Hamburg

/ham"berrg/; for 1, 2 also Ger. /hahm"boorddk/, n.

1. a state in N Germany. 288 sq. mi. (746 sq. km).

2. a city in and the capital of this state, on the Elbe River: the largest seaport in continental Europe. 1,597,500.

3. a town in W New York. 10,582.

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City (pop., 2002 est.: city, 1,726,363; metro. area, 2,515,468), constituting a state, northern Germany.

Covering 292 sq mi (755 sq km), it is located on the Elbe River and is Germany's largest port. It grew around the 9th-century castle of Hammaburg. Treaties with Lübeck in the mid-13th century led to the formation of the Hanseatic League, of which it was a leader. Incorporated into the French Empire (1810–14), it became a member of the German Confederation as a free city in 1815. In World War II Allied firebombing killed some 55,000 people and devastated the city. It was rapidly rebuilt after the war. The birthplace of Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms and home to the Hamburg Opera, it enjoys a distinguished musical history. It is Germany's foremost industrial city and northern Germany's chief economic centre.

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▪ Germany

Introduction

 city and Land (state), located on the Elbe River, northern Germany. It is the country's largest port and commercial centre.

      The Free and Hanseatic City (Freie und Hansestadt) of Hamburg is the second smallest of the 16 Länder of Germany, with a territory of only 292 square miles (755 square kilometres). It is also the most populous city in Germany after Berlin and has one of the largest and busiest ports in Europe. The official name, which covers both the Land and the town, reflects Hamburg's long tradition of particularism and self-government. Hamburg and Bremen (the smallest of the Länder) are, in fact, the only German city-states that still keep something of their medieval independence. The characteristic individuality of Hamburg has been proudly maintained by its people so that, in many spheres of public and private life, the city's culture has retained its uniqueness and has not succumbed to the general trend of standardization.

      Hamburg, nonetheless, is a cosmopolitan city in its outlook. Although comparatively few foreigners live there, many pass through it. The city has dealings with a large number of nations, and it has more consulates than any other city in the world, except New York City. Shipping and trade have been Hamburg's lifeblood for centuries. Not surprisingly, its harbour has remained the city's most important feature.

      Among Hamburg's many other facets are a network of canals reminiscent of Amsterdam; lakes, parks, and verdant suburbs full of gracious houses; elegant shopping arcades; richly endowed museums; and a vibrant cultural life. These are among the attractions that have contributed to a growing tourist industry. Although it was badly damaged during World War II, Hamburg has succeeded in maintaining a sense of old-world grace alongside its thriving commercial life.

Physical and human geography

The landscape

Site

      Hamburg stands at the northern extremity of the Lower Elbe Valley (Elbe River), which at that point is between five and eight miles (eight and 13 kilometres) wide. To the southeast of the old city, the Elbe divides itself into two branches, the Norderelbe and the Süderelbe; but these branches meet again opposite Altona, just west of the old city, to form the Unterelbe, which flows into the North Sea some 65 miles downstream from Hamburg. Two other rivers flow into the Elbe at Hamburg—the Alster from the north and the Bille from the east.

The city layout

      The nucleus of the city is the Altstadt (Old Town), the former medieval settlement, bounded by the harbour and by a string of roads that follow the line of the old fortifications. Within this core there are few great buildings to remind the visitor of the city's thousand-year history apart from the five principal churches—Sankt Jacobi, Sankt Petri, Sankt Katharinen, Sankt Nikolai, and Sankt Michaelis—and none of these is in its original condition. Fire has destroyed almost all the older residences and warehouses, and what was left untouched by conflagration has often been rebuilt for contemporary purposes. There are, however, a few scattered survivals of older buildings. Moreover, the layout of the old city centre can still be detected in some of the ancient street names and in the Fleete (canals), which connect the Alster with the docks on the Elbe. One of the best views of the inner city is to be enjoyed from the Lombardsbrücke (Lombard Bridge), whence the towers of the five churches can be seen rising high against a skyline that is still relatively harmonious despite the presence of modern skyscrapers.

      At the heart of Hamburg is a lake, measuring 455 acres (184 hectares), formed by the damming of the Alster and divided by the Lombardsbrücke into the Binnenalster (Inner Alster) and the Aussenalster (Outer Alster). Around the latter are elegant suburbs such as Rotherbaum, Harvesterhude, and Uhlenhorst. Many waterways, navigable by pleasure boats, run into the Aussenalster.

