Jewish Migration Networks through Prussia and the United States, 1880–1914

By the 1880s, thousands of Jewish migrants traveled annually through Bremen and Hamburg en route to the United States. On either side of the Atlantic, complex transportation systems developed to facilitate this large-scale migration. This paper will discuss the creation and effects of these systems as well as the experience of the migrants, placing them within a transatlantic migration context.

Between 1884 and 1914 transatlantic shipping companies and Prussian administrators worked together to create a system that induced migration through Germany rather than to Germany. The cornerstones of this system were the inspection, disinfection, and segregation of the predominantly Jewish migrants at border stations and on closed railroad cars beginning in the mid-1880s.  This specialized transportation system catered to the profit motive of private shipping companies while simultaneously addressing the fears and prejudices of the Prussian administration, who wanted to ensure that the migrants neither settled in Germany nor “contaminated” the German population with their destitution, morally questionable values, or contagious diseases.

A complex railroad network developed in the United States as well. All migrants who landed at Ellis Island and planned to travel further inland were subject to the railroad pool operating there, but an additional network arose to transport Jewish migrants outside of an overcrowded New York City and into other areas of the country. The Industrial Removal Office worked with railroad companies to match willing Jewish workers with communities throughout the United States, thus facilitating a spread of culture that otherwise would not have occurred.