Home in a suitcase

Fled, expelled, uprooted – around 12.5 million people came to destroyed Germany after the Second World War. Many locals saw them as strange have-nots who were reluctant to take in. The newcomers themselves longed to return to their familiar homes. Nevertheless, they all wrote an integration success story together, the exhibition reminded of the moving, today mostly forgotten beginnings.

Individual life stories bring the times back to life. Many things were on view for the first time that had only recently been privately owned: items of luggage, photographs and documents from those years, but also the valuable salvaged goods – traditional costumes, furniture and other family items. The words of Katharina Neumayer, who comes from Hungary, explain why all of this has been preserved to this day: “Everything we brought with us was important – it was home.”