About 100 years ago, the Vettel was germanys most important place for emigrates, leaving their homeland. The emigration camp Ballinstadt was the last station before starting a new life in the new western World. Nowadays the Veddel is inhabited by 44% people with migration background. In times, where the political situation in Europe is so much affected by fear against foreigners based on the refugee situation, it seems very necessary for us to remind people, that migration is also part of our history.
The Doorsill. It separates the familiar and the unknown. Mine and yours. And its made to be passed over every day. Directions and perspectives are relative and can switch from time to time.
New development for the former DB site in Altona, which was used for a long time as a freight train and marshalling yard and has been fallow in recent years. A quarter with a total of 3500 apartments is going to be constructed (1200 apartments to be owned, 1200 to be rent and 1200 as social housing). Building with rents from 16€ to 18€ the m2.
People complain that this new district does not meet the needs of the Hamburg residents, as people depend on cheap housing. It is criticised as well for the losing of the historical meaning of Altona due to the reconstruction.
As the location of the ferry connection of a major trade route, the origins of Blankenese, also known as 'blank nose', can be traced back to the 12th century. The area inhabited by fishermen and pilots developed at the end of the 18th century into an important sailormans village. The long history of the place can be seen in the construction: in that densely populated, thatched roofed half-timbered houses, elegant classical buildings, ornate Wilhelminian style buildings and straightforward residential buildings of the postwar period. 1937 Blankenese, against its will, was incorporated into Hamburg due to the Groß-Hamburg law.
Blankenese nowadays is known as the richest district of Hamburg. It is a posh and homogene area.
The day you decide to emigrate, is the day you decide to leave your old life behind.
Instead of your home and your belongings, you pack expectations, plans and dreams and you hope that your new life will fore fill all that.
This story of leaving your home, hoping to find a better life seems to continue throughout history.
The word ‚Immigrants‘ is associated with people from Asia, Africa or the eastern part of Europe.
But history shows us, that fleeing your home country to look for a new life, happened all over the world.
The Veddel ist the best example for Germany not always being as desirable as it now seems to be.
During the early 20th century its sand and stones were the last things many new becoming americans touched before leaving europe once and for all!
In other words, veddel was the last thing thousands of emigrants ever had physical contact with referring to the old continent. Therefore it always took a special place in memories of those and symbolizes an ending point to start something new or also a starting point into an unknown future hoping to achieve happiness.
Where do we find the veddel nowadays? Where is the place where people say there last goodbyes? Where is the place where people look over their shoulder knowing, that their certain past now turns into an uncertain future?
Hamburg-Mitte, the district surrounding the Binnenalster, is the touristic epicentre of Hamburg. It’s environment is dominated by all things commercial.
Consumerism forms the base to almost every single building in the area. Jungfernstieg, a place that got its name from the families that where “selling off” their daughters into marriage there, stands as a role model and the beginning of modern day consumerism in Germany.
In 1838 the Jungfernstieg was the first ever road in Germany to be asphalted. In 1843, after a fire destroyed most of the area, the first big luxurious shopping mall appeared on this site.
Nowadays storefronts and Displays everywhere battle for the crowd's attention, trying to lure them into their stores and buy their products.
But what exactly makes them so attracting, why do we pay attention to these monuments of consumerism?
For one day we let ourselves be carried, by the waves of tourists, through the streets of Hamburg-Mitte. Let ourselves be drawn to everything seeking for our attention, collecting everything we thought contributed to these monumental structures of advertency.
The roads are paved with shopping bags. People walking around with them, walking next to them or walking around them. Sometimes people even get circled by them. In the end, everybody has one, everybody carries
one! If there is one thing that outnumbres and might even outstand any other item in scene, its definitely one of hamburg-mitte’s shoppingbags!
Giving the districts long history in consumerism it is really interesting to see how the future, where online sales and the digitalisation of the market are gaining more and more traction, is going to shape the area.
Brands are invading our private spaces. Using our homes to advertise their products even more aggressively, desensitizing us to their omnipresence.
Assuming that in the future, the shopping bag will have disappeared from the streets of hamburg mitte, due to the evolution of the store into a monument for its brand, our readymade is reminding people of this forgotten time, where consumerism was clearly separated from our private space. Shopping bag monuments might warn people about the intentions of those brands even though they aren’t selling you anything in their stores anymore.
This change in our sense of privacy ultimately makes us more comfortable in commercial spaces like the Jungfernstieg area. Since we don’t go to stores to buy products anymore, those buildings will transform into communal spaces for people to meet, relax and hang out together. The stores transform into monuments for their brands. They use their existing space to create a seemingly harmless surrounding, a comfort zone as close as possible to the brand. A garden “Eden” where you enjoy the shadow the trees are giving you, not even realizing how close to the forbidden fruit you have gotten.
We can already see this happening in Hamburg-Mitte today. In 2006 the Jungfernstieg was transformed from a promenade, with trees and buildings on both sides, into the space we know today. The street was significantly narrowed and the trees and buildings on the alster side where removed, to make more room for the people to hang out, or maybe to move the shops closer to the people on the other side.
The shops used to change their appearances seasonally to remain attractive, but they know now, that to keep this attraction in the future, they need to rethink their strategy and change their whole character Monumentalize!
Two apples not so different. Temptation? Hypnotism? Pursuit of satisfaction?
[rotherbaum] is a borough belonging to the district of Eimsbüttel, which abuts on the west side of the Alster. It’s determined by it’s contrasts and it’s direct and indirect borders.
P R O C E S S I N G
step one: solely observation | first impressions
everyone of us walked alone through the streets of rotherbaum, time 3-4 hours
characteristics and observation: contrasts
on the one hand “Grindelviertel”, University of Hamburg with lively places of students and ambient
one the other hand a lot of streets and avenues with huge villas of wealthy people and empty, sterile, lifeless atmosphere
at the Alster site are private schools, hotels, embassy located
though every society is isolated – boundaries
macro- and micro-boundaries
independently from each other we observed boundaries:
Dennis: barriers in the streets, blocked streets at the villas located at the Alster, embassies, historical deportation of jews –> social exclusion
Karen: marking properties of flowerbeeds, different types of apartment buildings (villas, simpler builded apartments), places inviting to a collective get-together are not used
Lisa: Streets as limitations (Rothenbaumchaussee + Harvestehuder Weg), as imagine wall of different “types” of society
Limiting the own personalities because of desires of belonging to specific societies
step two: exchange of impressions / common denominator / focus / topic
social borders – common togetherness of all the different population groups (students, employees, affluent people) could be possible, local preconditions to interact with each other exist, but every group is living on their own in their own zone
how can social boundaries be defined?
parallel societies are formed / every group lives in their own kind of cosmos
why is it like that? are they afraid of people of different groups? boundaries as a human need (protection/privacy/property)?
limitation vs. exclusion vs. distinction
what kind of borders exist? digital borders? Wifi? landmarks? facile borders? manhole covers?
what will happen, if there are no borders anymore?
limitless up to a certain limit
step three: conductive ideas
there are objective boundaries in [rotherbaum]: barriers, gates, fences, hedges, prohibition signs, cameras, etc.
what boundaries do find in [rotherbaum] which are not visible? Are there any mechanisms that exclude other people or things? Who is excluded on the internet and who has to exclude themselves from each other?
the most powerful boundaries could be the on-and offline modus, adblock boxes our way through unsafe webpages and passwords functions as virtual keys to control accesses
government control the access to critical media
the human being has to prove that she/he is not a robot to get access to specific content
Does this exclude robots? For a example an artificial intelligence that has the urge to learn something new? Or can those a.i. systems solve those capture tasks?
What’s next?
The diversity of the district may lead to the situation that there will be many boundaries and regulation that determines the cohabitation of people. In a digital world the boundaries become blurry or disappear increasingly. The current location loose its importance also;
we post a blog entry from anywhere to present our studies so that anyone can read it from anywhere.
