Ruhleben emigration station

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The remaining barracks at the Ruhleben emigration station until 2012
At the Ruhleben emigration station
(illustration from the gazebo from 1895)

The emigrants station resting life was 1891-1914 a transit and control station for emigrants on the Berlin-Hamburg railway near the freight station Ruhleben west of the former Berlin city limits. Here the emigrants from the east had to register, disinfect and have a medical examination before they were allowed to travel on to the ports in Bremerhaven and Hamburg . The station was operated by the transport companies HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd in order to be able to better control the emigration flows.

prehistory

At the end of the 19th century, various factors led to Berlin becoming more and more an important transit station for emigrants: around 1880 the third major wave of emigration to the United States began . While in 1880 the share of Eastern Europeans in emigrants from German ports was only 13%, it quickly increased to over 50% after 1891. Reasons included anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in 1882 , but also developed for Russian Germans and the Eastern European rural population in general the situation in their home countries turns negative. Thanks to the completion of the Prussian Eastern Railway from Eydtkuhnen to Berlin, traveling from Eastern Europe to the overseas ports has been considerably simplified.

Before the emigration station was set up, emigrants mainly arrived at Ost- and Schlesisches Bahnhof and then had to go to Lehrter or Hamburger Bahnhof to catch a train going west from there. The waiting rooms at Berlin train stations were often overcrowded with a few 100 people passing through, which led to complaints at the railway management .

Operation of the station

Site plan of the station building from the central sheet of the building administration from 1893

When the authorities realized that the flow of emigrants passing through would not stop so quickly, it was decided to set up a separate train station outside Berlin between Ruhleben and Spandau , which the trains from then on would stop in Berlin without stopping. The emigration station started operating on November 11, 1891.

Such transit stations had two important functions for the transport companies: On the one hand, the disinfection carried out there should prevent any outbreaks of disease in the emigration halls of the overseas ports. On the other hand, the controls were directed against those emigrants who could be turned away in the United States according to the new immigration laws and sent back at the expense of the transport companies.

In the waiting room
(illustration from the gazebo from 1895)

There were three accommodation barracks on the site for about 200 people each. Rooms for ticket sales, supervisory officers and emigration agents were added to the middle hall. There was also a disinfection facility with shower rooms, an isolation ward with 24 beds, a canteen and a massive building with four bedrooms for six people each. Later, a building with a kitchen wing erected by the Jewish aid organization was added.

The barracks made of corrugated iron were clad with wood. The two largest were 80 m long, 10 m wide and 6 m high. The heating was carried out with iron stoves placed in the middle of the room, from which an iron flue pipe led directly through the ceiling to the outside.

The disinfection facility was set up due to the great Hamburg cholera epidemic of 1892 . Hamburg and Bremen threatened the transport companies with a complete blockage of their urban area for emigrants and from then on demanded a medical control card from Ruhleben as a condition for embarkation. In addition, a hospital with 12 beds was built next to the barracks at the emigration station.

The end

United States Immigration Numbers by Region of Origin

In 1909, the Ruhleben trotting track was relocated to an area directly to the east of the emigration station, as a residential area was to be created at its original location . For fear of the spread of infectious diseases, the decision was made to relocate the less attractive train station further west to Wustermark . The move was planned for 1915, but did not take place anymore because emigration from Eastern Europe via Germany came to a complete standstill during the First World War .

The emigration station was closed in 1914. After the war , the number of emigrants no longer reached the pre- war level, also because of the continuously stricter immigration regulations in the United States up to the quota regulation of 1921 . In 1913 alone, more than 193,000 so-called migrants had passed through the Ruhleben emigration station.

The remaining accommodation barrack of the former emigration station was demolished after the monument protection was lifted in August 2012. The Lower Monument Authority of the Spandau district approved the demolition in agreement with the Upper Monument Authority, which is part of the Senate, due to economic unreasonableness. Before the demolition, the monument office searched the object for any remaining relics, but found nothing that would have been interesting for preservation. The demolition met with criticism in the Spandau district council meeting because the committee for education and culture had not been informed.

See also

literature

  • Mary Antin : From the ghetto to the land of promise. R. Lutz, Stuttgart 1913, pp. 196-198 ( pds.lib.harvard.edu ).
  • Tobias Brinkmann: Traveling with Ballin: The Impact of American Immigration Policies on Jewish Transmigration within Central Europe, 1880-1914. In: International Review of Social History. 53, 2008, pp. 459-484.
  • Nicole Kvale Eilers: Bremerhaven. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 411-416.
  • Arne Hengsbach: Station of the European women. The history of the emigration station in Ruhleben. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins , 70th year, 1974, pp. 420–429, zlb.de (PDF).
  • Karin Schulz: The emigration station Ruhleben - eye of the needle to the west. In: Die Reise nach Berlin (exhibition catalog). Siedler, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88680-270-1 , pp. 237-241.
  • The emigrant train station in Ruhleben near Spandau . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . tape 13 , no. 14 , 1893, p. 142-143 ( digital.zlb.de ).
  • Richard Nordhausen: The emigrant train station in Ruhleben . In: The Gazebo . Volume 9, 1895, pp. 140–142 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Emigration station Ruhleben  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schulz: The emigration station Ruhleben - eye of the needle to the west. 1987, p. 237.
  2. ↑ Anzeiger für das Havelland , October 15, 1882. From: Jews in Central Europe, 2007 edition (PDF; 1.1 MB).
  3. ↑ Schulz: The emigration station Ruhleben - eye of the needle to the west. 1987, p. 240.
  4. ↑ Spandauer Anzeiger for the Havelland , April 10, 1912, quoted from Schulz: The emigration station Ruhleben - bottleneck to the west. 1987, p. 240.
  5. ^ Arne Hengsbach: Station of the European women. The history of the emigration station in Ruhleben. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin. 70th year, 1974, p. 424, zlb.de (PDF).
  6. ↑ a b Schulz: The emigration station Ruhleben - eye of the needle to the west. 1987, p. 241.
  7. ↑ Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
  8. ↑ Michael Uhde: The decision was made with the monument protection authority . In: Spandauer Volksblatt . January 15, 2013 ( berliner-woche.de ).

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '49.6 "  N , 13 ° 13' 25.4"  E