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Hamburg (German language pronunciation: [ˈhambʊɐk];, ['hambɔːx]) is the second largest city in Germany and along with Hamburg Harbour, its principal port, Hamburg is also the second largest port city in Europe, ninth largest port in the world, and the largest city in the European Union which isn't a national capital.
The official name Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (; ) refers to Hamburg's membership in the medieval Hanseatic League and the fact that Hamburg is a City State and one of the sixteen Federal States of Germany.
Hamburg is on the southern tip of the Jutland Peninsula, centered between Continental Europe to the south, Scandinavia to the north, the North Sea to the west, and the Baltic Sea to the east. The city of Hamburg lies at the junction of the River Elbe with the rivers Alster and Bille. The city center is set around two lakes, the Binnenalster ("Inner Alster") and the Außenalster ("Outer Alster").
An international trade city, Hamburg is the commercial and cultural centre of Northern Germany. Its citizens are known as Hamburgers.
History
The city takes its name from the first permanent building on the site, a castle ordered to be built by Emperor Charlemagne in 808 AD. The castle was built on rocky ground in a marsh between the Alster and the Elbe as a defence against Slavic incursion. The castle was named Hammaburg, where "burg" means "castle". The "Hamma" element remains uncertain. Old High German includes both a hamma, "angle" and a hamme, "pastureland". The angle might refer to a spit of land or to the curvature of a river. However, the language spoken might not have been Old High German, as Low Saxon was spoken there later. Other theories hold that the castle was named for a surrounding Hamma forest, or for the village of Hamm, later incorporated into the city. Hamm as a place name occurs a number of times in Germany, but its meaning is equally uncertain. It could be related to "heim" and Hamburg could have been placed in the territory of the ancient Chamavi. However, a derivation of "home city" is perhaps too direct, as the city was named after the castle. Another theory is that Hamburg comes from ham which is Old Saxon for shore.
In 834 Hamburg was designated the seat of a bishopric, whose first bishop, Ansgar, became known as the Apostle of the North. In 845 a fleet of 600 Viking ships came up the River Elbe and destroyed Hamburg, at that time a town of around 500 inhabitants.
Two years later, Hamburg was united with Bremen as the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.
In 983, the town was destroyed by King Mstivoj of the Obodrites. In 1030, the city was burned down by King Mieszko II Lambert of Poland. After further raids in 1066 and 1072 the bishop permanently moved to Bremen. Hamburg had several great fires, notably in 1284 and 1842.
The charter in 1189 by Frederick I "Barbarossa" granted Hamburg the status of an Imperial Free City and tax free access up the Lower Elbe into the North Sea. This charter, along with Hamburg's proximity to the main trade routes of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, quickly made it a major port in Northern Europe. Its trade alliance with Lübeck in 1241 marks the origin and core of the powerful Hanseatic League of trading cities.
In 1529 the city embraced Lutheranism, and Hamburg subsequently received Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. Hamburg was at times under Danish sovereignty while remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire as an Imperial Free City.
Briefly annexed by Napoleon I (1810-14), Hamburg suffered severely during his last campaign in Germany. The city was besieged for over a year by Allied forces (mostly Russian, Swedish and German). Russian forces under General Bennigsen finally freed the city in 1814. During the first half of the 19th century a patron goddess with Hamburg's Latin name Hammonia emerged, mostly in romantic and poetic references, and although she's no mythology to call her own, Hammonia became the symbol of the city's spirit during this time.
Hamburg experienced its fastest growth during the second half of the 19th century, when its population more than quadrupled to 800,000 as the growth of the city's Atlantic trade helped make it Europe's third-largest port.
With Albert Ballin as its director the Hamburg-America Line became the world's largest transatlantic shipping company at the turn of the century, and Hamburg was also home to shipping companies to South America, Africa, India and East Asia. Hamburg became a cosmopolitan metropolis based on worldwide trade. Hamburg was the port for most Germans and Eastern Europeans to leave for the New World and became home to trading communities from all over the world (like a small Chinatown in Altona, Hamburg).