However it seems that there is a deep need of boundaries in humans. In what forms will they exist in future?
Billstedt, 25 minutes from the center of Hamburg welcomed us with the Billstedt center, a mall connected directly to the underground station. Here started our dérive through the neighborhood, quickly, we left the urban part of Billstedt to reach a residential neighborhood made by small buildings and private detached houses, far from the idea we had of this quarter. It seems to be the typical case of urban sprawl with low density and these so desired detached houses with a private garden. The contrast is strong, the Billstedt center, really crowded is the completely opposite of these quiet residential streets where some individual practices seem to happen. Are the people in the center to consume of is it also a way to spend time and socialize ? We made this second hypothesis because the stats show that joblessness and the number of children are higher than the Hamburg average. But this socialization feeling could be just an illusion, even if the center is full of people, it doesn’t seem to be a place of interaction.
While crossing the residential part, the washing line were hanging there like a relic of a past where people used this common equipment. They are now doing it in their own private garden. However, even if the washing line are not that used, it doesn’t mean that this space could have news uses. Restricted, no games, no bike, nothing is allowed on this little green space. There is a lot of playgrounds for that, all empty, the kids prefer maybe going to the swimming pool. Everybody got is own grill, challenging each other to who will have the most efficient and highly developed. It is here totally different social practices much more individual.
The statue described as the housewife with two bags is a sculpture of Gerhard Brandes. We choose it as our ready-made monument because it seems to be more here for decoration, a failed artwork who let no places for interpretation.
“ There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument. They are no doubt erected to be seen – indeed, to attract attention. But at the same time they are impregnated with something that repels attention. Like a drop of water on an oilskin, attention runs down them without stopping for a moment.”
― Robert Musil
There are no informations or explanations about it that could give to the sculpture the status of a monument. However, in our case, it could be the monument that connect all these observations on the place, on one hand a place that gather people around consumption and on the other hand some individual practices at the neighborhood scale. The statue could be an illusion of a monument as well as the mall is an illusion of a social place. This wife with her two bags that remind consumption with this modern infrastructure and at the same time allegory of the individualism which could point the syndrome of urban sprawl around this myth of the detached house.
Musil, Robert (1936). Nachlass zu Lebzeiten, published in English as Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, trans. Peter Worstman, Eridanos Press, Hygiene, Colorado 1987: ‘Monuments’, p.61.
I don’t know if it really fits here - I’m afraid I guess - I don’t have anything against it but … just not here - there are better places - actually there’s a circus every year in this place, where should they stay instead?
I know from young women, that they have fear - noone is thinking about changing the infrastructure in the first place - the place is monument protected and should not be damaged for this - nature will just die - I expect dreadful things - day nurserys are overcrowded, schools are full - noone asked us - we could have decided together - the first time i heard about it, was though demonstrations.
Memorials of the terror of National Socialism as we know them from Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart are important for our cultural memory. Memorials and museums are educational institutions that give us specialized knowledge in form of codified and stored signs, as Aleida Assmann explains in her text „Soziales und kollektives Gedächtnis“.
The aim of these memorials is to remember the people who suffered under the regime through exhibitions and guided tours. Furthermore, Seminars and events are offered to stimulate discussion and reflection. Also in other German cities it was difficult to establish these memorials. However, after many protests and efforts by society, important places have emerged which would also be extremely important in Hamburg.
The „Stadthöfe“, which, with the exception of the „Görtz’sche Palais", were built between 1892 and 1921 and mainly intended for the police department. From 1933, it was used as the Gestapo police headquarters, with an attached prison, interrogation rooms and torture cellars. Resistance fighters, today known as the „Weiße Rose“ and other politically persecuted people were tortured and killed here. Only a small plaque commemorates the terrible, inhuman acts that took place here between 1933 and 1943. Even this plaque had only been achieved in 1981 under pressure from the people working in these buildings. Instead of taking the renovation of the „Stadthöfe“ as an opportunity to build an appropriate memorial, such as the „Topographie des Terrors" in Berlin, a consumer temple is being created. The City of Hamburg sold the quarter to the project developer „Quantum“ in 2009 on condition that an appropriate memorial has to be built there. What an appropriate memorial is, however, remains open in the requirement. Once, it was spoken of a 530 square metre memorial. What remains is a bookstore and a café with an attached 70 square meter exhibition area.
