Andreas Ratzlaff family emigration; Bremen

Once in Bremen, Germany, emigrants planning to travel via Nord-Deutscher Lloyd Shipping Line would detrain and be housed in facilities maintained by the shipping company or its agents.  Marie (Ratzlaff) Penner tells us that the Ratzlaff party stayed at the “Pilliar Inn” for two weeks as they waited to board their ship.  I feel it’s possible that Marie may have mistaken “Missler” for “Pilliar”.  The Ratzlaff party had probably used the biggest Nord-Deutscher Lloyd agent, Friedrich Missler, to book their sea passage.  In 1907, Missler completed a facility known as the Missler Inn to house immigrants near Bremen as they were processed.  The inn, located in a municipality called Findorf just northwest of the City of Bremen proper, may have been completed by the time the Ratzlaffs arrived in May, 1907.  The inn was situated somewhat northwest of the Bremen central railway station.  The building was demolished sometime in the 1980s.  Today, the site is home to a retirement community named the Bremer Wohnstift Seniorenzentrum Findorff.  The address of the site is Walsroder Strasse 1, 28215, Bremen-Findorff.

The Missler Inn:

The Ratzlaffs, Wedels and Unruhs waited at the Inn for about two weeks.  Marie (Ratzlaff) Penner says that one of Ben Unruh’s daughters was diagnosed with an eye condition during the medical examination.  As a result, the party could either wait for her to get better or leave her behind.  In the end, an older son of Ben Unruh stayed behind with the sick daughter and the rest of the party continued on to the seaport which serves Bremen.  Bremerhaven lies about 40 miles north of Bremen and may have taken about an hour to reach by train.  The location of the Missler Inn is marked on the inset map of Bremen by the green "X".

The Unruh children who were left behind in Bremen were probably Jacob (age 17) and Helen (age 11) Unruh.  Helen probably suffered from trachoma, which was an eye disease and was a common ailment afflicting would-be immigrants in this time period.  I don’t know any more details of what became of Jacob or Helen, but GRANDMA does indicate that they both died in the United States.

Andreas Ratzlaff family emigration; train across Germany

After the Ratzlaffs, Wedels and Unruhs boarded the train in either Ratibor or Myslowitz, they would finally have truly been on their way to Bremen, Germany.  The train route after the German border stations would have been Oppeln, Breslau (Wroclaw), Liegnitz, Guben, Frankfurt and then Berlin:

Just west of Berlin, the train may have stopped at Ruhleben, Germany.  During World War II, Ruhleben would become a Nazi camp, but in 1907 it was the last immigrant station where the travelers would be inspected a last time before being sent on to Bremen or Hamburg.  http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/history_culture/history/journey.html

The station at Ruhleben:

West of Ruhleben, the railway route came to be known as the “America Line”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_Line.  Tens of thousands of immigrants traveled this route by train to their ports of departure in northern Germany.  In 1907, the Ratzlaffs, Wedels and Unruhs also traveled this way:

This is a timetable chart for the route from Berlin to Bremen from June, 1906.  The timetable for May, 1907, probably looked very similar: