When the population of Hamburg gathers each May at the Landungsbrücken to celebrate the official birthday of the harbour, they are not merely giving thanks for the wealth that floods through its gates. The harbour is more than just a source of jobs and economic prosperity: it has provided Hamburg with its identity as a city of trade. Because of it, Hamburg has been known for centuries as Germany’s gateway to the world.
According to tradition, the harbour was founded more than eight hundred years ago, in 1189, when the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa granted Hamburgers the right to duty-free trade all along the Elbe from the city to the sea. With such an advantage over their neighbours, the city’s merchants soon built Hamburg into a major trading centre. By 1242 the city was powerful enough to draw up an agreement with nearby Lübeck, thus forming the template for the Hanseatic League. This alliance brought them major trading partners right across the region – not only in Germany, but also in Bruges, Amsterdam, London and even as far away as Novgorod – making this marshy, watery city one of the wealthiest in Europe. 3
By the sixteenth century Hamburg was nothing short of a huge, city-wide storehouse, holding vast quantities of goods for resale throughout Europe. Tall warehouses stacked with grain, oil, salt and beer rose beside the narrow canals and waterways that carried the tide of commodities into the heart of the city. The more expensive goods, such as honey, fine wines and amber, were stored on the higher floors to keep them safe from the floodwaters of the Elbe, while the lower floors were reserved for cheaper items, such as fish or lumber. With the discovery of the New World, local merchants who had made themselves rich by trading in cloth or foodstuffs were soon trading in precious gems and metals, saltpetre, coffee, tea, tobacco and exotic spices. One of the most lucrative cargoes was that of peppercorns, which Hamburg’s spice traders brought back in sackloads from the Orient. Even today, the wealthier citizens of Hamburg are still occasionally called Pfeffersäcke(‘peppersacks’) – a derogatory nickname for fat-cat businessmen.
The city’s residents lived in similarly tall houses, rising above the squalid streets like warehouses of humanity, storing workers for use in the busy port. In such cramped conditions hygiene was impossible, disease was rife, and life expectancy short. Despite the ubiquitous waterways, fire was a very real danger. In 1284 the entire city was completely destroyed by a huge fire that, according to tradition, left only a single building standing. In 1684, after a series of smaller fires, a second conflagration destroyed 214 houses. Nearby Altona also suffered a major fire in 1711, followed by the deliberate burning of two-thirds of the city by Swedish troops two years later. 4After each catastrophe, the city was rebuilt with houses even taller and more densely occupied than before.
Among this jumble of homes and warehouses there were also small islands of industry – tanneries, weaving houses, potteries, breweries and shipbuilders. Some of the city’s most important industries were brought here by outsiders. Hamburgers learned the art of sugar refining from the Dutch, and by the early 1600s Hamburg was one of the world’s biggest exporters of refined sugar. Dutch immigrants also brought the velvet and silk trades to the city. The French brought new baking techniques, and Franzbrötchenare still something of a city speciality. Greenlanders brought their skill in extracting oil from whale blubber, and set up a district of workshops in Hamburger Berg (now St Pauli): the glut of train oil they produced meant that the citizens of Hamburg could afford to put lanterns along the major streets, making this one of the first cities ever to have street lighting. 5
As a maritime power, Hamburg has always teemed with foreigners, and the face of the city seems to have changed with every new influx of immigrants. It was not only the sailors and adventurers who settled here, drawn to Hamburg along the world’s trade routes in search of a better life: refugees came too. While the rest of Europe was persecuting its religious minorities, Protestant Hamburg tended to extend a cautious welcome to anyone who brought in new money or new trades. In the sixteenth century Jews from Spain and Portugal settled there after being expelled from their own countries, and built one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. Dutch Calvinists found safety from the Catholic armies of Philip II, and came to dominate the city’s foreign trade. Later, Huguenots would flee there after the purges in France, as would aristocrats after the French Revolution. Hamburg fast became one of the most cosmopolitan places in Europe, a Renaissance Babel where English gentlemen and French princes knocked shoulders with Finnish sailors, Brazilian rubber merchants, and the countless migrants from Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein who flocked there to take a tiny share of the city’s considerable fortune.
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Hamburg has always been like this: hardworking, multifarious and quick to embrace new ideas. Throughout its history, the only constant has been change. Buildings rise, are demolished by fire or flood and rebuilt; whole suburbs are regularly created and destroyed. The population comes and goes from all over the world, creating distinct communities that flourish for a few generations then disperse once more as they are integrated into the whole. This is natural to Hamburgers, and continues to this day.
Even the river is not constant. Before the Second World War, parts of it silted up and caused problems for the ever-larger ships that travelled in and out of the harbour with the tides; specialist pilots had to guide them to the safety of their berths. Sometimes whole islands of silt would form in the centre of the river; for months, or even years, they would give the illusion of solidity, before the waters rose once more and they were swept away towards the sea.
2. The Anglophile City
I am the enemy you killed, my friend
Wilfred Owen 1
Through its trade links, Hamburg has developed associations with many countries over the centuries; but two relationships are particularly interesting, especially when considering the events of the Second World War. Hamburg’s connections with Britain and America go beyond that of mere trading partners: somehow those two English-speaking nations have found their way beneath Hamburg’s skin. This is particularly the case with the British – or, more specifically, the English. Even during the height of the war Hamburg still thought of itself as an anglophile city, and it was not until the dreadful events of July 1943 that Hitler’s propaganda minister was able to note with wry satisfaction that the city was at last learning to hate its English cousins. 2
Hamburg’s ties to England were deep-rooted and remain close to this day. As part of the Hanseatic League, the city has been trading with London since the thirteenth century. The first English company to set up a permanent office in the city was the Merchant Adventurers Company in the sixteenth century. It was followed by other English merchants, trading wool and fine English cloth for continental wine, linen and timber, and by 1600 Britain had established itself as a significant trading partner.
As Britain’s power grew, it became increasingly important for Hamburg to maintain a good relationship with its neighbours across the North Sea. This was not always easy. For example, in 1666 when Dutch men-of-war attacked British merchant ships in the Elbe, the British blamed Hamburg for allowing the warships passage, and insisted on compensation. The lawsuit between them continued for four years, but when Britain eventually threatened reprisals against the city there was nothing the burghers could do but resort to the centuries-old tradition of buying their way out of trouble. There was no question of Hamburg standing its ground: the city had only two warships at the time, which it used for escorting convoys, while the British navy consisted of 173 ships, equipped with 6,930 guns. 3
Hamburg’s precarious relationship with Britain blundered on, with various minor mishaps along the way, until the end of the eighteenth century. Then, in the 1790s, the city unwittingly found itself embroiled in a dispute between France and Britain, and its relationship with both countries rapidly degenerated. The dispute centred round Napper Tandy, the leader of the ill-fated Irish revolt against the British, who had fled to Hamburg in 1798 with three of his comrades. The British legation demanded that Hamburg hand over the rebels, but the French envoy objected, arguing that to do so would be a violation both of Hamburg’s neutrality and of international law. France was at war with virtually the whole of Europe at the time, including Britain, and would not tolerate any action that could be considered pro-British.