always thought of himself of German extraction.
So enough of the Edelman family history, on to the real story, which is the opportunity for all of you in the blogosphere with relatives from Eastern Europe who came to the US from 1850-1934, to trace your own lineage. Hamburg was the preferred port of departure for many Russians, Poles, Czechs and Rumanians, especially Jews, going to North and South America. The neighboring Bremen was the port for Germans leaving for the New World in that period. In fact five million people came through Hamburg to Ellis Island, the immigration point prior to entry to New York City. The City of Hamburg has complete records, including shipping manifests, photos of the ships and emigration records, for that entire period.
The Mayor of Hamburg, Ole von Beust, visited my home last night to review plans for BallinStadt, Port of Dreams, a museum complex devoted to the stories of the emigration from Europe to the US. This 12 million Euro project will open on July 4, 2007. It is utilizing two of the buildings that were constructed by Albert Ballin, a German entrepreneur who operated the Hamburg America shipping line. At any given moment, 5,000 emigrants were in BallinStadt preparing for their voyage.
Should you wish to access your family's history, please contact Reinhard Wolf, chairman of the board of the Hamburg Maritime Foundation at reinhard.wolf@hk24.de or Jens Nitschke, the designer of the complex at j.nitschke@leisureworks.de.
Does any of this matter? Consider this quote from Ben Franklin, whose grave site I visited over the summer during an idle moment between meetings in Philadelphia (yes, I fill up spare time by going to historic sites...as I tell my wife, I could have a lot more dangerous vices!). "The Body of Ben Franklin, Printer. Like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stript of its lettering and gilding. Lies here food for worms but the work shall not be lost for it will as he believed appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, corrected and improved by the author." Whether literally or figuratively, Franklin makes the case for continuity and tradition. We should heed his admonition.
PS: I wanted to comment on the recent controversy caused by the remarks made by the Pope during his trip to Germany. The incident demonstrates the pitfalls of our sound bite culture for leaders offering a hypothesis with the intention of knocking it down. For any leader giving a speech in this environment, he or she must realize that any piece of their remarks can be taken out of context. It is critical to review speeches paragraph by paragraph, not only as a whole.
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Germany, Hamburg, Ancestors
Posted by Edelman at September 19, 2006 4:13 PM
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