In this period when we cannot travel, we will bring places and special curiosities for you, through interviews with people who work and care for the attractions and places that we love so much.
We started with the Hamburg International Maritime Museum (IMMH – Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg), an unmissable museum, to understand the history of navigation. Our interviewee is Damián. He is Spanish, lives in Hamburg, and is a museum historian.
Each floor of the museum is called a Deck, and will appear in the text. 😊
We are very happy to work with you again! My last story was in 2016. What has changed in the museum since then? (In 2016, we did an article about the museum, which is in Viagem Hamburg).
Yes! Through social networks, I see that there is a lot of interest, in Brazil and Portugal, even though I don’t have materials that are not in English or German. The biggest change was that we went a long way in translating texts from the materials exposed into English, it was something that was missing. There are thousands of texts, some shorter, some not, and since the end of 2017, we have been translating these texts. In other words, the museum is now more bilingual, more accessible. And the most spectacular change – which is also related to Hamburg and South America – is that since 2019 we have started to receive Hamburg Süd’s historic collection. It is more than a century of Hamburg’s maritime history and the relationship between Hamburg and South America, as Hamburg Süd was the main company that united Hamburg to South America and until World War II, Hamburg Süd also carried passengers. There are passenger lists, still incomplete, that are not yet exposed, mainly passengers from America and Australia.
Could you tell us a little about the museum and its beginning?
The museum exists since 2008 and seeks to explain the maritime history of Humanity. Yes, it’s from Hamburg’s perspective, but it becomes an international issue whenever we talk about navigation and how ships can tell the story. The collection, however, begins in 1936, when the founder, Mr. Peter Tamm, at the age of 7, a sick day at home, receives from his mother a miniature in scale 1: 250 of a cargo ship from Hamburg. Then he starts to invest in more miniatures, and in this collection, of books, marine objects, because he wanted to be an admiral, something that did not happen. Mr. Tamm came from a traditional family of merchants from the port of Hamburg. He was a journalist at Hamburger Abendblatt, specializing in topics related to navigation – very relevant to the city of Hamburg – and became director of the publishing house Axel Springer.
At the age of 25, he acquired a miniature on a 1: 100 scale, much larger than the small ones he collected. In the 1980s, he retired, with what was probably the largest private collection in the world on navigation, and started to dedicate himself only to this. The collection is expanded with more miniatures, real boats, postage stamps, uniforms, historical documents. In the library alone, there are more than 500,000 volumes and 50,000 original shipbuilding plans. On a 1: 1250 scale, there are about 51 thousand miniatures! Mr. Tamm passed away in December 2016, but we say that he continues to collect, as the museum continues with the collection in his name.
And how did the collection become a museum?
In the 90s, he, who was an influential man, seeks a place in the city to transform his private collection into a museum, which until then was housed in a mansion, like an exhibition, but without the structure of a museum. The building in which the museum is located today is a warehouse from 1869, the oldest in Hamburg, which was used until the year 2000 and was empty at the time (the early 2000s). The building was assigned to the Mr. Tamm Foundation, as the building is part of the city’s historic heritage. And about 7 years later, in 2008, the old warehouse building opens as the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg. Today the director of the museum is his son, Peter Tamm.
What can visitors from Brazil find in the museum, related to the country?
We have Brazilian ships in the miniatures section, on the museum’s Deck 9. There is a section of the merchant navy and the military navy, in which Brazil is also represented in the collection of military uniforms and medals on the 4th floor. At the time of the fire at the Brazilian National Historical Museum, which was a tragedy, as a gesture of solidarity with my colleagues, I made a series of posts about our objects from and from the Brazilian Navy. On the 3rd floor, on the history of shipbuilding, there is a section with small boats and traditional boats from different peoples and there is a Brazilian raft.
The museum tries to have the navies of different countries represented and the Brazilian Navy is well represented. We have some objects from the Military Navy, like the foil. And even when there is no specific object from Brazil, there is a related one, such as a ship that carries ores from Brazil to Europe. We see this in the new exhibition of the Hamburg Süd collection, of Hamburg’s relationship with South America.
The theme of military navies, especially the Second World War, is a topic that arouses much interest. What do you consider a highlight of this theme in the museum?
In Deck 5 we have the history of military navies, from the Middle Ages to modern navies, from the XIX century to today. On this floor, we deal with the history of the American Civil War, which is very important for the history of the United States and for maritime history from a technological point of view. We then moved from the XIX century to the First and then World War II. We have some miniatures that show the technological evolution and the construction of these warships. We have the 1: 100 scale model of the Bismarck ship, alongside the Yamato warship of the Japanese imperial navy, which was the largest battleship ever built at the time.
