Civic Pride and a Passion Tor the Arts : Germany

The mercantile city of Hamburg is and always has been a place of freedom and tolerance and a city with a rich cultural tradition. It was here that Germany’s first permanent opera house was established in 1678; George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) staged his first opera (”Almira”) in the Hanseatic City. Both Georg Philipp Telemann and Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach lived and worked in Hamburg. One of the city’s famous sons was the composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897); the name of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born in Hamburg in 1809) is likewise closely tied to the city on the Elbe.

Influenced by England and France, Hamburg was a cradle of the Enlightenment in Germany. In 1767 the Deutsches Nationaltheater was founded here, an institution linked with the name of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (”Hamburgische Dramaturgie”, 1767-1769), which became renowned especially for its performances of Shakespeare’s works. “Minna von Barnhelm” (Lessing) and “Don Carlos” (Schiller) were performed for the first time here. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) and Matthias Claudius (1740-1815) were Hamburg’s “literary institutions” at the time. During the period of reaction in the 19th century, Julius Campe of Hamburg published the works of Heinrich Heine and other “rabble-rousing” writers of the “Young Germany”.

After World War II, the directors Rolf Liebermann and Gustav Grundgens gave the opera and theater modern accents with a strong international appeal. Unfor-gotten is the Hamburg-born actor Hans Albers (1891-1960). Today three state theaters and roughly 35 private theaters enhance the city’s cultural profile. Especially successful in recent years were the musicals “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera” by Andrew Lloyd Webber, productions famous far beyond Hamburg’s city limits. The Hamburg Ballet under the direction of John Neumeier is internationally renowned. It was here in Hamburg that the graphic artist and painter Horst Janssen (who died in 1 995) created his extensive Portfolio of works. At the beginning of the 1960s the Beatles embarked on their international career in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli.