57 Fun Facts About Hamburg

As of 2024, where does Hamburg rank among German cities by population?

Second, behind only Berlin: a 1937 law merged the neighbouring cities of Altona, Wandsbek and Harburg-Wilhelmsburg into Hamburg, adding half a million people at a stroke.

Which luxury pen maker has had its home in Hamburg for more than a century?

Montblanc is named after the highest peak in the Alps, whose height in metres, 4810, is engraved on its nibs, yet it has been based since its first years in a port city at sea level.

Which two other German cities share Hamburg's status as a city-state?

Berlin and Bremen: like them, Hamburg is a city and a federal state at once, so its mayor ranks as a state premier and the city casts its own three votes in the Bundesrat.

In 2024, only Rotterdam and which other European port handled more containers than Hamburg?

Antwerp, now run jointly with Zeebrugge as Antwerp-Bruges, has pulled far ahead: Hamburg handled 7.8 million containers in 2024, well short of the 9.7 million it moved a decade earlier.

By long tradition, which emperor is credited with founding the castle that gave Hamburg its name?

Charlemagne is the founder of tradition, but digs on the cathedral square showed that the first Hammaburg was a Saxon stronghold of the 700s, levelled around 800 and rebuilt about 820.

Which missionary, honoured as Hamburg's first bishop, is known as the Apostle of the North?

Ansgar, a Frankish monk, earned the title through his missions to Scandinavia, whose patron saint he now is. By church tradition, Emperor Louis the Pious made him Hamburg's first bishop.

Which raiders sailed a fleet up the river in 845 and sacked the young settlement of Hamburg?

Vikings struck as the Frankish empire was breaking apart. The bishop's biographer wrote that they burned his church and its books, and that he barely escaped.

Which emperor is credited with the 1189 charter that freed Hamburg's ships from tolls down to the North Sea?

Frederick Barbarossa gets the credit, and 7 May 1189 is still celebrated as the port's birthday. The surviving charter, though, was drawn up decades later and is widely judged a forgery.

Hamburg's 1241 alliance with which city is seen as founding the Hanseatic League?

Lübeck and Hamburg made their 1241 pact to fight together against the robbers who preyed on the road between the two cities.

Which Hamburg senate tradition, first held in 1356, is billed as the world's oldest of its kind still celebrated?

A ceremonial feast, the Matthiae-Mahl, carries that billing even though it lapsed from 1724 to 1956. The banquet is tied to 24 February, St Matthias's Day, which the Middle Ages counted as the first day of spring.

Which building did Hamburg blow up during the Great Fire of 1842 to try to stop the flames?

The town hall was blown up at the last minute to make a firebreak, once its records had been carried out, but the flames spread anyway. The brand-new stock exchange, ringed by fire, survived.

Where did the Great Fire of 1842 start?

A cigar factory on Deichstraße, Eduard Cohen's, caught fire around 1 a.m. on 5 May. The weather had been unusually dry and the wind kept shifting, so the blaze burned for three days.

Which epidemic killed about 8,600 people in Hamburg in 1892?

Cholera spread through drinking water that Hamburg still pumped unfiltered from its river, because its leaders had argued for decades over paying for sand filters.

What was the RAF codename for the July 1943 firebombing of Hamburg?

Operation Gomorrah borrowed the name of a biblical city destroyed by fire. On its first night the RAF dropped clouds of foil strips, code-named Window, for the first time to blind German radar.

Which occupying power's zone included Hamburg after its surrender on 3 May 1945?

Britain's 7th Armoured Division drove into the ruined city on the afternoon of 3 May, the same day General Alwin Wolz signed its surrender. Hamburg then sat in the British occupation zone.

Which disaster killed 315 people in Hamburg on the night of 16 February 1962?

A storm-surge flood burst the dikes and swamped the low-lying district of Wilhelmsburg. The city's police senator overstepped the constitution to call in the army and NATO helicopters.

Which two future German chancellors were born in Hamburg?

Helmut Schmidt and Angela Merkel were both born in Hamburg, but Merkel left as a baby when her pastor father took a parish in East Germany. Olaf Scholz, later the city's mayor, was born in Osnabrück.

Which Hamburg concert hall, opened in 2017, sits like a glass sail on an old warehouse?

The Elbphilharmonie, nicknamed Elphi, rests on the brick shell of a 1960s harbour warehouse. Due in 2010, it opened years late, after its bill had climbed to about €866 million.

Which piano maker has built its instruments for the European market in Hamburg since 1880?

Steinway, founded in New York by a German immigrant, opened a Hamburg plant in 1880 to get round Europe's import duties. It still supplies every market outside the Americas.