The theme of World War II is dealt with in an exhaustive way. We have two parallel sections: one dedicated to submarine warfare and another dedicated to naval aviation, which are two extremely important aspects of World War II. These two sections also complete the historical and technological account of World War II navies. That is, if the visitor wants to know how warships evolved in the XX century, they will be happy with the Museum’s Deck 5.
Does the history of warships in the museum begin in the 19th century or is it, for example, related to the Classical Age?
What we call the Classical Age, or “Age of Sail”, in English, especially in Europe, between the XIV and XIX centuries, is a theme that we dealt with in the museum’s Deck 2. There, we speak of the first naval powers, such as the United Kingdom, Portugal, Turkey, and the exhibition that ends with the Napoleonic Wars, with the bust of Admiral Horatio Nelson. This floor (deck) of the museum, is dedicated only to sailing ships. We also have history since antiquity, we started with the Mediterranean, then the Viking ships, the caravels, China as a maritime power in the XIV century.
Is there anything about German emigrants in the museum?
Now with the Hamburg Süd collection, it is an important part of passenger transport and there are also lists with names. This new section will include more objects from Hamburg Süd that show Hamburg’s close relationship with the Americas. The passenger lists are not complete, but if anyone has questions about ancestors, they can send us by email. We can’t promise, but we try. We received questions from people about their great-grandparents, for example, who emigrated to the Americas on Hamburg Süd ships. Immigration is an important topic for us to understand the history of the merchant marine since the middle of the XIX century. Many of the big shipping companies in Hamburg and the world started doing business with this, as millions of European emigrants went to America. We had Hamburg Süd to the east coast of South America and Hapag (now Hapag-Lloyd) on the north line and took passengers, when passing through Chile, loading ships with raw materials, mainly phosphates for agriculture, and returning for Europe.
There are two spectacular models from the new collection that are arriving: one from 1918 and one from 1927, already on display at the museum, which is the Cap Polonio and Cap Arcona ships on Deck 6. They were passenger ships from Hamburg Süd and these original models were used by the company to advertise. The Cap Arcona ship has a dark history because it took prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp (near Hamburg) in 1945 and was signaled as a troop transport. Then it was bombed by English aviation and about 5,000 people died on this ship alone. But originally, the ship was a super-luxurious Ocean Liner that traveled Europe (Hamburg) and South America, stopping at Brazilian ports. The Cap Arcona model was made on a 1: 37.5 scale and is over 5 meters. It is an object loaded with history and visually spectacular.
What are the items that most interest visitors from other countries? For you, what is the highlight of the museum, which the visitor cannot miss?
There are several things. The highlights are very subjective, but from my point of view, the most spectacular items in the museum are the bone boats, made by prisoners of war. It is a unique collection in the world. There are 33 miniatures of ships built by prisoners of war during the Napoleonic Wars, with the bones of the remains of food. Twice a week, they had meat meals, that is, they are not human bones, but of the animals that were left. It is estimated that there are 650 miniatures like this in the world and 33 of them are here in the museum. It is the largest collection open to the public of these miniatures in the world.
One of the most fun objects is the 1:50 scale replica of the Queen Mary II passenger ship made of Lego. It is a replica of the ship that is at dock 17 of the company Blohm + Voss in the port of Hamburg. Everyone is fascinated by this huge Lego model, whether elderly or children. It is fun and very beautiful.
We also have a wonderful collection of maritime paintings, from the 17th to the XX century, but mainly from the XIX century. We have spectacular dioramas, such as the reconstruction of part of the port of Hamburg on a 1: 1250 scale with ships, in which you can see how the different commercial sectors of port work. The miniature of the Cap Arcona ship too.
What other museums, cities, or tourist attractions in Germany do you recommend to visitors?
Whoever comes to Hamburg, I recommend that you visit the Cap San Diego museum ship. It was a 1970s ship from Hamburg Süd, which is in the port of Hamburg. It’s Wonderful. I believe that anyone visiting Hamburg should also go to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. It is extremely interesting, and the people who work at the Memorial do an excellent job explaining the darkest part of the history of Hamburg, Germany, and also of humanity. Hum..and something that is not a museum … Yes, something I would recommend to visitors to Hamburg who wants to go out at night, is not to go to the Reeperbahn. Go to the most authentic bars in the St. Pauli neighborhood. The drink is cheaper, the atmosphere is more authentic and there are fewer tourists, as the Reeperbahn has become a sort of Disneyland for adult tourism. Go a little further north on St. Pauli, on the Karoviertel, or south on the Reeperbahn, near the port.
P.S. Our conversation was over the phone in late April 2020 and translated and transcribed by me viagemalemanha.com/quem-somos/.
We would like to thank Damián and the IMMH team once again for the interview and the material kindly provided for our post.
