In League with History; Hanseatic Ports Echo Steps of German
Merchants, Emigrants Byline: Corinna Lothar, SPECIAL TO THE
WASHINGTON TIMES HAMBURG, Germany - Wistfulness and envy
accompanied the great ships, crowded with emigrants on their way
to America, out of the mouth of the Elbe River into the North
Sea. "America," the saying went, "is just around the corner."
Only a little imagination is required to see, in the mind's eye,
the tearful scenes on the dockside, the weeping relatives saying
goodbye, and the ships moving slowly toward the cold horizon.
This was the starting point for the great waves of German
immigration to the New World. My great-grandfather set sail from
the nearby port of Bremen, the exit, together with Hamburg and
the port of Cuxhaven, for millions of Northern Europeans. He was
bound for California and the gold rush. I would follow a century
later from Lisbon, Portugal, just ahead of the Gestapo, but I
could feel a kinship with the ghosts of earlier immigrants. I
returned to Germany many