17th and 18th centuries When the Senate commissioned
Jan van Valckenborgh to build a second layer to the
city's fortifications to protect against the
Thirty Years War (1618–1648), Hamburg was also extended by the newly created
"New Town" (Neustadt). Some of these street names still date from the grid system of roads he introduced. In the late 1580s, the first
Sephardi Jews arrived—fleeing from
Portugal—and built a
Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg. In 1610, official lists of the senate counted about 100 Jewish families.
Lutheran theologians preached against them, especially the "
schools of Satan"—meaning the synagogues—and in 1611 the senate had to ask the Lutheran theological faculties of
Jena and
Frankfort for their opinions. The faculties attested to the senate that the Jews should be tolerated in the town as strangers. The safety in person were granted; however, several assaults, often triggered by Christian homilies, against individual Jews took place. The community was not to be allowed to practise its religion publicly, but small private praying rooms were overlooked. Not until 1660 could the first small synagogue be built. In 1664 the
senate of Hamburg enacted a law to protect the
swans of the city. Hard punishments would be given if a swan was beaten to death, insulted, shot or eaten. A popular belief (omen) is that Hamburg will be free and Hanseatic so long as swans are living on the
Alster river. In 1712/13, the
plague raged in Hamburg and Altona. The latter was burned down by a trespassing Swedish army (Altona was not part of Hamburg at the time); Sweden's adversaries retaliated by burning down
Wolgast in
Swedish Pomerania. In 1762 the city was briefly occupied by Danish forces who were trying to raise money to fight a coming war with Russia.
19th century Briefly annexed by
Napoleon I (1810–14), Hamburg, with a population of about 100 000, was the capital of the
department ''
Bouches-de-l'Elbe'', with
Amandus Augustus Abendroth as the new mayor. Hamburg suffered severely during the
Continental Blockade and Napoleon's last campaign in Germany but managed to raise two forces to fight against him, the
Hamburg Citizen Militia and
Hanseatic Legion. 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. In addition to stimulating German nationalism, the war had a major impact in mobilizing a civic spirit in numerous volunteer activities. Many volunteer militias and civic associations were formed, and collaborated with churches, and the press to support local and state armies, patriotic wartime mobilization, humanitarian relief and postwar commemorative practices and rituals. Hamburg was a member of the 39-state
German Confederation from 1814 to 1866 and, as the other member-states, enjoyed full sovereignty. After periodic political unrest, particularly in
1848, the self-ruling city-state adopted a democratic constitution in 1860 that provided for the election of the Senate, the governing body of the city-state, by adult taxpaying males. Other innovations were the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State, freedom of the press, of assembly and association. Hamburg became a member of the
North German Confederation (1866–71), the
German Empire (1871–1918), while in 1888 it was one of the last two states to
join the German Customs Union (along with Bremen) and was to maintain its self-ruling status during the Weimar Republic (1919–33). 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. , 1842 on River Alster in 1900 In 1842, about a third of the city was destroyed in the "
Great Fire". This fire started on the night of 4 May 1842 and was extinguished on 8 May. It destroyed three churches, the town hall, and countless other buildings. It killed 51 people, and left an estimated 20,000 homeless. Reconstruction took more than 40 years. As part of the reconstruction, the first large modern sanitation system in Europe was built in Hamburg. 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. Construction of
the port lead to the disappearance of several of the smaller of
Hamburg's many rivers and channels, such as the
Dradenau. A major outbreak of
cholera in 1892 was very badly handled by the city government, which still retained an unusual degree of independence for a German city at the time. About 8,600 died in the largest German
epidemic of the late 19th century, and the last major cholera epidemic in an important city in the Western world. The Hamburg water supply from the Elbe did not meet modern standards, and the authorities long continued to deny there was an epidemic, or implement the new understanding of the
germ theory of disease. The imperial government used the scandal to greatly reduce the powers of the city authorities.
20th century With
Albert Ballin as its director the
Hamburg-America Line became the world's largest
transatlantic shipping company around the start of the 20th 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 organised club for social and family
nudism,
Freilichtpark (Open-air Park) was opened in Hamburg. 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.