In 1903, the world's first organized club for social and family nudism, Freilichtpark (Free-Light Park) was opened in Hamburg by Paul Zimmerman. It was located on a lake formed by the Alster River in the southern part of the city, adjoining a bathing beach.
After World War I Germany lost her colonies and Hamburg lost many of its trade routes. In 1938 the city boundaries were extended with the Groß-Hamburg-Gesetz (Greater Hamburg Act) to incorporate Wandsbek, Harburg, Wilhelmsburg and Altona. The city counts 1.7 million inhabitants.
During World War II Hamburg suffered a series of devastating air raids which killed 42,000 German civilians (see Bombing of Hamburg in World War II). Through this, and the new zoning guidelines of the 1960s, the inner city lost much of its architectural past.
The Iron Curtain — only east of Hamburg — separated the city from most of its hinterland and further reduced Hamburg's global trade. On February 16, 1962 a severe storm caused the Elbe to rise to an all-time high, inundating one fifth of Hamburg and killing more than 300 people.
After German reunification in 1990, and the accession of some Eastern European and Baltic States into the EU in 2004, Hamburg Harbour and Hamburg have ambitions for regaining their positions as the region's largest deep-sea port for container shipping and its major commercial and trading centre.
Main sights
Churches
The skyline of Hamburg features the high spires of the five principal churches (Hauptkirchen) covered with green copper plates.
(The dates given correspond to the establishment of the respective parish, the buildings are considerably younger)
Other churches are also visible in the inner city:
St.Johannis, Harvestehude, Hamburg (Saint John’s) at the Außenalster
Bridges and tunnels
Hamburg has a number of prominent buildings from the past and present.
The many canals in Hamburg are crossed by over 2300 bridges — more than Amsterdam (1200) and Venice (400) combined. Hamburg has more bridges inside its city limits than any other city or town on Earth.
Köhlbrandbrücke
Freihafen Elbbrücken
Old Elbe Tunnel (Alter Elbtunnel)
New Elbe Tunnel (Elbtunnel)
Towers and masts
Heinrich-Hertz-Turm
Transmitter Hamburg-Billstedt
Culture
Theatres
Altonaer Theater
Theater Allee
Deutsches Schauspielhaus
Ernst-Deutsch-Theater
Hansa Theater
Theater im Zimmer
English Theatre
St. Pauli Theater
Schmidts Tivoli
Hamburger Kammerspiele
Imperial Theater
komödie - im Winterhuder Fährhaus
Thalia-Theater
Thalia Gaußstraße
Monsun Theater
Theater Imago
Kampnagel-Fabrik
Theater für Kinder
Neues Theater am Holstenwall
Theater in der Basilika
Schilleroper
Theaterschiff am Mäuseturm
Ohnsorg-Theater—a theatre in which the actors speak Low Saxon (but they speak Missingsch-infused German for national television broadcasts, since Low Saxon isn't comprehensible to most German speakers)
Economy
The most significant economic basis for Hamburg is the Hamburg Harbour, which ranks 2nd only to Rotterdam in Europe and 9th worldwide with transshipments of 9 million standard container units (TEU) and 134 million tons of goods in 2006. After the German reunification, Hamburg recovered the eastern portion of its hinterland, becoming by far the fastest growing port in Europe. International trade is also the reason for the large number of consulates in the city. Although situated up the Elbe, it's considered a sea harbor due to its ability to handle large ocean-going vessels.
Hamburg, after Seattle and Toulouse, is one of the most important locations of the civil aerospace industry world in the world. Airbus, which has one of its two assembly plants in Hamburg, and related companies employ over 30,000 people in or near the city.
Other important industries are media businesses, most notably three of Germany's largest publishing companies, Axel Springer AG, Gruner + Jahr and Heinrich Bauer Verlag. About half of Germany's national newspapers and magazines are produced in Hamburg. There are also a number of music companies (the largest being Warner Music Germany) and Internet businesses (for example AOL, Adobe Systems and Google Germany, and also Web 2.0 companies like Qype).
Heavy industry includes the making of steel, aluminium and Europe's largest copper plant (External Link ), and a number of shipyards like Blohm + Voss (External Link).
Transport
Hamburg is connected by four Autobahnen (motorways) and is the most important railway junction on the route to Northern Europe. Hamburg Airport is the oldest airport in Germany still in operation. There is also the smaller Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport.
Hamburg's licence plate prefix is "HH" (Hansestadt Hamburg, English: Hanseatic City of Hamburg), rather than just the single-letter normally used for large cities. The prefix "H" is used in Hanover instead.
As in most larger German cities, public transport is organised by a fare-collection joint venture between transportation companies. Tickets sold by one member company in this Hamburger Verkehrsverbund (Hamburg traffic group) (HVV) are valid on all other HVV companies' services.
HVV acts as an overall coordinating body for transport in the Hamburg combination, with representation by the Hamburger Hochbahn (Hamburger Overhead Railway); Deutsche Bundesbahn (German Federal Railroads); AKN (Altona-Kaltenkirchen-Neumunster Gleis/Altona—Kaltenkirchen—Neumunster Railway); HADAG Seetouristik und Fahrdienst A. G. (HADAG sea-tourism and driving service shares society); VHH (Verkehrsbetriebe Hamburg-Holstein A.G./ Transporting enterprises Hamburg Holstein shares society); PVG (Pinneberger Verkehrsgesellschaft, mbH/ Pinneberger public transport company, Inc); and KVG (Kraftverkehrgesellschaft, GmbH/ Motor Traffic Company, LLC).
Nine mass transit routes across the city are the backbone of Hamburg public transport. Three lines comprise the U-Bahn and six the S-Bahn system. U-Bahn is short for Untergrundbahn (underground railway). Approximately of of the U-Bahn is underground; most of the U-Bahn tracks are on embankments or viaducts or at ground level. Older residents still speak of the system as the Hochbahn ("elevated railway"). The Hamburg S-Bahn has a total length of (single-track, underground) with 59 stations, of which 10 are underground. A light rail system, the AKN, connects to satellite towns in Schleswig-Holstein. Gaps in the mass-transit network are filled by bus routes, plied by single-deck, two-, three- and four-axle diesel buses. Hamburg has no trams or trolley-buses, but has hydrogen fuelled buses operating pilot services.
Finally, regional trains of Germany's major railway company Deutsche Bahn AG and the regional Metronom trains may be used with a HVV public transport ticket, too. Except at the three bigger stations in the centre of Hamburg, the regional trains hardly stop again inside the area of the city.
A 24-hour bus network operates as frequently as every 2 minutes on busy routes (30 minutes in suburban areas). There are six ferry lines along the river Elbe, operated by the HADAG company. While mainly needed by Hamburg citizens and dock workers, they can also be used for sightseeing tours at the (relatively) low fees of a HVV public transport ticket.
Music
Famous composers connected to Hamburg include:
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) died in Hamburg.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788, son of Johann Sebastian Bach) died in Hamburg.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was born in Hamburg.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was born in Hamburg.
Hamburg and vicinity is a popular residency for famous contemporary classical composers. Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) also known for his music in films by Stanley Kubrick lived in Hamburg for 30 years and taught at the local music academy. He was succeeded at the Hochschule by the Russian-German composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) who died in Hamburg. His countrywoman Sofia Gubaidulina (born in 1931) lives on the outskirts of Hamburg. Other important composers living and working in Hamburg are Manfred Stahnke, a pupil of György Ligeti's, Peter Ruzicka, Peter Michael Hamel and .