Hamburg's red-brick Speicherstadt warehouses stand on foundations made of what?

Timber piles driven into the river mud carry the whole district, built from 1883 as a customs-free zone. Clearing the site meant moving some 20,000 residents out of their homes.

Hamburg's Chilehaus office building, finished in 1924, is famously shaped like what?

An ocean liner, with a sharp eastern corner that rises like a prow. Its owner, the magnate Henry Sloman, named it for the country where he made his fortune trading saltpetre.

What does the name Reeperbahn literally mean?

Ropewalk, from Low German Reep, rope. Twisting ships' cables needed a long, straight track, so in the 1620s the rope-makers moved outside the crowded walled city.

A 1664 decree of Hamburg's senate made it a crime to harm or even insult which birds on the Alster?

Swans were a privilege of kings and dukes, so keeping them on the Alster advertised the city's independence. Hamburg has employed a keeper, the Schwanenvater or swan father, since 1674.

Which Beatle was deported from Hamburg in November 1960 for being too young to work in its nightclubs?

George Harrison was 17, too young to play a nightclub after midnight, and was sent home on 21 November. The band's first Hamburg residency, begun that August at the little Indra club, collapsed within days.

Which Hamburg photographer, engaged to the Beatles' first bassist, is often credited with their mop-top haircut?

Astrid Kirchherr cut Stuart Sutcliffe's hair in the style her art-school friends wore, and his bandmates later copied it. She herself dismissed the credit as 'rubbish'.

Which famous St. Pauli music venue opened on Friday 13 April 1962 with the Beatles on the bill?

The Star-Club brought the Beatles back twice more that year. A home tape of their final nights there came out as a live album in 1977, after the band tried and failed to block it.

Which composer was born in Hamburg's cramped Gängeviertel quarter in 1833?

Johannes Brahms hoped to lead Hamburg's Philharmonic concerts, but in 1862 the post went to a singer, Julius Stockhausen. Deeply hurt, he made his career in Vienna instead.

Which musical's 1986 German premiere began Hamburg's unbroken run of musical theatre?

Cats opened at the Operettenhaus on the Reeperbahn on 18 April 1986 and stayed for 15 years. Its success led the producers to build another Hamburg theatre, opened in 1990, for their next show.

Which subgenre did Hamburg bands like Helloween and Gamma Ray help establish?

Power metal took its fast, melodic shape on the two albums Helloween released in 1987 and 1988. Guitarist Kai Hansen then quit the band and founded Gamma Ray in the same city.

Order an Alsterwasser in a Hamburg bar and you get which mixed drink?

Beer with lemonade, the northern name for what southern Germany calls a Radler. In some regions the two names mean different mixes, one with lemon soda and one with orange, and which is which changes from place to place.

What is a Franzbrötchen?

A cinnamon-sugar pastry of buttery, layered dough. Each slice is pressed flat with the handle of a wooden spoon, so the filling oozes out at the sides and caramelises in the oven.

Which fish is simmered with dried plums, apples and pears in a classic Hamburg soup?

Eel, in the sweet-and-sour Hamburger Aalsuppe. A much-told story says the name first meant 'everything goes in' rather than the fish, but the claim is disputed and lacks evidence.

Which pan-fried Hamburg dish of minced beef, bread and onion may be an ancestor of the American hamburger?

Frikadelle is today's name for the dish that New York menus of the late 1800s sold as Hamburg steak, a nod to the port many emigrants had sailed from. At home it comes with potatoes, not in a bun.

Which northern German dish of corned beef, potato and onion is a Hamburg speciality?

Labskaus began as sailors' food in the age of sail, built on the salted meat that was standard fare at sea. Its Liverpool cousin, scouse, gave Scousers their name.

Which club did Hamburger SV beat 1-0 in Athens to win the 1983 European Cup?

Juventus lined up with Platini and several of Italy's 1982 World Cup winners, yet fell to an early goal from Felix Magath.

Until 2018, Hamburger SV was the only founding Bundesliga club never to have suffered what?

Relegation finally came on 12 May 2018, after almost 55 years. A stadium clock had counted the unbroken top-flight stay, which earned HSV the nickname 'Bundesliga-Dino'.

Which unofficial emblem did FC St. Pauli's fans adopt in the 1980s?

The skull and crossbones arrived, the story goes, when a fan known as Doc Mabuse nailed a pirate flag to a broomstick and carried it to a home match. Other supporters copied him, and the club later bought the rights to the symbol.

What is the name of FC St. Pauli's home ground?

Millerntor-Stadion is named after a former city gate nearby. From 1970 to 1998 it carried the name of a club president, until members voted to drop it because he had belonged to the Nazi party.