Forgetting, erasing and destroying history and building a consumer temple in this place is in our opinion not appropriate.
When we were searching for the geographical center of Hamburg we found out that the term “geographical center” has no concrete definition. And so we came across many different calculation methods, all coming up with different results on where the geographical center is.
However, the St. Gertrudenkirche in Hamburg Uhlenhorst is considered the geographical center, being the result of multiple methods and mentioned in articles. So we decided to start our research here.
[ supposed geographical center of Hamburg ]
On site, we interviewed passing people, asking them about this place. Interesting for us was firstly whether people knew, the spot they were at, is considered the geographical center of Hamburg and secondly, what this meant to them. None of the people we interviewed, knew they were in the center, and so the answers regarding the meaning of this information were rather vague. In one of our interviews, we were told to go to the civic association Uhlenhorst-Hohenfelde, so we did. But the conversation here went very similar to the ones before. Instead we were told to try at the rectory. There we couldn’t find anyone. Instead, we accidentally disturbed a dance group and it went on as we knew: “Oh really? We didn’t know that?”
The only serious answer we got, was, looking back on it now, kind of selfish, but still certain opinion, to not put a monument here showing the center. The church itself is used a lot for wedding ceremonies already, because of its location and utilisation. A monument here would attract even more people, flooding the place.
And so we already knew that for complex areas, such as big city, there is not just one center. Depending on the definition or consideration of different landmasses, because the island Neuwerk and other small islands in the estuary of the Elbe, are part of Hamburg as well.
However, all these calculation and definition methods are in connection with the borders of Hamburg, because an area can only be defined through borders. Now, borders are man made lines. Even though there are, depending on the site if the border you’re at, different laws, regulations, sometimes time zones, etc., if you were to remove barriers, indicating signs and such, the step across a border (without knowing, that you are crossing such) would feel just like the previous or next step. It’s the same thing with a center. It’s there, because people put the borders this way.
[ so does a geographical center need a monument ? ]
In our eyes, we don’t think a monument for the pure existence of the geographical center is necessary. And so we created the idea of perhaps an “anti-monument”, because borders are historically seen always a trigger of dispute, arguments and even war. Every border delimits - isolates and excludes. Open and non-binding borders, such as the ones we have in Germany and the EU, are a luxury.
And so the monument we suggest kind of ironic, thought provoking and questioning would be inconspicuous on the one hand and on the other hand invite to relax. A sector embedded in the ground, you can walk or look across it without being disturbed. And if you care for the geographical center, or even are in doubts or anger about the difficulties trying to define it, you should sit down and practice relaxation. In a nice area on the grass, near the beautiful “Kuhmühlenteich”, the Gertrudenkirche, next to a barely used road, we design a small memorial stone and place for a yoga mat in one.
[ the geographical center as an ironic hidden antimonument . ]
Between personification, national identity and time relation
Human built monuments distinguish themselves from natural monuments which are found by people and exist long before human life did. They are not intended to mean something beforehand; the act of symbolizing follows afterwards.
So as in the case of the ‘Findling’ found in the Elbe of Hamburg 1999 during dredging work under water. Its age comes from its material Växjö-Granit from the ice age in Småland (Sweden) and count approximately 1,8 billion years.
Because of its found place in Hamburg and its origin in Sweden, the general consulate of Sweden and the senate of Hamburg decided to make the 217 tons heavy glacial erratic to a symbol of immigration of people regardless of their height and origin.
What makes it paradox at the same time: It became special because of its size and has been personified especially with a new national identity based on its origin.
