Spurensuchen - english tourist programmes

Spurensuchen - Familienforschung & Stadtführung

Tourist Programmes all year round for individual travellers and small groups

Hamburg - Then and Now

Hamburg: a city bridging past, present and future – the "brewery of the Hanseatic League" characterised not only by the middle-class dwellings of the historic Deichstraße, the historic warehouse district in the Speicherstadt, the Fischmarkt, the old Elbtunnel and the Köhlbrandbrücke bridge, the spire of the Michel church and the crop of new buildings in the Hafencity, but also by the Blue Mosque, the old Kontorhaus office buildings and shopping arcades, the town hall and Reeperbahn, the Elbe river with its idyllic pathways and steps in the Blankeneser Treppenviertel and villas flanking the Elbchaussee, the romantic Alster lake bordered by consulate buildings and dreamy canals… All this and more will be subject to the critical scrutiny of contemporaries to provide an additional insight into the darker, more awkward sides of Hamburg’s history and strike a balance enabling us to form a picture of the city as a whole.

Programme: A guided tour of the city on foot and by public transport, lasting approx. 6 hours (including breaks), comprising a visit to the Michel church (interior/exterior) and tower, a souvenir, Hamburg-Card for public transport, and a stop-off at a local brewery. Price per person: 59 Euro.

Jewish Life in Hamburg – Between Synagogues and Stumbling Blocks

Jews have been living in Hamburg for more than 400 years. We will take up the trail of academics, ship owners and artists such as Ernst Cassierer, Anita Reè, Sabine Kalter, Albert Ballin and Heinrich Heine. We also find out about the Wolf brothers, the Hamburg comedian duo from the 1920s immortalized in the play "Jungs mit dem Tüdelband". On a walk through a residential area formerly inhabited mainly by Jews, we will see the ease with which they moved within the upper echelons of Hamburg society, discover the burgeoning wave of anti-Semitism that led to their displacement, exile or assassination and visit their places of suffering during the period of Nazi rule.

Programme: A guided tour of the city on foot and by public transport. The tour takes approx. 3 hours and includes a day ticket for the HVV transport system and a break for lunch or afternoon tea.

Shopping - From Luxury to Low-Budget

Hamburg is proud of its magnificent shopping arcades. At the same time – or even at the heart of these same arcades – we find a host of small, specialist shops built on tradition, where shopping becomes a pleasure and the international clothing labels we know so well are replaced by chic fashion, Hamburg style; shops where you can find one-off souvenirs for friends and family or original gifts for yourself, shops guaranteed to raise the pulse of model railway, chocolate and coffee fans... A shopping tour sprinkled with fascinating information about Hamburg society’s predilection for fashion through the ages.

The Hamburg Harbour and Working Life

The harbour is a part of the Hamburg cityscape which for many tourists never fails to conjure up romantic images of travels to distant shores and a seafarer’s love of his trade, to the tune of songs by Hans Albers and Freddy Quinn. But the harbour is a vibrant location that is today host to numerous shipyards, container handling docks, museums and warehouses.

We will be exploring the harbour on foot and by barge, focussing on coffee warehouse workers, tallymen, container bridge drivers, captains and navigators, as well as woman working in traditionally male jobs. We will get to know the harbour as a workplace, an economic centre at the heart of the worker’s movement. At the same time, we will discover small, romantic canals dotted with gently rolling barges, grassy banks, peopled by water fowl and constantly subject to the changing mood of the tides.

Programme: A guided tour that lasts approx. 4 hours and includes a barge tour and visit to a typical harbour-area coffee shop.

"On the Outskirts of the City" – The Neuengamme Concentration Camp and the Children of Bullenhuser Damm

In 1938, the National Socialists chose an idyllic location in the park and marshlands outside Hamburg to build the Neuengamme concentration camp, using it as a base for the production of clinker brick for the future "Führerstadt". We will visit the new memorial commemorating the lives of the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in Neuengamme concentration camp by the National Socialists. We will discover locations where prisoners were forced to work, where local residents came to accept the presence of the camp and where companies from the area employed inmates as cheap labour.

We will also visit the memorial to the children of Bullenhuser Damm. It is here that twenty Jewish children between the ages of five and twelve were murdered in an abandoned school on the night of 20^th to 21^st April, 1945. The children had been transported to Germany from Holland, Italy, Poland, France and Yugoslavia. In Neuengamme, they were subjected to medical experiments against their will. To conceal the fact that the children had been used as human guinea pigs as the Allies approached, the SS murdered the children and their four supervisors from France and Holland. That same night, the SS also executed 24 Soviet prisoners of war.

A memorial located in the cellar at Bullenhuser Damm has been open to the public since 1980. A rose garden was planted behind the school building where roses can be planted in memory of those who died. The garden is also the site of a monument to the 24 Soviet prisoners of war who were killed.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 6 hours, including a tour of the Neuengamme concentration camp, the memorial to the children of Bullenhuser Damm and a break for lunch.

