Germany’s Gateway to the World : Germany

Hamburg is the second largest German city, Germany’s principal seaport and the country’s largest overseas trade center. 160 firms from China have offices here, along with 135 from Japan, 65 from Taiwan and 25 from Hong Kong; all in all, more than 3,000 firms are engaged in the transaction of import and export business in the Hanseatic City. Traditional port-related industries are shipyards, refineries and processing plants for raw materials from abroad. Through a consistent policy of structural change, Hamburg has developed into a service metropolis. Future-oriented sectors such as the civil aviation, microelectronics and communications industries are laying a modern foundation for the future of this attractive site for business and industry.

Founded around the year 811 (as Hammaburg), Hamburg began to flourish as a commercial town in 1189, when it was granted customs and commercial rights. One of the first members of the Hanseatic League, it was the League’s main transshipment port on the North Sea. Kings and princes never ruled Hamburg: It was always the citizens themselves who governed the city-state. The devastating fire of 1 842, a readiness to continually modernize and World WarII spared little of the crowded heart of the old commercial metropolis.

Prominent structures include the Late Baroque St. Michael’s Church (whose 132-meter-high tower - affectionately called “Michel” - is the city landmark), the 100-year-old Town Hall, and the Chilehaus, an Expressionist brick building dating from the 1920s. A distinctive type of cultural monument isthe old “Speicherstadt” in the port area, a complex of brick warehouses erected toward the end of the last century. It is not, however, individual buildings which lend Hamburg its special flair but rather the expansive panorama afforded by the Alster, a body of water in the center of the city that has been dammed up to form two lakes, and the colorful picture presented by the port and houses along the broad Elbe River.