St. Pauli
Hamburg is known for giving the Beatles a start in their musical career in the early 1960s. The Beatles lived in St. Pauli and played at the Indra, the Kaiserkeller, the Top Ten Club, and the Star-Club, which was located in the district near the perhaps most famous street of Hamburg, the Reeperbahn. Singer and actor Hans Albers is strongly associated with St. Pauli, providing the neighbourhood's unofficial anthem, "Auf der Reeperbahn Nachts um Halb Eins." St. Pauli is also known as a centre for the German punk movement.
Contemporary popular
Sascha Konietzko the frontman and founder of KMFDM is from Hamburg and visits regularly.
More recently it's known for some of the most popular German hip hop acts, such as Fünf Sterne deluxe, Samy Deluxe, Beginner and Fettes Brot. There is also a quite big alternative and punk scene which gathers around the Rote Flora (External Link), an occupied former theatre located in the district of Sternschanze. Some of the musicians of the famous electronic band Kraftwerk also came from Hamburg. In addition, the members of Tokio Hotel currently reside in Hamburg.
Hamburg is also famous for an original kind of German alternative music called Hamburger Schule ("Hamburg School"), a term used for bands like Die Sterne, Tocotronic, Blumfeld and Tomte.
Hamburg was one of the major centres of the heavy metal music world in the 1980s. Many bands such as Helloween, Running Wild and Grave Digger got their start in Hamburg. The influences of these bands and other bands from the area were critical to establishing the subgenre of Power metal.
Hamburg is also one of the most important global centres for psychedelic trance music. It is home to many record labels such as Spirit Zone, [MushroomMagazine, the world's best known and longest running psy-trance magazine, as well as many parties and club nights. During the summer people from all over the world flock to the countryside surrounding Hamburg to attend massive festivals such as Voov Experience, Shiva Moon, Tshitraka and Fusion Festival.
Since the German premiere of Cats in 1985 there are always a number of musicals being played in the city. Among them have been Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King or Dirty Dancing (before there was Dance of the Vampires). This density, which is the highest in Germany, is partly due to Germany's major musical production company Stage Entertainment being located in Hamburg. One of the musical theatres is a large tent in the harbour, guests either arrive by boat or through the historic Old Elbe Tunnel.
Hamburg was one city to take part in the Complaints Choir project. Meg Weymes is also a celebrity from Hamburg.
Museums
Currently Hamburg has 79 Museums. Famous and popular ones include:
Altona Museum and North German State Museum (External Link)
Art Gallery and Gallery of Contemporary Arts and (Kunsthalle Hamburg und Galerie der Gegenwart) (External Link)
BallinStadt - The History of Emigration (External Link)
Bucerius Kunst Forum (External Link)
Deutsches Zollmuseum (External Link)
Erotic Art Museum (External Link)
Hamburg Dungeon (External Link)
Hamburg Museum for Archaeology and the History of Harburg
Neuengamme concentration camp memorial (External Link)
Helms-Museum (External Link)
Johannes-Brahms-Museum
HSV Museum (External Link)
Museum of Art and Design (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) (External Link)
Museum of Communication (Museum für Kommunikation) (External Link)
Museum of Ethnography (Museum für Völkerkunde) (External Link)
Museum of Hamburg History (Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte) (External Link)
Museum of Labour (Museum der Arbeit) (External Link), an Anchor Point of ERIH, The European Route of Industrial Heritage
Speicherstadt Museum (External Link)
St. Pauli Museum (External Link)
See also: List of museums in Hamburg in the German Wikipedia
Cuisine
Although Hamburg is jokingly said to be the birthplace of the Hamburger, this might just be a myth. However, the beef patties a German immigrant from Hamburg sold in the 1850s in New York allegedly were named after the butcher and then became a generic term.
