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”.
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The Green Industrial City : Germany

Hamburg is Germany’s second largest industrial center and the heart of a metropolitan area with a population of 3.3 million. It is nevertheless one of the greenest cities in Germany. 41 percent of Hamburg’s total area consists of arable land and garden plots, parks and public gardens, woodlands, moors and heaths. Landscape reserves and nature reserves cover 28 percent of the city’s area. As a result of the unification of Germany and the opening up of Eastern Europe, the port of Hamburg has regained its old hinterland. This enhances the city-state’s prospects of once again becoming the hub of trade, services and communications between East and West. Firm plans have been made for the construction of the Transrapid magnetic levitation train, which is to link Hamburg’s city center with the center of the German capital Berlin in less than one hour.

The port, one of the largest in the world, spreads out over 75 square kilometers, occupying one tenth of Hamburg’s city area. In terms of container transshipment volume, Hamburg ranks second in Europe after Rotterdam. Approximately 180 scheduled shipping lines offer about 7,000 departures each year from the port of Hamburg to points all aver the globe. Every day more than 220,000 people from the surrounding area commute to work in the Hanseatic City. Hamburg is the banking center for northern Germany and Germany’s largest insurance headquarters. With more than 95 consulates-general and consulates, Hamburg is the world’s principal consular city. The Congress Center conveniently located in the heart of the city is one of the most modern and most popular conference centers in Europe. The immediately adjacent trade fair halls further enhance its attractiveness as a venue for important trade exhibitions.
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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.

Bremen’s Sights : Germany

draw millions of visitors to the city every year: the Market Square with the Renaissance Town Hall, the statue of Roland and the Gothic St. Peter’s Cathedral, the world-famous “Bottcherstrasse” and the historic Schnoor Quarter. The Bremen Free Market, which has been held on the Biirgerweide for over 960 years, is one of Germany’s largest fairs. More than 250 tall sailing ships from many nations congregated in Bremerhaven in the summer of 1996.

The Art Gallery, the New Museum Weserburg, the Gerhard Marcks House and the Paula Becker-Modersohn House display important works of art. The -jerman Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven boasts impressive collections from all eras of seafaring as well as a number of historic ships in the museum’s own port. The Theater am Goetheplatz, the bremer shake-speare company, the annual Bremen Music Festival ^nd the International Music Project Bremen are household words for music and theater aficionados.

Marine Research and the Fine Arts : Germany

Bremen’s university has about 18,000 students; its primary fields of emphasis are engineering and the natural sciences. Leaders in the area of basic research are the Bremen Institute of Applied Beam Technology (BIAS) and the Institute ofShipping Economics and Logistics.

The Center for Tropical Marine Ecology and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology develop modern concepts for marine research. Bremen is also the home of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. The Bremen Academy for Fine Arts and Music, which focuses on design, the fine arts and music, is nationally renowned as well. The beginning of 1997 marked the reopening of the renovated “Glocke”, the concert hall with extraordinary acoustics.

Ports and High Tech : Germany

Ports and shipping, international trade connections and products of highest quality manufactured by state-of-the-art industries are the foundations of Bremen’s economic life. The container terminal in Bremerhaven is Europe’s largest container transshipment facility. Every year, more than 10,000 ships link Bremen’s ports with roughly 1,000 ports all over the world, With an annual volume of 830,000 vehicles, Bremerhaven is Europe’s most important automobile transshipment point.

The Free Hanseatic City’s shipyards stand for quality in shipbuilding. Bremen is also one of the centers of the German food, luxury food and beverage industries: Coffee, chocolate, flour, milk products, spices, fish products and beer are the best-known products. Key components for rockets, satellites and the Airbus are developed and built in Bremen, a hub of the aerospace industry. The electrical and electronics industries as well as high-tech industries likewise play a prominent role in the city’s economy. Symbolic of Bremen’s expertise in the field of high technology is the 148-meter-high tower of ihe Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, in which experiments can be conducted under conditions of weightlessness. The Bremen Securities Exchange - which is over 300 years old -and the commodities exchanges handle trading for all of northwestern Germany.

A Commitment to Tradition : Germany

Together with Bavaria, Hamburg and Saxony, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen is one of the political entities which already existed prior to 1945; after San Marino, it is the second oldest city republic in the world. The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen consists of the city of Bremen (549,000 inhabitants) and the city of Bremerhaven (130,000 inhabitants), which lies 65 kilometers farther down the Weser River. The territory in between the two cities belongs to the state of Lower Saxony.

First mentioned more than 1,200 years ago, namely in the year 782, a bishopric since 787, and endowed with the rights of a free city by Emperor Frederick I Bar-barossa in 1186, Bremen joined the Hanseatic League in 1358. With the erection of the statue of Roland in1404 and the construction of the Town Hall in 1405, the city demonstrated its claim to self-determination. In 1646 Bremen was elevated to the status of a free imperial city; since 1806 it has called itself the Free Hanseatic City. Bremerhaven was founded in 1827 and elevated to the status of a city in 1851. The state parliament bears the traditional name “Bremische Burgerschaft”; the state government is called the “Senat”, and the president of the Senat is the minister-president of the state. Every year, on the second Friday in February, distinguished German public figures are invited to the historic “Schaffermahlzeit” banquet held by Bremen’s maritime community in the Town Hall.