Research and Travel Dr. Grams. Find your Roots in Germany

Dr. Grams Portrait

Dr. Grams was born in Vietze/Gorleben and holds a doctorate in eighteenth-century German literature. He is an author, researcher, planner of heritage projects and a travel professional. Since 1997, as founder of the institute “Routes to the Roots” in Oldenburg, he has organized and conducted heritage tours to Germany and to America.

For many years Dr. Grams was a research consultant for Ancestry.com and helped to build up the German website Ancestry.de. His projects included Bremen crew lists, the Hamburg passenger manifests, extensive nineteenth-century census records for Mecklenburg and a variety of family history data for former German principalities.

Dr. Grams is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the German migration experience, still teaches classes in history and cultural tourism, and has carried out many pilot projects in the field of German American migration studies. He is a fascinating narrator and lecturer and shares his profound knowledge and talents in his travels, projects, lectures and publications.

Dr. Grams is the founder (1996), owner and managing director of his privately run institute “Routes to the Roots, Research and Travel (R&T).” The institute emerged from a research project headed by Dr. Grams, then professor at the Department for Political Sciences at Oldenburg University. R&T carries out historical biographical research, designs databases, exhibits and cultural projects with focus on the migration experience and as a specialized tour operator conducts field trips and excursions. Dr. Grams teaches German American Studies and Cultural Tourism, conducts workshops, seminars and lectures in these fields.

Dr. Grams was a research consultant, project planer and content acquisitionist for ANCESTRY.COM in Germany until February 2017. He has served this company as a contractor and project designer since 2004 starting with the implementation of Ancestry.de and it’s office in Munich, Germany to building up many online databases by managing co-operations with German archives. Within these projects Dr. Grams has negotiated the digitization of the Hamburg passenger lists in a co-operation with the emigration museum Ballinstadt and the Hamburg state archives. Other projects include co-operations with archives on all levels from the Bundesarchiv to small municipal collections throughout Germany.

He was a consultant for the German National Tourist Office New York and Frankfurt, for the Deutsche Tourismusverband and the German Ministry for Economic Affairs, Berlin to promote cultural heritage projects through seminars, workshops, conceptual studies and print and online media.

Dr. Grams was author of a World EXPO 2000 concept “Auswanderung über Bremen und Bremerhaven” and co-planer for the German Emigration Center / Deutsches Auswandererhaus in Bremerhaven. He was curator of the EXPO 2000 exhibit “Abenteuer Spurensuche” and academic adviser and researcher of biographical portraits for the German Emigration Centers’s exhibit until its opening in 2005.

Funded by the European Union (1993 -1996) Dr. Grams was founder and chairman of a European network "Routes to the Roots" consisting of specialized museums and research centers in Germany, the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Greece, Poland and Scandinavia, members of the Association of European Migration Institutions (AEMI).

Dr. Grams has organized many heritage tours both for Americans to Germany and for Germans to America including pilot projects in heritage cruises with HAPAG LLOYD or CUNARD. Through his academic work and heritage projects he has developed a network for research and travel among societies, museums and individuals in Germany and in the US.

He has received his PhD (Dr. phil.) in 1990 at Oldenburg University in the field of German 18^th century literature and lectured in this field at the Department for German Literature at Bremen University from 1990 - 1992.