BallinStadt - Emigrant Museum Hamburg

This guide to BallinStadt in Hamburg opens with a question: why would a shipping magnate build a quarantine station, a synagogue, and a dance hall instead of just another dock? It follows Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg America Line, and the costly problem American immigration law posed for him in the 1890s, then the village of more than thirty buildings he raised on Veddel island in 1901 to house, feed, and screen emigrants before they ever boarded a ship. Every emigrant who reached this island had already been checked once at the German border, and here they were checked again, bathed, and examined by company doctors.