Architecture

      The last intact ensemble of traditional Hamburg architecture is to be found in the Deichstrasse, one side of which backs onto the Nikolai canal. Its tall, narrow houses, resembling those of Amsterdam, were originally built from the 17th through the 19th century. It was in one of them, number 42, now a restaurant, that the devastating fire of 1842 broke out. Afterward the houses were rebuilt in the old style. Today the street is a protected area, and in recent years it has undergone extensive restoration. Many traditional restaurants are found there.

      Another survival of older architecture is in the Krameramtswohnungen, near Sankt Michaelis. Consisting of two half-timbered brick buildings on either side of a narrow courtyard, it was built as a series of dwellings for the widows of shopkeepers and is the only surviving 17th-century construction of its kind in the city. Thoroughly restored between 1971 and 1974, it now forms a delightful secluded alleyway housing a restaurant, small shops, and a branch of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Museum of Hamburg History).

      Of Hamburg's five great churches, the most imposing is probably Sankt Michaelis, an 18th-century Baroque-style Protestant church with a rich white-and-gold interior. It was destroyed by fire in 1906, rebuilt, devastated again during World War II, and restored yet again after the war.

      The prosperous years 1890–1910 brought an abundance of fine architecture, examples of which can be seen in the spacious and elegant patrician houses around the Aussenalster. Many of these are now occupied by consulates. Another period of architectural flowering came in the 1920s and 1930s when there was a revival of the use of the traditional north German dark red brick as a building material, led by the architects Fritz Höger and Fritz Schumacher. A good example is Höger's Chilehaus, a massive office building constructed between 1922 and 1924.

      More recently Hamburg has acquired its quota of starkly functional modern buildings, such as the Congress Centrum (Congress Centre; opened 1973) and the Fernsehturm (Television Tower), 271.5 metres (891 feet) high, but there is now a strong tendency to renovate old houses rather than to demolish and build afresh. Thus the townscape of Hamburg as a whole has a human quality lacking in many German cities.

Climate

      Hamburg has mild winters, late springs, relatively cool summers, high humidity, and frequent fog. The mean winter temperature is 34.2° F (1.2° C), and the mean summer temperature is 62.4° F (16.9° C).

The people

      In 1965 the city had about 1,850,000 inhabitants, but since then the population has been slowly decreasing. More than three-fourths of the residents are Protestants, and the remainder are predominantly Roman Catholic. There is a small Muslim community, which includes many Turkish Gastarbeiter (“guest workers”), and the Jews, of whom there had been 27,000 in 1933 (when Hitler took power), now number only about 1,000.

The economy

Industry

      Having absorbed Altona, Harburg, and Wandsbek in 1937, Hamburg has become Germany's major industrial city. All processing and manufacturing industries are represented there. Hamburg treats most of the country's copper supplies, and the Norddeutsche Affinerie, on Veddel, is Europe's second largest copperworks. The chemical, steel, and shipbuilding industries are also important, although shipbuilding has declined as a result of competition from Japan and Korea. Hamburg is also the most important centre in Germany, after Berlin, for newspaper and periodical publishing. Three nuclear plants, at Krümmel, Stade, and Brunsbüttel, provide power at a reasonable cost to the industries bordering the Unterelbe and to parts of Hamburg.

Trade

      In the period of German partition, Hamburg handled more than half of West Germany's foreign trade, not only in the form of shipping cargo but also as rail and airfreight. Chief among imports are vegetable oils and fats, tea, coffee, petroleum, tropical fruit, and uncured tobacco. Exports include machinery, electrotechnical products, processed petroleum fuel and lubricants, copper, and pharmaceutical products.

      The greatest economic centre of Germany, Hamburg since 1960 has become the site of first-class trade fairs. Many of the fairs and conventions are held at the Ernst-Merck-Halle exhibition grounds, located south of the Planten un Blomen park. An especially popular event is the international boat show, held each winter.

Transportation

 The harbour is Hamburg's “gateway to the world.” More than 15,000 ships from over 100 countries pass through it each year. The city's Übersee-Zentrum is the world's largest roofed warehouse, and the Waltershof container terminal is the largest of its kind on the continent.

      Harbour and city are well served by the German railway network, and the city has a good system of buses and underground trains. To relieve the central city from long-distance traffic, a tunnel was built (opened in 1977) under the Elbe as a part of the Stockholm–Lisbon highway.

      The airport of Hamburg–Fuhlsbüttel, which dates from 1911, is one of the oldest in Europe. It has two runways from which even the largest jet-propelled aircraft can still take off.