What did Hamburg voters reject in a November 2015 referendum?

A bid for the 2024 Olympics was voted down by a narrow majority, so Germany dropped out of the race. Rome and Budapest later pulled out too, and Paris ended up as host.

What is Miniatur Wunderland, opened in Hamburg's Speicherstadt in 2001?

The world's largest model railway, by Guinness's count, was dreamed up in 2000 when Frederik Braun wandered into a model-train shop on holiday in Zurich. He founded it with his twin brother Gerrit.

What innovation made Tierpark Hagenbeck a landmark in zoo design in 1907?

Open enclosures with moats instead of bars came from Carl Hagenbeck, an animal dealer who patented the idea in 1896. Hidden ditches let seals and polar bears appear to share one Arctic scene.

How did carts and pedestrians get down to Hamburg's old river tunnel when it opened in 1911?

By large lifts: cages on each bank lowered wagons, and later cars, 24 metres to the twin tubes. The tunnel let tens of thousands of dock and shipyard workers cross in any weather.

Hamburg's airport at Fuhlsbüttel, founded in 1911, was first built to serve which kind of aircraft?

Airships came first: the site began as the base of a company that built an airship hangar, and aeroplanes were confined to one corner. It is now Germany's oldest airport still in use.

Which World War II battleship was built at Hamburg's Blohm+Voss shipyard?

Bismarck was launched at the Hamburg yard in February 1939. On her only raid into the Atlantic, in May 1941, she sank HMS Hood, and the Royal Navy hunted her down within days.

Hamburg's copper-spired landmark church, long a beacon for ships, goes by which nickname?

Michel is the city's name for St. Michael's. The church has burned down twice, struck by lightning in 1750 and set alight during repair work on the tower in 1906, and was rebuilt each time.

Which Hamburg landmark was briefly the tallest building in the world in the 1870s?

St Nicholas' took the record in 1874 with a 147-metre spire designed by the English architect George Gilbert Scott. Bombs gutted the church in 1943, and the ruined tower now stands as a war memorial.

Which weekly news magazine, founded in 1947, is published in Hamburg?

Der Spiegel was started in Hanover by press officers of the occupation, who soon handed it to the young Rudolf Augstein. He moved it to Hamburg in 1952 and stayed its publisher until his death in 2002.

What are the letters on Hamburg's vehicle licence plates?

HH stands for Hansestadt Hamburg: one H marks the old Hanseatic League port, the other the city. Big cities usually get a single letter, such as D for Düsseldorf.

Which event fills Hamburg's Heiligengeistfeld three times a year, for about a month each time?

The Dom funfair takes its name from the cathedral, the Dom, where market traders once sheltered from bad weather. The fair outlived the building and has been held on this site since the 1890s.

What is Hamburg's Planten un Blomen?

An inner-city park, part of the green belt laid out where the city's ramparts stood until the early 1800s. Its Low German name, 'plants and flowers', comes from a garden show held there in 1935.

Which country administered Hamburg's Altona district from 1640 to 1864?

Denmark made Altona a city in 1664 and let faiths settle there that Hamburg restricted, so a large Jewish community grew up next door. Altona passed to Prussia in the 1860s and joined Hamburg only in 1937.

Which aerospace company builds airliners at a plant with its own runway in Hamburg-Finkenwerder?

Airbus assembles its A320-family jets there. The works began in the 1930s, when the shipbuilder Blohm & Voss decided its skill with all-metal ships would carry over to aircraft.

Which fashion designer, born in Hamburg in 1933, spent decades telling the world he was five years younger?

Karl Lagerfeld gave 1938 as his birth year until a newspaper printed his Hamburg baptism record in 2008. He had himself congratulated on a '70th birthday' that year all the same.

Which country's community in Hamburg, called the largest of its kind in Europe, began with carpet traders in the 1970s?

Afghanistan's carpet merchants came first, drawn by the trade in Hamburg's free port. Refugees from the Soviet invasion and later wars followed, and the community had passed 50,000 by 2023.

Which international court has had its seat in Hamburg since 1996?

International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea: the UN's sea-law conference picked the port city as its home in 1981, fifteen years before the court opened. Its 21 judges settle disputes such as maritime borders.

Which international meeting brought violent clashes to Hamburg's Sternschanze area in July 2017?

The G20 summit met in exhibition halls right beside the district, the heart of the city's radical left around the Rote Flora squat. Rioters torched parked cars and looted shops there for hours.

Which sport, brought over from England around 1900, has its German stronghold in Hamburg?

Field hockey made its debut at the London Games of 1908, where a Hamburg club side, Uhlenhorster HC, took the field as Germany.