Report on a trip to The Emigration Museum Ballinstadt
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Last Wednesday the students of class 11c of the Wirtschaftsgymnasium Weidenstieg went on a field trip to the emigration museum Ballinstadt in order to enlarge their knowledge about the current topic of the English class migration. First of all an employee of the museum gave us a short lecture in English on the exhibition mentioning and explaining its topics and history.
After this short introduction we were supposed to go around the vivid and bilingual exhibition for about an hour and fill out a questionnaire which requested information from all parts of it. The large exhibition is well designed because it not only provides informative texts but also multimedia devices as well as great models which for example picture a ship that transported emigrants making the exhibition very appealing. The topics the exhibition deals with particularly are Hamburg’s role as a main port for emigrants, Ballinstadt as their isolated quarter, the push and pull factors for them, the problems they faced before and during the journey to the US or South America in the 19th century as well as their life in the new world. However these topics were not only illustrated by models and mediums but also by specific examples of certain immigrants who accompany you with their story through the whole exhibition. Besides working in groups it was convenient to have a questionnaire as a guideline to show you what to look for in the detailed museum and on the other hand guarantee that everyone participates in the excursion.
Overall the exhibition was interesting even though it provided too much information for such a short visit but it accomplished its goal by giving us a better impression about the life as a migrant. (Marc Walter, 11c)