Weimar Republic In early November 1918, during the first days of the
German revolution of 1918–1919,
revolutionary workers and soldiers took over Hamburg's government with minimal violence or loss of life. They held a free, equal and universal election in March 1919 for a new (parliament) that was to write a republican constitution for the city-state. Despite its revolutionary nature, the new chose to leave much of the city's administration intact and some of the members of the pre-war Senate in their posts. The new constitution kept a large part of the external form of the oligarchic pre-war Hamburg government while making it republican in function. The was freely elected by the full adult citizenry of Hamburg, and the 16-member Senate, chosen by the , acted as the state ministry dependent on the confidence of the . The willingness of the moderate socialists and bourgeoisie to work together contributed to Hamburg's stability during the
Weimar Republic. The only major incident of violence occurred on 23 October 1923. In the
Hamburg Uprising, communists attempted to take over the city as part of the larger
German October centered in central Germany, but they lacked broad support, and the insurrection was quickly quashed by Hamburg's police force; about 100 people, many of them bystanders, lost their lives. Until after the
Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, the Hamburg government was dominated by the parties of the moderate left to moderate right. Especially between 1924 and 1929, it made democratic reforms in such areas as working conditions, housing, education, work training and social welfare. The
Great Depression, which began in 1929, hit Hamburg hard, especially its shipbuilding. The percentage of unemployed residents rose to 40% by June 1933. As in the rest of the Weimar Republic, the communists and
Nazi Party benefitted most from the crisis, with the two together taking 47% of the vote in the 1932 election. Due to a parliamentary deadlock, however, the centrist coalition that had governed Hamburg since 1928 remained in office on a caretaker basis until 8 March 1933. in the of 27 January 1937 On 8 March 1933, the
Bürgerschaft (state parliament) elected
Carl Vincent Krogmann as President of the Senate and
Bürgermeister (mayor), and he formed a coalition administration dominated by Nazis but also containing members of the bourgeois parties. From 18 May 1933, he bore the official title of
Regierender Bürgermeister (Governing Mayor). On 7 April, the Reich government enacted the "
Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich" that established more direct control over the states by means of the new powerful position of
Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor).
Karl Kaufmann, the Nazi Party
Gauleiter for
Hamburg, was installed in this new post on 16 May. Under the provisions of the "
Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich" of 30 January 1934, the
Bürgerschaft was abolished altogether and all the state's sovereign powers passed to the central government. The state government continued
de jure but it was
de facto a mere administrative unit of the Reich. A bitter rivalry existed between Krogmann and Kaufmann over juridiction of the city-state. On 29 July 1936, this was resolved in Kaufmann's favor when Hitler granted him the title of
Führer der Landesregierung (Leader of the State Government). Effective 1 April 1937, the "
Greater Hamburg Act" (26 January 1937) greatly extended the city boundaries to incorporate the Prussian cities of
Altona,
Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and
Wandsbek, in addition to over two dozen smaller rural towns and villages. In return, Hamburg ceded a few
exclaves, including
Cuxhaven. Hamburg was named
Hansestadt Hamburg (Hanseatic City of Hamburg). Effective 1 April 1938, the Constitution of Hamburg was altered through the "Law of the Constitution and Administration of Hamburg" (9 December 1937). This formalized the division of Hamburg into separate state and municipal administrations. Kaufmann remained in charge of the state government and received the lion's share of the power and authority. The Hamburg Senate and the position of Governing Mayor of Hamburg were abolished. Krogmann's title was downgraded to Mayor and he was left with only municipal administration. . The camp operated from 1938 to 1945 in the
Neuengamme neighbourhood of Hamburg. During
World War II Hamburg suffered a series of
devastating air raids which killed 42,000 German civilians. British bombers dropped 23,000 tons of bombs, the Americans dropped 16,000 tons. As the bombings continued more and more people moved out. By May 1945 half a million people (35%) had fled. Through this, and the new zoning guidelines of the 1960s, the inner city lost much of its architectural past. From 1938 until 1945 a
concentration camp was established in the
Neuengamme quarter of Hamburg, the
Neuengamme concentration camp, some of the buildings have been preserved and as of 2008 serve as a memorial. From 1939 until 1945 more than 500,000 men, women and children — including
prisoners of war — were forced to work at more than 900 companies, living in more than 1,200 camps all over Hamburg. Some of these camps held only 7 inmates, others were known for more than 1,500 inmates.
After the Second World War After the end of the Second World War until the end of the
Besatzungsstatut, Hamburg was a
British-occupied city from 1945 to 1949. Specially
George Ayscough Armytage and
Governor Henry V. Berry identified with the city and worked through the
indirect rule, asking prospective Hamburg inhabitants to resume office in the administration.
Denazification and rebuilding of the society proceeded, e.g. in Hamburg were the important trials for war crimes (
Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials) held at the Curio house in
Rotherbaum quarter, and
Radio Hamburg, a public broadcasting radio station, was established on 4 May 1945, even before the capitulation. The
Iron Curtain — only east of Hamburg — separated the city from most of its hinterland and further reduced Hamburg's global trade. On 16 February 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.
Since the 2000s in
HafenCity on 6 December 2013 After
German reunification in 1990, and the accession of some Eastern European and Baltic States into the
EU in 2004,
Hamburg Harbour 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. In 2008, started the conversion of a section of the old
Port of Hamburg facilities in the
Elbe river island of Grasbrook into a mixed-used development called
HafenCity. The project include modern office space, housing blocks, parks, and the flagship building
Elbphilharmonie, designed by Swiss architects
Herzog & de Meuron and inaugurated in January 2017. The landscape projects in the redevelopment included open spaces designed by EMBT Architects (see
Benedeta Taglibue) and the flood-protection and river promenade designed by
Zaha Hadid. In 2015, a section to the north of the
HafenCity called
Speicherstadt was granted the
UNESCO World Heritage Site status with the adjacent
Kontorhausviertel. On 7 and 8 July 2017, the
G20 summit took place in Hamburg, accompanied by protests and riots. == See also ==