Administration and social conditions

Government

      According to the constitution of June 6, 1952, legislative authority is vested in the Bürgerschaft (State Parliament), which comprises 120 members elected for a four-year term.

      The Bürgerschaft elects the government, the Senat, which is organized on a collegiate basis; the president, or erster Bürgermeister (“first mayor”), is elected by the Senat itself annually, although in practice each incumbent normally stays in office at least four years. The Senat as a whole represents the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in its dealings with the other federal Länder, with the federal government, and with foreign states. Each senator is responsible for a particular department, but administrative problems of a local nature are delegated to the district offices and to the local authorities.

      The magnificent Rathaus (City Hall), where the Senat and the Bürgerschaft meet, in the centre of the city near the Binnenalster, was built late in the 19th century in the Neo-Renaissance style.

      Hamburg's coat of arms displays a three-towered castle, intended to represent the Hammaburg, silver (argent), on a red (gules) field, its design being derived from the city's great seal of 1241. The state flag likewise shows a white castle on a red field. The state's anthem, “Stadt Hamburg an der Elbe Auen” (“City of Hamburg by the Meadows of the Elbe”), was written by G.N. Bärmann in 1828 and set to music by Albert Methfessel.

Education

      The Universität Hamburg, founded in 1919, is one of the largest in Germany, with some 46,000 students and faculties covering virtually every discipline except certain technological subjects. A second university, the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, began classes in 1982. Hamburg also has state schools for music and interpretative art and for the sculptural arts, as well as some 250 research centres covering such areas as hydrography, oceanography, tropical medicine, shipbuilding, economics, meteorology, and particle acceleration.

Cultural life

      Among Hamburg's six principal museums, the Kunsthalle, founded in 1868 by Alfred Lichtwark, an outstanding patron of artists, is one of Europe's most remarkable galleries. It is particularly notable for its collection of 19th- and 20th-century works, including many of the German Romantic school. The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Art and Crafts), founded in 1877 by the jurist Justus Brinckmann, has one of the most significant collections of ancient artifacts in Germany and is also famous for its examples of Asian art and of Jugendstil (Art Nouveau). The Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, which has grown from a collection of local antiquities started in 1839, contains a wide range of exhibits, from costumes to parts of old buildings and from architect's drawings to models of ships, shown in such a way as to present an impressive conspectus of the state's history. The Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnology and Prehistory), founded in 1878, has impressive collections in its own fields. The Altonaer Museum, opened in 1863, specializes in north German subjects, with special attention to Schleswig-Holstein, and houses Germany's largest collection of old ships' figureheads. The Helms-Museum, in the Harburg district, is a local museum for the part of Hamburg south of the Elbe but also houses antiquities representing the prehistory and early history of the whole territory. The Ernst-Barlach-Haus, in Jenisch Park, was founded in 1961–62 by another great patron of the arts, Hermann F. Reemtsma, to make his private collection accessible to the public. Hamburg's once famous Zoological Museum was destroyed by bombs in 1943 after a century of existence.

      The Hamburg Staatsoper, which dates from 1678, has won world renown. Its performances of classical and contemporary works bear comparison with those given by the great opera houses of Vienna, Milan, London, and New York City. The Deutsche Schauspielhaus, a leading theatre, enjoyed a particularly high reputation from 1955 to 1963, when Gustaf Gründgens directed and performed there. The Thalia-Theater, founded in 1843, with a multifaceted program that includes plenty of light entertainment, is popular with local audiences. All three establishments are generously funded by the state. The numerous other theatres include the tiny Piccolo-Theater and the Hansa-Theater, said to be the last genuine variety theatre in the German-speaking world. Plays of a local character or in Plattdeutsch (Low German) are performed in the Ohnsorg-Theater and sometimes in the Sankt Pauli-Theater, which dates from 1841 and is Hamburg's oldest playhouse.

      The birthplace of Mendelssohn and Brahms, Hamburg has a sustained tradition of musical activity. Three great orchestras—the Philharmonische Staatsorchester, the Symphonie-Orchester des Norddeutschen Rundfunks, and the Hamburger Symfoniker—familiarize the public with classical and contemporary compositions. There are also groups specializing in chamber music, in choral performances, and in church music; and orchestras, choirs, singers, and instrumentalists from other parts of Germany or from abroad are also invited to Hamburg. The focal point of Hamburg's musical life is the Neo-Baroque Musikhalle, built in 1904–08 with money donated by the shipowner Carl Laeisz.

