Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum Bremerhaven

In the location's words:

As the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute of Maritime History, we look at the past, present and future from the sea. Because ships change the world: they drive global interdependencies in society, politics, science and the environment.

Ships can be places of longing or delivery vehicles, drivers of war or escape helpers, destroyers of the environment or repositories of knowledge. One thing is certain: without ships, our world would be a different place. Because ships move - people and goods, ideologies and information. Ships are contemporary witnesses - silent and communicative at the same time. Our museum, one of eight research museums of the Leibniz Association, researches and presents their history: a history of man and sea. Because ships are the key to understanding our globalized world: they shape our relationship to the sea and to other countries - socially and culturally, economically, technically and scientifically. How did these interdependencies come about - and what can we learn from them for the present and the future? We research this and make it visible in exhibitions. As a museum and historical research institute, we are unique in the German-speaking world.

Instead of reconstructing the past, we use it to strengthen civil society through cultural knowledge. The basis for our research projects, exhibitions and publications is our collection. In it, we preserve and make accessible more than 60,000 objects, around 380,000 archival documents and a library stock of more than 100,000 specialist publications.

The collection focuses on maritime culture and technology from the late Middle Ages to the present day. The spectrum ranges from a medieval cog from 1380 to the seafaring book of a steward working on the TITANIC and from a tide calculator from the First World War to an old whaling steamer in the museum harbor. Our aim is to be able to depict more recent and the latest historical developments through integrated collecting and research. We use and develop state-of-the-art digital methods and technologies to achieve this.