Abstract:
The topics that museums as institutions of collective memory deal with vary due to changing trends in historiography. Only recently, immigration and emigration are discovered as part of national histories in Europe and hence are by and by integrated in existing museums or become a matter of exhibitions and newly established museums. This research relates the commemoration of migration in the museum context to a change in national self-conceptions and also to current Europeanization processes. For a long time history and with it collective memory was thought in terms of a national frame of reference. At the sight of Europeanization processes, the question of European "lieux de mé-moire" ( Etienne François) such as museums are more and more discussed and migration history is recognised as a factor of identification with the European project. This paper focuses on the "Deutsches Auswandererhaus" in Bremerhaven, one of two recently opened museums in Germany that deal with emigration. Special attention will be moreover paid to a touristic trip on a cruise which starts from Bremerhaven and follows the emigrants' traces to America. At the example of this cruise, different concepts of the musealisation of migration will be discussed and it will be argued in how far a ship as "mobile museum" which generates a transatlantic space of commemoration is privileged to demonstrate the history of mobile societies.

Keywords: museum, cruise, event tourism, memory, migration in Europe

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