There are plenty of smaller glacial erratic and geotopes which give also information about the ice age and have an interregional relation but are just too small to be noticed.
On top of that, there has been a ceremony: The glacial erratic was christened and named with a German idiomatic expression “Alter Schwede” implying astonishment and providing a term for a good honest friend. “The oldest immigrant of Hamburg”. This significant personification leads to another dimension of distinctive reminding.
So, those “Findlings” may belong to the oldest forms of monuments in the world’s history. But time does not play the importance of a monument nowadays anymore.
Whereas old monuments remember us of the past, new monuments – as Robert Smithson once defined in times of Minimal Art in the 60s – are built against evolution as well as time with movement and space. Their energy drain lead to an inactive history, ages are radical reduced to seconds. The objective present consists of the past and the future at the same time, that are possibly interchangeable. Whereas the Växjö Granit of the “Alter Schwede” monument remind us of the past a long, long time ago, new monuments let us forget the future and can tell a story of past and future within seconds.
Transition apart of entropy makes us think of the actual though time related question: How can we define future monuments and interact with them nowadays?
[ Bismarkdenkmal ] or, “The Importance of Being Herring”
Is it a question of Image, or a question of Meaning? Or both.
Probably most of the time one concept is not separable from the other, but still, it happens that one prevail over the other, depending on who is having a look on the particulare Image or its peculiar Meaning.
That will bring us to the next question, is it more important the object itself, or the way in which we look at it?
Trying to clarifying with an example, the Water, considered as a natural element has different properties if seen by a Chemist or by a Plumber, but it still doesn‘t impede one to take a shower, and the other to drink it. That‘s mean that we can experience different realities from a same element, or with a same generic object. The Water in our House will assume a different meaning from the Water in the Ocean. And going on playing with Water, an Herring will probably perceive it in the way we perceive Air. And we will not be able to explain to an Herring easily which is our perception on living in the air, so like we could probably have some difficulties to perceive the same that one Herring does with Water. That is one privilge of being an Herring. For sure.
That is a topic strictly related to objects which surround us in everyday life, like the old jacket of a Grandpa, or one book which a really good friend of us gave us a long time ago; but it is a concept that can be adopted to a larger scale.
We use to live in houses, and we can consider our house like a container in which save our personal history and memories. And as a community, that‘s the same thing we do with the space in our cities,trying to mantain alive the collective memory and our common history. And there is a huuuuuuge range of methods to do that.
One of this is the Monument.
And probably that‘s the privilige of living in a peculiar city rather than in another: the possibility we have to read a meaning which otherwise would have been inexpressible.That‘s also the important of living in one society, the possibilities we have to give meanings and create meaning by the forms which surround us.
And yes, Monuments did it and still do it since the beginning of our societies.
Nowadays, the „problem“- if we want to name it like this -, is that the images and Monuments in our cities, especially the oldest ones, are experiencing a lack of meaning. But the Why and the How, we will let it as an open question for the mo(nu)ment.
Here, we would like to have a short view to one BIG classical Monument of Hamburg:
BISMARK DENK(an mich)MAL
a short story
The monument of the first german chancellor „Otto von Bismarck“ was built in 1906. It is up to 47m high and looks like a patron, guarding the city. His view is pointed to the sea, there are different interpretations if Bismarck is looking towards Great Britain, Denmark or Africa.
The monument has been a relevant point of reference for conservatives and nationalists in germany. In the years before the Nazis got empowered, there were a lot of gatherings and marchings with torches of the political rightwing movement, but there has also been resistance against those events, which ended sometimes in confrontations, between left and right people and the police.
In 1925 Hitler took a photo of himself with the monument of Bismarck.
During the Nazitime it was an important location for events and gatherings. In the catacombs below the monument are a lot of Nazisymbols and there are myths about the catacombes as a kind of religious location to pay homage to Bismarck.
During the second world war, the catacombes were used to protect peoples against the bombs and homeless people lived there after the war until the catacombes were closed.
