The Museum Selma closes a gap in the culture of remembrance
Migration affects everyone, regardless of their biography.
It is the norm and helps to shape society.
Nevertheless, the experiences of migrants, their descendants, black people and people of color are often overlooked in the German culture of remembrance.
The Museum Selma makes them visible and invites visitors to change their perspective.
The memory of the migration society
The heart of the museum is the unique DOMiD collection – Germany's largest collection of objects and testimonies about the diverse history of migration in Germany. In contrast to state archives, the collection has grown out of civil society.
It thus preserves the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of migration in Germany - in a unique fund of everyday migrant testimonies that are not documented anywhere else in this abundance.
The collection comprises over 150,000 objects: from documents and photographs to works of art, interviews, video recordings, everyday objects and much more. It documents the diverse history of the migration society in Germany since 1945.
It covers all forms of migration in Germany, including internal migration, such as from the DDR (German Democratic Republic) to the BRD (Federal Republic of Germany), as well as all regions of origin and motives for migration. The collection thus offers numerous points of reference on topics such as work, flight, expulsion and life in multiple places.
We show how migration has inscribed itself in German history and how it shapes the way we all live together in society. In doing so, we retell the history of this country – with many voices.
The Museum Selma...
... tells your stories!
Asimina Paradissa
Asimina Paradissa was born in Vrasta, Chalkidiki, Greece. In the mid-1960s, she followed her brother to Wilhelmshaven to work for the Olympia company. She lived there in a hostel. Later, she moved to Wuppertal and worked in various automotive supply companies. The energetic pensioner still lives there today, taking photographs, travelling and writing poetry.
Georg Smirnov
Georg Smirnov was born in central Russia in 1981 to a Russian-German mother and a Russian father. At the age of four, he moved with his parents to Kyrgyzstan. In 1990, the family came to Germany. After graduating from high school, he completed vocational training at Deutsche Welle and then studied in Bonn and Berlin. He works as a documentary filmmaker focusing on Nazi history in Cologne and publishes poetry on topics such as migration and transgenerational trauma.
Esther Dischereit
Esther Dischereit, born in Heppenheim in 1952, is a German-Jewish writer who publishes prose, poetry, essays, theater and radio plays. She lives in Berlin. Her works repeatedly deal with themes of remembrance culture, civil rights and anti-racism. She has donated various objects from the people´s tribunals on the "NSU complex" (a series of racist murders and bomb attacks) to our collection, as well as objects related to the right-wing extremist attack on the synagogue, the neighbourhood snack bar and others in Halle.
A small insight into the collection
(Post)migrant stories
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During his escape, the owner of this memento travelled from Turkey to Greece on a boat. To protect themselves from the water and the cold, the fugitives tied their trouser legs together. -
In order to improve their income and support their families in Vietnam, many Vietnamese ‘contract workers’ sewed clothes, especially jeans, for GDR citizens in their spare time. -
Italian Lorenzo Annese was the first ‘guest worker’ to be elected Chairman of the Works Council in Germany. This lab coat documents his time at VW. -
A student left Ghana with this suitcase in 1979 after a military coup. She went to Freiburg to study. She used the suitcase again and again on her subsequent trips to Ghana.