      An important aspect of Hamburg's history is its prominence as a centre of newspaper and periodical publishing, which dates to the 17th century. By 1830 Hamburg had more newspapers than any other city in Germany. In the 1920s Berlin began its ascendancy as a press centre, and Hamburg fell into second place, which it still occupies. Its daily newspapers include the Hamburger Abendblatt, the Hamburger Morgenpost, and the Bild-Zeitung. In addition, a wide range of weekly and monthly magazines issue from the various publishing firms located in the city.

      Sports have long been popular in Hamburg. The Hamburger Turnerschaft (1816) is Germany's oldest athletic club. The first German rowing club, founded in Hamburg in 1836, took part in 1837 in Germany's first official rowing race, against the English Rowing Club formed by members of Hamburg's then numerous English colony. The Hamburger Rennklub, for horse racing, was founded in 1852, and the North German Derby, first run in 1869, became an annual event, as the German Derby, in 1889. Hamburg's first public football (soccer) matches were played in 1881–82, after disputes about the rules of the game with the local Anglo-American Football Club. Another noteworthy event is the international tennis championship, which takes place every year in May.

      An aspect of the city that cannot be ignored is its world-famous red-light district, centred on the Reeperbahn, where prostitution is legally permitted and kept under control by the police. Another famous Hamburg institution is the colourful Sunday-morning market held at the Fischmarkt by the harbour, where items ranging from fish to secondhand household goods are available.

History

Early settlement and medieval growth

      Hamburg's history begins with the Hammaburg, a moated castle of modest size, built in about AD 825 on a sandy promontory between the Alster and Elbe rivers. In 834, during the reign of the emperor Louis the Pious, the castle's baptistery became the seat of an archbishopric, and Archbishop Ansgar (Ansgar, Saint) made the young city of Hamburg the base of his missions to the heathens of northern Europe. Vikings (Viking) burned the city in 845, and the rebuilt Hamburg was burned down again eight times in the following 300 years. By the end of the 11th century, Hamburg's role as the spiritual metropolis of the north was over, and henceforth commerce rather than religion was to be the principal raison d'être of the city. Between 1120 and 1140 some trading businesses were installed, and the foundation of Lübeck, on the Baltic, by Adolf II, count of Holstein, further promoted the economic development of Hamburg as Lübeck's port on the North Sea. In the autumn of 1188 a group of Hamburg entrepreneurs received from their feudal overlord, Adolph III of Schauenburg (Schaumburg), count of Holstein, a charter for the building of a new town, adjacent to the old one, with a harbour on the Alster River and with facilities for the use of the Elbe River as an outer roadstead. On May 7, 1189, the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa confirmed Count Adolph's dispositions in a charter granting special trading rights, toll exemptions, and navigation privileges.

      In the 13th century Hamburg grew steadily in both area and economic importance, owing to the development of the Hanse (an association of merchants trading in a particular area) into a widespread association of north German merchant cities, the great Hanseatic League, in which Hamburg's role was second only to Lübeck's. A major entrepôt for the trade between Russia and Flanders, Hamburg proceeded to safeguard the trade routes by acquiring tracts of land along the branches of the Elbe in the immediate vicinity of the town and also on the estuary farther downstream (Ritzebüttel, nucleus of the later Cuxhaven, was acquired by Hamburg in 1393). It thus came to control the use of the river and to be recognized as the protector, in the emperor's name, of navigation on its lower course. Some political complications arose with the death, in 1459, of the last Schauenburg count of Holstein, since his princely rights in Germany passed thereafter to the royal house of Denmark, but Hamburg scarcely recognized Danish suzerainty in any but a formal way.

Evolution of the modern city

      Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League gradually dissolved. Hamburg then went its own way and by 1550 had surpassed even Lübeck in economic importance. A stock exchange was founded in 1558 and the Bank of Hamburg in 1619; a convoy system for shipping was inaugurated in 1662, Hamburg's merchantmen being the first to be escorted on the high seas by men-of-war. About the same time marine insurance was first introduced into Germany. There were two causes for this new ascendancy: first, the wars of religion in the Low Countries in the second half of the 16th century had prompted many Dutch merchants to emigrate to the Unterelbe (Lower Elbe) region, with the result that Hamburg was henceforth to be the focus of their already established international commerce; second, the city had been so efficiently fortified in the decade 1616–25 that it could pursue its business untroubled throughout the worst crises of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). By the end of the 17th century, Hamburg, with 70,000 inhabitants, was the largest city in Germany after Cologne.

