Archive of the Month: From New York to Bremen 1859

In the new series "Archive of the Month", the German Maritime Museum (DSM) / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History will present a special treasure from the archive every month starting in January 2023. The start is made by the pasted travel album of Georg Papendiek, a German-American with Bremen roots, who visits his old old home in 1859.

A family trip from New York to Bremen on the NDL steamer BREMEN is documented in a pasted album from 1859.
Georg Papendiek visited his parents in Bremen that year for the first time in 14 years. At just twenty years of age, he had settled in America as a merchant. With him to Bremen came his wife Sarah Jane from Boston, their five-year-old son Ernest Albert and their one-year-old daughter Eleanor. When the family reached the city on May 30, Georg wrote: "[...] at about one o'clock we caught the first glimpse of Bremen, the sight of which, after so long an absence naturally filled me with peculiar emotions." In the album he documented on 22 pages for his family in America mainly the sights of Bremen. The 29 illustrations in contemporary printing techniques and one watercolor drawing clearly demonstrate the beginning of Bremen's marketing not only as a destination for emigrants and merchants but also for educational travelers.