30 The face of the victim: the trauma of being bombed scarred an entire generation of Germans.
31 Some of the city’s 45,000 dead litter a street in the suburb of Hamm.
32 According to the late W. G. Sebald, in the immediate post-war years shopkeepers would pull photographs like this from under the counter with a furtiveness usually reserved for pornography. These unfortunates were not burned but baked in the heat of their shelter.
33 The changeful nature of the firestorm produced some gruesome contrasts: this body of a pregnant woman could almost be sleeping, while the corpses behind her are charred and mumified beyond recognition.
34 The clean-up operation: Hamburg workers clear the entrance to a buried air-raid shelter.
35 A prisoner from Neuengamme concentration camp loads charred body parts into a bucket.
36 Survivors being issued with emergency rations at one of the refugee assembly points.
37 Chalk messages appeared on many of the ruins, listing the where abouts of those who used to live there. Some of them seem like gestures of defiance: Wir leben(‘We are alive’).
38 Ruined landscape. After the Gomorrah attacks Volksdorfer Strasse in Barmbek was merely a pathway cleared through the rubble.
39 In Hamm only the façades of buildings still stand: everything else has been turned to ash.
40 Life amongst the ruins: for the rest of the war, and for years afterwards, families were forced to live in the most basic of conditions wherever they could find shelter.
41 The memorial to the dead at Ohlsdorf depicts Charon ferrying the dead across the Styx. It stands in the centre of four mass-graves (below), where 36,918 bodies are buried. Thousands more were never recovered.
Appendix A
Chronology of Hamburg
Year
Date
Events and description
808
Charlemagne begins building a fortress called Hammaburg at the point where Alster meets the Elbe.
831
Franconian emperor Ludwig the Pious sends Benedictine monk Ansgar to pitch tents on Elbe and appoints him bishop.
845
Viking marauders reduce Hammaburg to rubble.
9th–13th C
Reign of Schauenburg counts allows city to flourish and expand to south of the Elbe.
1186–7
Adolf III von Schauenburg parcels out wasteland to west of old town, and a mercantile settlement and harbour are constructed. This becomes Neustadt.
1189
7 May
According to tradition, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa grants Adolf III the right to duty-free trade all along the Lower Elbe to the point where it flows into the North Sea.
1190
Inhabitants revolt and try to free themselves from aristocratic rulers.
1201
Hamburg is invaded by Danes.
1227
Danes expelled by Adolf III’s son, Count Adolf IV.
1235
Alster is dammed.
1250
Population 5,000.
1265
‘Barbarossa’s Charter’ drawn up formally.
13th C
Hamburg joins Hanseatic League.
1400
Population 7,500.
early 1400s
Klaus Stoertebeker and Godeke Michels, Hamburg’s equivalent of Robin Hood, wage buccaneer war against Hanseatic fleet.
1510
Emperor Maximillian I declares Hamburg an Imperial City – an important step in gaining emancipation from Danes.
1558
Founding of Hamburg Stock Exchange. Population around 20,000.
16th C
Lutheran reformation in city carried through by Johannes Bugenhagen. Influx of Protestants to city to avoid persecution elsewhere.
early 17th C
Influx of Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain to avoid persecution.
1619
Founding of Bank of Hamburg.
1800
Population 130,000.
1806
Napoleon invades Hamburg.
1814
Napoleon’s troops repelled.
1815
Congress of Vienna guarantees freedom of the city.
1842
The Great Fire.
1847
Founding of HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerikanische-Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft), to become the biggest ship business in Germany.
1867
Hamburg joins North German League.
1871
Integration into German Reich under Bismarck.
1872
Opening of rail bridge across Elbe – followed by New Elbe Bridge for road traffic in 1887.
1881–88
Erection of Speicherstadt, a harbour storage city district.
1888
Hamburg joins German Customs Union. ‘Free port’ established, enabling Hamburg to become one of the largest storage locations for coffee, cocoa, spices and carpets.
1892
Cholera epidemic kills 8,000.
1895
Construction of Baltic–North Sea Canal.
1897
Inauguration of new Rathaus.
1900
Population passes 1 million.
1912
Hamburg becomes the third largest port in the world, after London and New York.
1914–18
40,000 citizens die in First World War.
1918
Revolution starts with mutiny of sailors in Kiel, and quickly spreads to Hamburg. On 6 November they form ‘Workers and Soldiers Council’, and seize political power. After elections the following spring, they hand over power to city council on 16 March 1919.
1919
University of Hamburg founded. Treaty of Versailles requires coastal towns to hand over majority of merchant fleets.
1923
Hyperinflation cripples Hamburg.
1927
Links with UK and US help Hamburg to recover quicker than most of Germany. Blue-collar workers’ pay reaches pre-war levels again at last. White-collar workers pay would be the same by 1929.
1929–30
World slump hits Hamburg hard. Companies go bankrupt. City’s welfare expenditure spirals out of control.
1932
Unemployment almost 40 per cent – radicalism returns.
1933
30 January
Hamburg’s senate implements persecutions ordered by Nazis, so as not to give new government any pretext to intervene in the running of the city.