      The Treaty of Gottorp, concluded with the Danes on May 27, 1768, released Hamburg from theoretical subjection to the king of Denmark and so paved its way to being acknowledged, in 1770, as an “immediate” imperial city of Germany (that is, having no overlord other than the emperor). In addition, the treaty ceded to Hamburg the islands, from Veddel to Finkenwerder, that lay between the city and the left banks of the Elbe River and that, a century later, were to be the site of new docks. Hamburg, however, was not to enjoy its new advantage for long: the Napoleonic (Napoleon I) Wars overthrew the old order in Germany, and in 1810 the little state was annexed to Napoleon's French Empire.

      After Napoleon's downfall (1814–15), Hamburg became a member state of the German Confederation, with the designation “Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg” from 1819. Prosperity was quickly recovered, as Hamburg's trade was extended to newly opened territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Even the great fire of May 1842, which devastated one-fourth of the city, did not check the booming economy, and the harbour was converted into one accessible at any time, without ships' having to depend on the state of the tides in the Elbe Estuary. Under the German Empire, founded in 1871, the political status of Hamburg was maintained, and development proceeded unchecked. The splendid Baroque houses of the densely populated Brook Island were demolished in the 1880s to make room for the warehouses of the new free port. By the end of the 19th century, in the course of which the population grew from 130,000 to 700,000, Hamburg had expanded far beyond its previous limits, absorbing such former suburbs as Sankt Pauli and Sankt Georg and spreading its tentacles into the countryside, toward Eimsbüttel, Eppendorf, Harvestehude, and Barmbek.

      Hamburg entered the 20th century determined to maintain and to strengthen its position as “Germany's gateway to the world”; new docks and wharves were constructed on the left bank of the Elbe River. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought progress to a standstill, however. Hamburg's international trade collapsed, and its merchant fleet of 1,466 ships was virtually confined to port. After the war the victorious Allies demanded nearly all of Hamburg's ships by way of reparation from Germany.

      For many years after the war, Hamburg could undertake no further development because it had already exhausted all the potentialities of its territory. The Greater Hamburg Ordinance of January 26, 1937, changed this situation by allowing Hamburg to incorporate the neighbouring cities of Altona, Wandsbek, and Harburg, which until then had belonged to Prussia. The immediate prospect of expansion, with the development of these areas on a basis of large-scale planning, was shattered by the outbreak, in 1939, of World War II, during which repeated air raids demolished 55 percent of Hamburg's residential area and 60 percent of the harbour installations and killed 55,000 people. When the war ended in 1945, only the most strenuous efforts could supply the elementary needs for Hamburg's survival.

      Reconstruction proceeded rapidly, however. Symptomatic of the city's postwar commercial efflorescence was the vast new business district City-Nord, built in the 1960s. At the same time, nightclubs on the Reeperbahn became proving grounds for British rock and roll bands—most notably the Beatles (Beatles, the)—who took advantage of a direct ship route from Liverpool, England. In 1962 the city experienced a flood, which killed more than 300 people and destroyed much of the old part of the city. In the mid-1960s, Hamburg's population exceeded 1,800,000, though it has fallen in the decades since, owing to a population shift toward the suburbs. With continued immigration of foreigners to the city, Hamburg's foreign-born population reached 10 percent by the 1980s.

      The unification of Germany in 1990 increased trade between the city and eastern and central Europe. During the 1990s the city underwent continued modernization. In 1993 Hamburg hosted a multimedia festival, an exhibition on the use of modern communication methods in business and the arts. The following year the city became the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric.

      Hamburg's cherished traditions, together with its thriving business and cultural life and the energy of its inhabitants, make it one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

Additional Reading

Bernhard Meyer-Marwitz, Das Hamburg Buch (1981), a concise and lively book for the general reader; David Rodnick, A Portrait of Two German Cities: Lübeck and Hamburg (1980), the city's history and social conditions; Eckart Klessman, Geschichte der Stadt Hamburg (1981), a comprehensive and detailed study; Heinrich Reincke, Hamburg: Ein Abriss der Stadtgeschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (1926), a historical presentation; Wilson King, Chronicles of Three Cities—Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck (1914), an informative illustrated source; Martin Caidin, The Night Hamburg Died (1960), dealing with the events of World War II; and Volker Plagemann (ed.), Industriekultur in Hamburg (1984), a well-illustrated symposium focussing on social and cultural aspects of the city's industrial history. The architecture of the city is explored in Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmale der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, ed. by Günther Grundman, 3 vol. (1953–68).Helmuth Thomsen Christopher Angus McIntosh Ed.

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