Overview

The Green, Mean Hamburg

Repeated natural calamities, invasions by neighboring kingdoms and being literally razed to the ground in WWII – Hamburg has seen it all but nothing has stopped her from becoming the second largest city in Germany, an important trading center and the greenest city in the nation.

Hamburg is visited by a large number of tourists every year for its many attractions, its happening nightlife and shopping areas. The city also sees a lot of business visitors as it the city is an important center of commerce in the county. Whatever reasons compel visitors to Hamburg, there is something of interest for everyone in this beautiful city with a long, storied history and rich heritage.

Some may want to experience the thrill of walking down the neon-lit Reeperbahn at night; others may be interested in a ride around Alster Lake in the city center or to explore the city’s elegant parks and buildings. A stroll along one of Hamburg's many canals whips out the truth behind Hamburg’s epithet - "Venice of the North" and its striking contrasts between steel-and-glass structures rising amid the old baroque Hauptkirche St. Michaelis never fail to mesmerize visitors.

Hamburg has risen like a Phoenix, time and again through its tumultuous 1,200-year history. This North Sea port was all but destroyed during World War II, but it sprang back with extraordinary resilience to become a larger and more beautiful city, with huge parks, impressive buildings, and important cultural institutions. Today it is one of the greenest cities in Europe, with more than half of its surface area marked with water, woodlands, farmland, and some 1,400 parks and gardens.

Hamburg is Germany's second-most populated city and commands the land around the Elbe River just about a 100 Km from the North Sea. It is a delight to visit this beautiful city and once you know more about the land that gave the world Hamburgers, you would want to come back again and again.

Hamburg’s History

Charlemagne

Hamburg is named after the first permanent building on the site, a castle ordered to be built by Emperor Charlemagne in 808 AD. The castle, built on rocky ground in a marsh between the Alster and the Elbe acted as the city’s prime defense against Slavic incursions and wad named Hammaburg.

The first Bishop of the city was Ansgar, known as the Apostle of the North, who declared it the seat of the bishopric in 834. the city was attacked and subsequently destroyed in 845 when a fleet of 600 Viking ships came up the River Elbe. Two years later, Hamburg had rebuilt its town of five hundred odd inhabitants and had joined hands with Bremen as the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.

This burning down and rebuilding continued when in 983, the town was destroyed by King Mstivoj of the Obodrites and in 1030, the city was burned down by King Mieszko II Lambert of Poland. After further raids in 1066 and 1072 the bishop permanently moved to Bremen. The next century saw the city go down to ashes in the great fire of 1284 and much later in a similar mishap in 1842.

Hamburg, 1150 AD

The charter in 1189 by Frederick I "Barbarossa" granted Hamburg the status of an Imperial Free City and tax-free access up the Lower Elbe into the North Sea. This charter, along with Hamburg's proximity to the main trade routes of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, quickly made it a major port in Northern Europe. Its trade alliance with Lubeck in 1241 marks the origin and core of the powerful Hanseatic League of trading cities.

In 1529 the city embraced Lutheranism, and Hamburg subsequently received Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. Hamburg was at times under Danish sovereignty while remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire as an Imperial Free City.

Briefly annexed by Napoleon I (1810–14), Hamburg suffered severely during his last campaign in Germany. The city was besieged for over a year by Allied forces (mostly Russian, Swedish and German). Russian forces under General Bennigsen finally freed the city in 1814. During the first half of the 19th century a patron goddess with Hamburg's Latin name Hammonia emerged, mostly in romantic and poetic references, and although she has no mythology to call her own, Hammonia became the symbol of the city's spirit during this time.

Hamburg experienced its fastest growth during the second half of the 19th century, when its population more than quadrupled to 800,000 as the growth of the city's Atlantic trade helped make it Europe's third-largest port. With Albert Ballin as its director the Hamburg-America Line became the world's largest transatlantic shipping company at the turn of the century, and Hamburg was also home to shipping companies to South America, Africa, India and East Asia. Hamburg became a cosmopolitan metropolis based on worldwide trade. Hamburg was the port for most Germans and Eastern Europeans to leave for the New World and became home to trading communities from all over the world (like a small Chinatown in Altona, Hamburg).

In 1903, the world's first organized club for social and family nudism, Freilichtpark (Free-Light Park) was opened in Hamburg by Paul Zimmerman. It was located on a lake formed by the Alster River in the southern part of the city, adjoining a bathing beach. After World War I Germany lost her colonies and Hamburg lost many of its trade routes. In 1938 the city boundaries were extended with the Greater Hamburg Act to incorporate Wandsbek, Harburg, Wilhelmsburg and Altona.

During World War II Hamburg suffered a series of devastating air raids which killed 42,000 German civilians (see Bombing of Hamburg in World War II). Through this, and the new zoning guidelines of the 1960s, the inner city lost much of its architectural past.

The Iron Curtain — only 50 kilometers east of Hamburg — separated the city from most of its hinterland and further reduced Hamburg's global trade. On February 16, 1962 a severe storm caused the Elbe to rise to an all-time high, inundating one fifth of Hamburg and killing more than 300 people. After German reunification in 1990, and the accession of some Eastern European and Baltic States into the EU in 2004, Hamburg Harbor and Hamburg have ambitions for regaining their positions as the region's largest deep-sea port for container shipping and its major commercial and trading centre. Since reunification the Greater Hamburg Metropolitan Region gained about 400,000 inhabitants and in 2007 its population was about 4.3 million people.

The Best time to go

While Germany can have pleasant summer weather, northern areas including Hamburg are known for their year-round Reizklima, or 'healthy, bracing climate'. This perhaps is the reason for the region’s robust cuisine. Summer is a good time to go to Hamburg as summer temperatures mostly don’t climb upwards of 20 degrees.

You would like going to Hamburg during the winter months if Skiing is a hobby. Winter is prime ski time in the city and you can head south for the Alps of the Harz Mountains for some of the best Ski resorts in the world.