In 1963 there were plans to refunction the monument as a view point, but they were never realised. 20 years later the city put trees around the monument to hide Bismarck a little bit, to avoid political discussions about it. But the trees were cut off a few years later.
In 1998, the 100. yearsday of Bismarcks death, the nationalconservative „Bund für Denkmalpflege e.V.“ was cleaning the monument and in 2003 they made an illumination for it.
In June 2015, a collective of artists from vienna set a sculpture of a capricorn on the top of Bismarcks head of the 43 m high monument. With this action they wanted to make the comeback of german nationalism a subject of public discussion.
Now we can say, the monument is not a static sculpture. It is a monument wich is changing an is treated in different ways, depending of the people in Hamburg and the political and cultural situation.
Nowadays especially tourists are interested in the monument to take a photo of it.
from the Serie “Bismark and I”
In conclusion
Random quote
“The Random, isoltated object (work, novel, book) is of no use whatsover. It must be inserted into the context of living social relations.“
But where is Wissman ?
Our story begins with a disappearance. The last time that the Wissman memorial was seen, it was in the basement of the Hamburger Sternwarte (observatory). Wissman cast in bronze was laying on the ground with Hans Dominik, an askari and a lion. A question is to know why Hamburg chose this place to stock it ? A place to observe the stars, more precisely the light of already dead stars, maybe a metaphor of monuments that remind a past event. Ralph Waldo Emerson said « When it is dark enough, you can see the stars », isn't that story around Wissman and colonisation dark enough to show it ? That's the debate around this monument occurring since 1968. Meanings and contexts have changed since the unveiling of the Wissman's memorial the 3rd April 1909 in Dar el Salaam (Tanzania). Designed by Adolf Kürle, a german artist, the monument was celebrated the glory of Wissman and his actions in the German East-Africa. After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Germany lost its colonial power and the British have taken control of its territory. By being transported to London, the memorial became a trophy for the British. After some negotiations, the desired memorial came back to homeland in 1922, installed in front of the University of Hamburg. A symbolic place because it was the Colonial Institute of Hamburg. However, through the time, the relation to this monument have changed. In 1967, the students have shut down the memorial in reason to its racist history. 1968 is a period of strong social movement initiated mostly by students. We observed at this time a turning point in the meaning associated with this memorial. Hamburg government decided to stock it in the Hamburger Sternwarte, its first stay from a long list in this place. From the memorial to the museum piece, Wissman have been presented several times, once at the Kampnagel for the exhibition “Männersache” and once in the Deustches Historisches Museum for the exhibition “German colonialism: fragments past and present”, in both case Wissman is laying on the ground, changing deeply the image of power of the original monument. But one of the most significant event with the memorial was in 2004 with the project Afrika-Hamburg and the artist Jokinen, the Wissman was placed at Landungsbrücken, an exposed place and was working as a tangible medium in relation with a debate platform on internet.
From the cult to the contempt, the Wissman monument is, through its story, an example of an evolution in the society and its relation with past events. Now controversial, it is questioning how to deal with this difficult past.
Space, Site, Intervention - situating installation art
Excerpt / Conclusion goes here...
The site of a monument is a primary part of the content of the artwork itself. It is reactive to its site: to the cultural content and the materials of its surroundings. Thus, the existent site of a monument redefines the very way in which the artwork is understood by the spectator; the site in which a monument is placed is part of the experience of it. There is a relation between the artwork, the speculator and the site; when moving it, as every place is totally different, the whole interrelation between the object, the context and the viewer further change.
For instance, by displacing the Black Form from Münster to Hamburg, not only the coordinates of it changed – the whole perception among spectator, artwork and place got also lost. In Münster, its original location, the Black Form reacted the whole context of its site – the place influenced and inspired the artist Sol Lewitt, and the speculator perceived the main statement. But, by moving it to Altona, the site changed and so did the context and the relationship with the viewer. Even if the meaning and the purpose did not change, the relocation of the monument affected the concept. Once the Black Form was a political statement, which provoked and remind many people of the killed Jews in World War II, now it is just a black block in Altona, which nobody really notices.