Anne Frank and Others – The Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

The Bergen-Belsen prisoner of war and concentration camp is located in the idyllic Lüneburger Heide region. Anne Frank was just one of the countless men, women and children to be imprisoned and murdered here between 1941 and 1945. The horrific images that greeted British soldiers when the camp was liberated on 15th April, 1945 shocked the world. We will be visiting the former site of the camp, including the permanent exhibition and historic sites in the vicinity such as the railway platform via which the majority of prisoners arrived at Bergen-Belsen.

We will also visit the 700 year-old regional capital Celle, home to a picturesque historic town centre and the oldest synagogue in northern Germany.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 7 hours, including entry to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a visit to Celle and a break for lunch.

The Sandbostel by Bremervörde Prisoner of War and Concentration/Reception Camp

Full-day trip including guided tours and breaks.

On 29th April, 1945 British troops liberated the STALAG XB and concentration/reception camp at Sandbostel, near Bremervörde.

We will visit the grounds of the former camp and learn more about the little-known history of this site. Until the summer of 2004, local politicians refused to build a memorial here. It is thanks to the combined efforts of committed citizens and organisations that a fitting memorial is finally be constructed, to coincide with the 60^th anniversary of the Allied liberation.

A Jewish cemetery in the Wingst area – as abandoned and forgotten as the people buried there - will be a point of call during our trip. A visit to the village of Osten provides insight into the fate of one Jewish family following deportation. On the journey back to Hamburg, we will stop to visit the picturesque town of Stade and its historic town centre.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 8 hours, including entry to the site of the former Sandbostel concentration and reception camp, a visit to the towns of Osten and Stade and a break for lunch.

"The Last Concentration Camp" – A Full-Day Tour of Wöbbelin, Ludwigslust and Wismar

On 2^nd May, 1945, the 82^nd US Airborne Division – under the command of James M. Gavin, future NATO commander-in-chief - liberated Wöbbelin concentration camp. For hundreds of concentration camp inmates, the liberation came too late; in the final weeks of the war, the last outpost of the Neuengamme concentration camp – whose construction had been completed just months before at the end of 1944 – had acted as a centre for the organisation and execution of death marches. Malnutrition, a lack of medical care and appalling hygiene meant that prisoners did not survive long. When the Americans reached the concentration camp, the surviving inmates were in a pitiful condition. On the orders of the American commanders, the bodies of the murdered prisoners were buried in graves dug by German soldiers in the castle square at Ludwigslust in a ceremony witnessed by the local population.

We will visit the memorials for the concentration camp outpost at Wöbbelin, Ludwigslust, as well as the royal residence of the dukes of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and the picturesque Wismar – a town belonging to the Hanseatic League and characterised by its impressive brick Gothic churches.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 8 hours, including entry to the memorial of the former concentration camp outpost at Wöbbelin, a visit to the towns of Ludwigslust and Wismar, and a lunch break.

Forced Labour and Death – A Full-Day Tour of Gardelegen and VW-Wolfsburg

This full-day trip combines two facets of WWII: weapons production, taking VW – Volkswagen as an example, and the dissolution of the concentration camps by means of death marches. On 15th April, 1945, a reconnaissance patrol from the 102^nd US infantry division discovered the burning ruins of a barn at Isenschnibbe, near Gardelegen. To their horror, they found that the ruins contained the charred remains of 1,016 inmates from the Neuengamme and Dora-Nordhausen concentration camps. Deeply shocked by the discovery, Commander Frank A. Keating ordered the bodies to be buried with the assistance of the residents of Gardelegen.

After a lunch break in the picturesque Altmark region, we will visit Wolfsburg, the town of the "KdF car" (KdF standing for the Nazi "Kraft durch Freude" or "Power through pleasure" principle), later to become a legend in the automotive industry under the label of the Volkswagen Beetle. We will take a tour of the municipal museum which offers, among other things, an exhibition on the subject of "forced labour", or the VW automobile museum.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 8 hours, including entry to the Gardelegen memorial, a short visit to the town of Wolfsburg with a tour of the municipal or VW automobile museum, a break for lunch and a VW souvenir to take home.

Berlin: Historic Sites

Even from a distance, the golden dome of the New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Straße casts its light across the city and acts as a beacon for the centre of Jewish life in Berlin. We will spend a day discovering and learning more about the Centrum Judaicum, The Missing House, Moses Mendelsohn and Otto Wielck. We will visit the Jewish Museum (designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind), the courtyards of the Hackesche Höfe and the new monument commemorating the Jews murdered in Europe (Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial). We will learn about the people who fell victim to National Socialism, as well as those who resisted it.

Programme: A guided tour by minibus or coach lasting approx. 8 hours, including entry to the Jewish Museum or the Centrum Judaicum, a short tour of the city, a walk through the courtyards in the Hackesche Höfe district and a break at midday (packed lunch provided).

Spurensuchen - History & Heritage Tours