Original Hamburg dishes are Bohnen, Birnen und Speck (Low Saxon Bohn, Peern un Speck, green runner beans cooked with pears and bacon), Aalsuppe (Low Saxon Oolsupp, often mistaken to be German for "eel soup" (Aal/Ool ‘eel’), however the name probably comes from the Low Saxon allns [ʔaˑlns], meaning “all”, “everything and the kitchen sink”, not necessarily eel. Today eel is often included to meet the expectations of unsuspecting diners.), Bratkartoffeln (Low Saxon Brootkartüffeln, pan-fried potato slices), Finkenwerder Scholle (Low Saxon Finkwarder Scholl, pan-fried plaice), Pannfisch (pan-fried fish), Rote Grütze (Low Saxon Rode Grütt, related to Danish rødgrød, a type of summer pudding made mostly from berries and usually served with cream, like Danish rødgrød med fløde) and Labskaus (a mixture of corned beef, mashed potatoes and beetroot, a cousin of the Norwegian lapskaus and Liverpool's lobscouse, all offshoots off an old-time one-pot meal that used to be the main component of the common sailor’s humdrum diet on the high seas).
Hamburg is the birthplace of Alsterwasser (a reference to the city’s river Alster with two lake-like bodies in the city centre thanks to damming), a type of shandy, a concoction of equal parts of beer and carbonated lemonade (Zitronenlimonade), the lemonade being added to the beer. Hamburg is also home to a curious regional dessert pastry called Franzbrötchen. Looking rather like a flattened croissant, the Franzbrötchen is somewhat similar in preparation but includes a cinnamon and sugar filling, often with raisins or brown sugar streusel. The name may also reflect to the roll's croissant-like appearance -- franz appears to be a shortening of französisch, meaning "French," which would make a Franzbrötchen a “French roll.” Being a Hamburg regional food, the Franzbrötchen becomes quite scarce outside the borders of the city; as near as Lunenburg (Lüneburg) it can only be found as a Hamburger and isn't to be had in Bremen at all.
Ordinary bread rolls—without which a leisurely weekend breakfast in Hamburg is unimaginable—tend to be oval-shaped and of the French bread variety. The local name is Rundstück (“round piece” rather than mainstream German Brötchen, diminutive form of Brot “bread”), a relative of Denmark’s rundstykke. In fact, while by no means identical, the cuisines of Hamburg and Denmark, especially of Copenhagen have a lot in common. This also includes a predilection for open-faced sandwiches of all sorts, especially topped with cold-smoked or pickled fish. The American hamburger seems to have developed from Hamburg’s Frikadelle (or Frikandelle): a pan-fried patty (usually larger and thicker than the American counterpart) made from a mixture of ground beef, soaked stale bread, egg, chopped onion, salt and pepper, usually served with potatoes and vegetables like any other piece of meat, not usually on a bun. (Many Hamburgers consider their Frikadelle and the American hamburger different, virtually unrelated “creatures.”)
Sports
The most popular sports team in Hamburg is Hamburger SV, a football team in the Bundesliga (which has played in the group stages of the Champions League twice; in 2000/2001 and in 2006/2007). They play at the HSH Nordbank Arena. The Hamburg Freezers represent Hamburg in the DEL, the highest ice hockey league in Germany. The HSV Handball represents Hamburg in the German handball league. Both teams play in the ultra-modern Color Line Arena. Additionally FC St. Pauli is a highly regarded second division (formerly Bundesliga) football club with a large fan base. They play at the Millerntor-Stadion. Hamburg is the nation's hockey capital and dominates the men's as well as the women's Bundesliga with teams like Der Club an der Alster, Großflottbeker THGC, Harvestehuder THC, Klipper THC or Uhlenhorster HC. There are also several minority sports clubs, surprisingly Hamburg has two cricket clubs, Alster CC and HSV Cricket. Hamburg is also home to the Hamburg Dockers Australian Rules Football club which compete in the German Australian Football League.
The HSH Nordbank Arena (formerly the AOL Arena and originally Volksparkstadion) was used a site for the 2006 World Cup.
