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| While Alija was working on Intellingenz Blatt, this was
forwarded, and since Bav-Anc had during July 2003 much interest Emigration
Procedure and Permission to Leave, it seemed a good thing to post here. |
[Alija]: The
following was a post of mine to the BAV-ANC list a while back and
explained the procedure
Re: Re: [BAV-ANC] Emigration Approvals - Emigration Agency
from: Alijabav
to: BAVARIAN-ANCESTORS-L@rootsweb.com
Date : 28.08.2002
The procedure for
emigration was the following. The person who wanted to emigrate had to
apply for an "Auswanderungs Genehmigung" [emigration approval]
with the government. To get this approval the person had to supply a lot
of information, i.e. "Leumunds-Zeugnis" [certificate of good
conduct], school certificates, information about his financial situation,
certificate of baptism and more. After the emigration request was
approved, there had to be two announcements in the local newspaper about
the intent of this person to emigrate. The reason for this was to inform
the public that this person will emigrate. This would allow i.e. other
people, to whom maybe the future emigrant still owes money, to veto the
approval until the debt was paid. Normally the future emigrants, when no
veto was coming forward, would leave immediately after this
publication in the newspapers and travel to the port from which they were
leaving.
The "Auswanderungs Absichtserklärung" [announcement of the
intent to emigrate] were published either in the local newspapers or in
local special newspapers, called something like "Amtsblaetter",
which were used to inform the inhabitants of the local areas about
official messages and news. The newspapers (incl. the published
announcements) still exist in State archives in Bavaria.
A lot of emigrants arranged their travels - at their home area -
with an "Auswanderungs Agenten" [emigration agents or
agency]. The shipping companies, i.e. from the ports of Hamburg or
Bremen, had "Agents" all over Germany. Some of these
"Auswanderungs Agenturen" even had "sub-agents"
all over. These local i.e. Bavarian agents sold the ship tickets for the
passage, made the reservations for temporary accomodations in the German
ports, gave helpful hints of "to do and don't do" and so on.
Most of all this local agents did what today we would call "heavy
public relation and advertisement" [ ! ] They organized
meetings to tell the Bavarians how wonderful America is, that it is a the
chance of a lifetime to go there. They published
"leaflets" and books about emigration and so on. They were very
active and resourceful in what they very doing!
A short while ago I had the chance to read an original advertisement
booklets (from around 1850s). It was printed in the old script and had
detailed explanations what to do and better not to do. It had maps about
the US, told some stories of very lucky emigrants, but also gave warnings
and lectures about the best possible behaviour before and after the
emigrant arrived. For example the agent who had published this booklet,
gave very stern warnings n o t to leave home without a
passport! In the past at that time it would have been no problem to
leave Bavaria or Germany without a issued passport and to arrive in the US
without one [***]. But as he rightly pointed out in his book, to have a
Bavarian or German passport would be the only way for the emigrant (than
immigrant) to get help from the German "Konsul" (kind of
ambassador) in America should the emigrant run into trouble . Even so the
wording in this booklet was very old-fashioned, it was fun to read it.
These emigration agents were very far advanced in what we now call 'public
relations and marketing' and they were successful - a lot of Bavarians
emigrated! I learned a lot reading this brochure |
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