Hamburg

This article is about the city in Germany. For other articles subjects named Hamburg, see Hamburg (disambiguation).

Map of Germany showing Hamburg

The state and administrative city cover 750 km² with 1.8 million inhabitants, while another 750,000 live in neighbouring urban areas. The Greater Hamburg Metropolitan Region including nearby districts of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony covers 18,100 km² with a population of 4 million.

See also: List of Mayors of Hamburg, List of Honorary Citizens of Hamburg

Table of contents

1 Language 2 History 3 Sport 3.1 Soccer 4 Culture 4.2 Institutions 4.3 Celebrities 4.3.1 Actors and Actresses 4.3.2 Poets and Writers 4.3.3 Politicians 4.4 Churches 4.5 Theatres 4.6 Music 4.6.4 Classical 4.6.5 Composers 4.6.6 Pop 4.7 Museums 4.8 Regional Dishes 5 External links

Language

History

Founded in the first decade of the 9th century as Hamma Burg ("fortified town"), it was designated the seat of a bishopric (834) whose first bishop Ansgar became known as the Apostle of the North. In 845 a fleet said to number 600 Viking ships came up the River Elbe and destroyed Hamburg, at that time a place of around 500 inhabitants. Two years after that Hamburg was united with Bremen as the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. In 1030 the city was burned down by King Mieszko II of Poland. The see was finally moved to Bremen after further raids in 1066 and 1072, this time by Slavs from the east.

Frederick I "Barbarossa is said to have granted free access up the Lower Elbe to Hamburg in a charta of 1189. Hamburg's proximity to the main trade routes of the North and Baltic Seas quickly made it a major port of Northern Europe, and its alliance (1241) with Lübeck on the Baltic is considered the origin of the powerful Hanseatic League of trading cities. However, Frederick's document, still at display at the town museum, is known to be a fake from around 1265. Therefore Hamburg does not hold city rights.

In the 1520s the city authorities embraced Lutheranism, and Hamburg subsequently received Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. At times under Danish sovereignty while a part of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1768 it gained full Danish recognition as an Imperial Free City.

Annexed briefly by France (1810-14), Hamburg suffered severely during Napoleon I's last campaign in Germany, but 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 post.

Jungfernstieg in Hamburg, view across the River Alster with fountain (May 2003)

The city boundaries were extended in 1937 with the Groß-Hamburg-Gesetz (Greater Hamburg Act) to incorporate neighbouring Wandsbek, Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and Altona.

During World War II and in response to Germany levelling Coventry two days before, the Royal Air Force began to bomb Hamburg on November 16, 1940. Later, in Operation Gomorrah the British bombed Hamburg on July 28, 1943 which caused a firestorm that killed 42,000 German civilians. By the end of the war at least 50,000 Hamburg residents died from Allied attacks.

The population of the city proper peaked in the mid-1960s at 1.85 million, but has recovered from a mid-1980s low of under 1.6m. Growth is now concentrated in the suburban areas.

year	inhabitants
1200	approx. 1,500
1300	approx. 5,000
1430	approx. 16,000
1560	approx. 20,000
1650	approx. 60,000
1787	100,000
1820	125,000
1851	175,000
1 December 1875 ¹	264,675
1 December 1890 ¹	569,260
1 December 1900 ¹	705,738
1 December 1910 ¹	931,035
8 October 1919 ¹	985,779
16 June 1925 ¹	1,079,126
16 June 1933 ¹	1,129,307
17 May 1939 ¹	1,711,877
13 September 1950 ¹	1,605,606
6 June 1961 ¹	1,832,346
31 December 1970	1,793,600
30 June 1975	1,725,900
30 June 1980	1,648,800
30 June 1985	1,585,900
1 January 1989	1,603,070
30 June 1997	1,706,800
August 2003	1,733,716

¹ census

Sport

Culture

• Gustav Gründgens
• Hans Albers
• Heinz Rühmann
• Boy Gobert

• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• Matthias Claudius
• Hubert Fichte
• Helmut Heißenbüttel

• Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt

Theatres

• Famous organ built by Arp Schnitger (1648-1719)

• Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
• Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788, a son of Johann Sebastian Bach)
• Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

More recently it is known for some of the most popular German hip-hop acts, such as Sammy Deluxe, Beginner and Fettes Brot. There is also a quite big alternative and punk scene which gathers around the Rote Flora, an occupied villa once owned by Salomon Heine located in the district of Sternschanze. Some of the musicians of the famous electronic band Kraftwerk also came from Hamburg.

Museums

• Afghan Museum
• Altona Museum and North German State Museum
• Art Gallery (Kunsthalle)
• Brahmsmuseum
• Bucerius Kunst Forum
• Erotic Art Museum
• German Customs Museum
• Hamburg Museum for Archaeology and the History of Harburg
• Neuengamme concentration camp memorial
• Speicherstadt Museum
• Museum of Labour
• Museum für Völkerkunde

External links

• City Panoramas - Panoramic Views of Hamburg's Highlights
• Official government portal (German)
• Official government portal (other languages)

States of Germany
Baden-Württemberg | Bavaria | Berlin | Brandenburg | Bremen | Hamburg | Hesse | Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | Lower Saxony | North Rhine-Westphalia | Rhineland-Palatinate | Saarland | Saxony | Saxony-Anhalt | Schleswig-Holstein | Thuringia

Source | Copyright