See also: Deutsches Derby
Religion
38% of inhabitants are Protestant, 10% Catholic, and 12% Muslim, while around 40% profess no religion.
There is also a large number of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs.
Language
As elsewhere in Northern Germany, the original language of Hamburg is Low Saxon, usually referred to as Hamborger Platt (German Hamburger Platt) or Hamborgsch. It is still in use, albeit by a minority and rarely in public, probably due to a hostile climate between World War II and the early 1980s. Since large-scale Germanisation beginning in earnest with in the 18th century, various Low German-coloured dialects have developed (contact-varieties of German on Low Saxon substrates). Originally, there was a range of such Missingsch varieties, best known being the low-prestige ones of the working classes and the somewhat more “posh” bourgeois Hanseatendeutsch. All of these are now moribund due to the influences of “proper” German propagated by education and media, perhaps also because of gradual erosion of the erstwhile independent spirit and local pride of Hamburg’s population.
In addition, immigration brought numerous dialects from all over the German-speaking world used to Hamburg, also a large number of foreign language communities. Hamburg has a sizeable population of Sinti and Roma (“Gypsy”) people, some of them sedentary (mostly Sinti) and some of them nomadic or semi-nomadic (mostly Roma), camp grounds being set aside by the state and municipal governments. Hamburg is thus one of the few locations in the world in which both Sinti and Romany are spoken, and it's also one of the major headquarters of international Roma organisations.
Education
Universities
Currently, up to 29 institutions of tertiary education are located in Hamburg:
AMD - Akademie für Mode & Design website
BAH - Berufsakademie Hamburg website
BLS - Bucerius Law School - Hochschule für Rechtswissenschaft website
EBC - Euro-Business College Hamburg website
Euro-FH - Europäische Fernhochschule Hamburg - European University of Applied Sciences Hamburg website
EvFH - Evangelische Fachhochschule für Sozialpädagogik, Soziale Arbeit und Diakonie website
FHÖV - Fachhochschule für Öffentliche Verwaltung Hamburg website
FOM - Fachhochschule für Oekonomie und Management Studienort Hamburg website
FüAkBw - Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr website
HAW - Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften - Hamburg University of Applied Sciences website
HCU - HafenCity University for Architecture, City Planning, Structural Development and Geomatics website
HfBK - Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg website
HfF - Hochschule für Finanzen (website not available yet)
HFH - Hamburger Fern-Hochschule website
HfMT - Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg website
HH - Hotelfachschule Hamburg website
HMS - Hamburg Media School website
HSBA - Hamburg School of Business Administration website
HSU - Helmut Schmidt Universität / Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg - Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg website
HWP - Hamburger Universität für Wirtschaft und Politik website
ICoM- International College of Music, Hamburg website
JAK - Akademie JAK Modedesign website
NIT - Northern Institute of Technology website
SSH - Stage School Hamburg website
TUHH - Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg - Hamburg University of Technology website
UHH - Universität Hamburg - University of Hamburg website
UKE - Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf - University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf website
WAHH - Wirtschaftsakademie Hamburg website
ZMNH - Zentrum für Molekulare Neurobiologie Hamburg (External Link)
Tourism
Image:Speicherstadt 1890.jpg|Warehouse district 1890
Image:Speicherstadt3glp.JPG|Warehouse district
Image:Kesselhaus.JPG|The Kesselhaus (boiler house)
Image:Freedom-of-the-Seas--in-Hamburg.jpg|"Freedom of the Seas" behind the Landungsbrücken
Hamburg was generally not considered to be a tourist magnet, not even by locals. Nevertheless, tourists play a significant role in the city's economy, and according to the magazine Travelhouse Media two of the most visited sites in Germany are located here: the harbour (8 million visitors per year) and the Reeperbahn (4 million), compared to famous sites like the Cathedral in Cologne (6 million) or the castle Neuschwanstein (200,000) unexpected high numbers to most people. Hamburg has the fastest growing tourism industry in Germany (2005 and 2006 approx. 15%) and will most probably reach rank 10 of Europe's most visited tourist destinations by 2008.
