Abstract:  The German Port Museum in Hamburg is a new museum development that aims to make the international exchange of goods and services tangible for visitors by illustrating the central role of international maritime trade and port culture in modern life. It has a decidedly environmental history and history of knowledge focus that foregrounds ports as built environments, sites of ecological exchange and knowledge production and spaces of nature/culture. One important thematic focus of the museum is the history and future of energy production and consumptions in and through ports.

In recent years, transformations in energy production, consumption and transfer have not only become a much-discussed topic in the media but also concern many people daily: either because they are striving for a more environmentally friendly life and/or because they are concerned with rising energy costs. Sea and river ports have a long history as central, albeit often invisible, energy-scapes. Ports today are also central venues where (sustainable) futures are currently imagined politically, economically and socially. Raw materials needed for energy generation were shipped, stored or refined at ports for centuries. Ports themselves consume large amounts of energy, too. Change and continuity in the human use of energy can therefore be seen particularly well in the environmental history of ports.

This object lesson will use the example of a massive oil tank from 1914 which was converted into a social space for employees of a Hamburg oil tanking company in the 1990s to show the entangled histories of energy production, consumerism, labour history and popular culture throughout the 20^th century into the early 21^st century.

Bio:  Dominik Hünniger is a cultural historian and exhibition curator with special interest in 17th, 18th and 19th centuries environmental, medical and natural history as well as the history of museums and collections, universities and scholarship. His research critically engages with Animal Studies and the development of the scientific as well as quotidian engagement of humans with the natural world in the past but also the present.

Coffee/tea, cake and fruit will be served @ 2pm.