Hamburg's miniature world

Hamburg around 1400

We are inside a historical ship, the so-called "Hansekogge".

The bulbous stern of the "Hansekogge" (Hanseatic cog ships) allowed plenty of space for loading goods and raw materials. Standardized barrels were the "containers of the Hanseatic period." Almost everything was transported in them: herring, knives, gold bars, and pieces of ore.

The pirate Klaus Störtebeker, whose head we see at the side of the ship, is a legend in northern Germany. Even today, people like to tell the tale of the gold treasure that he supposedly hid in the masts of his ship. There is indeed historical evidence that the Baltic and the North Sea were swarming with pirates around 1400. Hamburg's merchants tried to protect their goods by travelling in groups, protected by armed escort ships.

Hamburg in 1535

Take a look around our model of the mills!

At the end of the 12th century, the Alster was dammed to drive corn mills. During the decades which followed, the town was systematically expanded. In 1235, the Alster was dammed for a second time at the Reesendamm, part of what is now the Jungfernstieg promenade. The model shows how a number of meal and grain mills had been established there by around 1535. There are two corn mills, one of which mainly served the local population, while the other was largely reserved for brewers and bakers. Alongside them is a polishing mill, where suits of armor made of metal plates were manufactured and polished, and a carpenter's workshop, on the wide forecourt of which tree trunks are being sawn and chopped to make a mill wheel.

Hamburg in the year 1644

We see a densely populated Old Town with the cathedral, the churches of St James, St Peter, and St Catherine, the New Town—still sparsely populated with many gardens—the port, and, above all, the encircling fortifications with 22 bastions, which was Hamburg's major building project in the early 17th century. The investment paid off immediately, because Hamburg was largely protected from the Thirty Years War which raged across mainland Europe until 1648.

Hamburg in the 17th century

Both politically and economically, Hamburg experienced a massive upturn in the 17th century. From the middle of the 16th century there had been a general increase in shipping on the North Sea, but Hamburg also opened up brand new sea routes. Ships now sailed directly to England, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain, and served all Mediterranean ports. The resulting trade brought immense wealth to Hamburg.

Just imagine, all of this was done only by windpower!

The Reeperbahn, which is nearly a kilometer long, is still the most famous street in Hamburg's red-light district, St. Pauli. At the beginning of the 17th century, rope makers began to settle here on public land outside the gates, between Hamburg and Altona. In seafaring, a "Reep" was a rope or hawser. Making a rope like this required a stretch of straight road about 300 meters long.

Hamburg before the Great Fire of 1842

This model shows how Hamburg looked before the Great Fire of 1842: an early industrial port city, still with no railway service, but instead with a sheltered port upstream on the Elbe for tall ocean-going ships. For safety reasons, the steamships, which were innovative in their time, had their own landing stages further down the Elbe. There were no quay walls in the harbor. Instead, the ships would moor at so-called "Duckdalben," consisting usually of several massive oak piles rammed into the harbor's seabed.

Between 1850 and the 1930s

Between 1850 and the 1930s, nearly 5,000,000 emigrants left the country via the port of Hamburg. Most of the passengers boarding the Frisia in Hamburg were emigrants.

In the middle of the Frisia's stern sat the steamship's engine: a gigantic machine with a boiler and coal bunker. It occupied over a third of the total area of the ship. In addition to the engine, the ship also had sails.