Hamburg is best visited in spring or summer. A typical Hamburg visit includes a tour of the city hall and the grand church St. Michaelis (called the Michel), and visiting the old warehouse district (Speicherstadt) and the harbour promenade (Landungsbrücken). Sightseeing buses connect these points of interest. Of course, a visit in one of the world's largest harbours would be incomplete without having taken one of the harbour and/or canal boat tours (Große Hafenrundfahrt, Fleetfahrt) which start from the Landungsbrücken. Many visitors take a walk in the evening around the area of Reeperbahn, considered Europe's largest red light district and home of many theatres, bars and night clubs. It was in the Reeperbahn that The Beatles began their career with a 48-night residency at the Indra Club, and then another 58 nights at the Kaiserkeller, in 1960. Others prefer the laidback Schanze district with its street cafés or a barbecue on one of the beaches along the river Elbe. Hamburg's famous zoo, the Tierpark Hagenbeck, was founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenbeck as the first zoo with moated, barless enclosures. A friend of Hagenbeck's, the illustrator Heinrich Leutemann made some illustrations here.
Quite common is a tour through Northern Germany with Hamburg as a starting point or stop-over.
However, most people visit Hamburg because of a specific interest, notably one of the musicals, a sports event, a congress or fair. Therefore, in 2005, the average visitor spent two nights in Hamburg. The majority of visitors come from Germany (80%); most foreigners are European, especially from the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and the largest group from outside Europe comes from the U.S. An interesting footnote is the high number of rich guests from the Arabian peninsula, who seek treatment in one of Hamburg's hospitals.
Regular events
For the interested visitor, some events held every year:
Sports (Note that a registration, usually months in advance, is needed for public races.)
Film festivals
Arts & Exhibitions
- International Fireworks Festival: August
- Kirschblütenfest - Grand fireworks and Japanese culture: May
- Lange Nacht der Museen - one ticket, 40 of Hamburg's museums open until midnight: May
- Theme nights (jungle, romantic, Asian) at Hagenbeck's zoo (External Link): Saturdays in summer
Music
- Fleetinselfest - Music and international artists open air (External Link): July
- G-Move - Techno parade (until 2005, since 2006 taking place at the city of Kiel)
- Schlagermove - German 1960's / 1970's music parade (External Link): July
- Wacken Open Air - The world's largest annual heavy metal music festival, with over 60,000 in attendence in 2007: August
- Reeperbahn Festival - huge Indoor Musicfestival in many Clubs of the Red-Light-District in St.Pauli, mostly Rock, Alternative and Indie-music: September (External Link)
Fun / Street Festivals
Sister cities
St. Petersburg, Russia, since 1957
Marseille, France, since 1958
Shanghai, People's Republic of China, since 1986
Dresden, Germany (then East Germany), since 1987
León, Nicaragua, since 1989
Ōsaka, Japan, since 1989
Prague, Czech Republic, since 1990
Chicago, Illinois, U.S., since 1994
More information: Hamburg Sister Cities (in German only)
Notable Hamburgers
Notable Hamburgers include actors like Hans Albers, the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, composers Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms, poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, writers and publishers Rudolf Augstein, Marion Dönhoff, former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt, scientists Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Sportsmen Max Schmeling and Uwe Seeler as well as some important business people like Albert Ballin, Paul Carl Beiersdorf and Kurt A. Körber, as well as the pioneer of the modern zoo Carl Hagenbeck.
Ferdinand Laeisz and Axel Springer were born in Hamburg
Photographer Astrid Kirchherr is from Hamburg
Tennis player Tommy Haas was born in Hamburg.
Film directors Oliver Hirschbiegel and Fatih Akin were born in Hamburg.
External results
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