Therefore, it is not possible to design a neutral monument or to move artworks from one site to another – a monument has to be created for a specific place and it has to react to its context so that the meaning can be comprehended by the observer.
The monument “Ätherwelle” was made to honor the german physicist Heinrich Hertz, who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves in 1886.
The artist Friedrich Wield was appointed by the german broadcasting company “NDR” and the senate of Hamburg in 1931 to create a monument dedicated to the work of Heinrich Hertz. After the takeover of the NS-regime the artist was forced to end his work on the sculpture reasonable that Heinrich Hertz was a jew. In the eighties a descendent of the artist proposed to finish the work on the sculpture and it was erected in a park close to the Alster. In 1998 the agency of culture decided to transfer the “Ätherwelle” to a seemingly more adequate location in front of the broadcasting building of the NDR.
[ monuments and repetition ]
At first sight a monument and repetition are extremely opposite things. Once a monument is erect it normally persists at its place. Regular encounters by the people in their daily routines make it more recognisable. On the other hand immaterial things such as prayers or other texts might become monumental themselves through constant repetition as long as there is a higher instance controlling this act of repetition by repressing alternative actions. – For example singing the national anthem before a football game or commiting to a universal alphabet within different languages.
So in theory monuments are affecting our daily lives and routines just by occupying the same space every day for centuries. Repetitions can furthermore create a monumental sense by evolving into traditions.
Relating to the monument “Ätherwelle” we observed that people notice the sculpture in their daily routines but most people did not know its meaning. Moreover some even alienated the monument from its original purpose and gave it their own meaning to better fit their personal lives. For example as a landmark or a waypoint to lead their way to work or as a reference point to give directions.
[ consolidation ]
One explanation might be the restricted capacity of the human memory. Our brain has to evaluate which informations are worth keeping and which are not. That does not mean that this information is completely deleted, but it is rather archived in the structure of our expectations.
The port of Hamburg with the quay sheds 50 to 52 are the last preserved transhipment locations from the imperial period. It is today used for port handling, offices, the Hafenmuseum Hamburg and major events.
Tradition and modernity, culture and trade, event and craft are combined to form an authentic unity with a variety of possibilities. On around 100.000 m2 one can experience the entire area with the quay facilities, historic cranes, harbor railways and ships.(1)
In the history of the port of Hamburg, the strike in 1896 was a big milestone. Around 16.000 dockworkers put down their work to fight for better working conditions. Herman Blohm, who was the owner of the shipyard broke of all negotiations. The employer saw hisself forced to hire new workers, which were called strikebreakers by the dockworkers. Finally the strikers had hat to surrender. Because politics were on the side of the employer, the donation money, the dockworkers got from supporters, was confiscated and some of the strikers were even arrested. Although the strike involved no direct achievement, following successes concerning the working conditions can be linked to the strike. In 1912 they implemented the nine-hour-day and until the 1st world war, all workers got wage agreements.(2)
The old port of Hamburg, as a monument, makes us reconsider what impact the history of the dockworkers even has today. At this monument you can not just experience the bygone time: The place is like a metaphor for the obstacles but finally also the sucess one can achieve by fighting for better working conditions, fighting for your rights, and fighting for a better life. Currently for example the workers from the online company amazon are frequently fighting for better wage agreements. So as we can see: These bad working conditions they had at the port of Hamburg may be history for this specific place, but its actually a relevant topic also today – all over the world but also in Europe and also in Germany.
1 50er Schuppen - Tradition und Moderne mitten im Hafen; 2018;
https://www.stiftung-hamburg-maritim.de/50er-schuppen.html
2 1896: Als Hamburgs Arbeiter den Hafen lahmlegten; 2016;
https://www.ndr.de/kultur/geschichte/chronologie/1896-streiken-die-Hamburger-Hafenarbeiter,hafenarbeiterstreik100.html
