Maritime heritage traces China's three-century-long Hamburg story

BERLIN — For many children, museums are where dreams take root. For Peter Tamm Senior, however, a dream sparked by a simple childhood gift gave root to a museum — one that now tells a global story of connection, including that of the East meeting the West.

That gift, a grayish-white ship model the size of a finger, was given to him by his mother in 1934 to lift his spirits after he caught the flu. Today, that tiny vessel rests on a navy blue velvet cushion in a glass case in the International Maritime Museum Hamburg, a legacy born from Tamm's lifelong passion for maritime history.

Born in 1928 into one of Hamburg's oldest seafaring families, Peter Tamm Senior (1928-2016) amassed one of the world's largest private maritime collections. He later donated it to a charitable foundation, leading to the founding of the IMMH in 2008.