The Heart of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg

We arrived in cold & rainy Hamburg, exhausted yet energized, ready to explore one of the most important harbors in Europe and the world, located in one of the original EU founding member states. We were welcomed by our wonderful program coordinators, Petra Pissulla and Christina Peter, who are affiliated with the Dräger Foundation, a GMF partner organization.

During our first city tour, we discovered that Hamburg owes much of its wealth to its mercantile background. I was impressed by the city's beautiful architecture surrounded by lots of greenery. We walked around the city center and visited the City Hall, Chamber of Commerce, Speicherstadt (old storage houses used to store goods such as coffee and tea), and several churches. One fascinating church was a cathedral whose core was destroyed during the war but whose structural remains were preserved.



Our initial tour was a stark contrast to one a few days later of St. Pauli, Hamburg's poorest region characterized by social weakness and the Red Light District. We walked through St. Pauli's main church, which contained eccentric modern furniture and many paintings of prostitutes offering their services. We passed by the Red Light District, a small strip where women who are not working as prostitutes are forbidden to enter (think Amsterdam's district on a smaller scale). Prostitutes receive the same social benefits as other Hamburgers, as long as they are legally employed in Hamburg. Our tour ended in the Reeperbahn, a touristy street full of adult stores, nightclubs and bars.




One of our first professional meetings was at the headquarters for Die Ziet (pronounced DEET ZYTE), a weekly German news publication that our coordinator described as "a combination of the Economist and New York Times." We were fortunate to have prominent German intellectual and chief editor of Die Ziet Dr. Theo Sommer (pictured with Hamburg AMMF's below) as our host. Dr. Sommer confirmed that there is an overwhelming support of the Obama administration in Germany since Obama recognizes the importance of having strong transatlantic ties. Dr. Sommer also commented that though Europe will never be as homogenous as the US, there is a shift to increasing European identity and someday there will be a "United Europe of States."


Another publication we visited was 'Hinz & Kunzt,' a street magazine and social project created to address the poverty and homelessness in Hamburg. Vendors, who must be homeless, purchase copies of the magazine in advance and make a profit of 0.8 Euros per copy. Hinz & Kunzt provides specific services for vendors, including showers and a recreation area. Gabriele Koch, a fundraiser for the publication, explained that the staff works hard to ensure that the primary reason folks purchase the publication is for its content and not out of sympathy for its vendors. As a result, 55,000-65,000 copies are sold per month. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of the upscale restaurants where we dined allowed vendors to solicit inside the establishment.

Other notable meetings/events include:

• Karen Johnson, the US Consul General in Hamburg, who shocked us when sharing that in the early 1970's she was forced to resign from her former position in the Foreign Service when she got married;
• Pat Mix, a director at Amnesty for Women, an NGO that provides services for women immigrants to Germany;
• Anja Hajduk, Senator of the Hamburg Ministry of Urban Develpment and Environment, who is proud that Hamburg secured the prestigious position of the Green Capital of Europe 2011;
• A side trip to Luebeck, a small town an hour outside of the city (the Holstentor, a main gate into the city, is pictured below, featuring fellows Chandi Ghosh, Staci Lynch, and myself);
• A delicious, intimate dinner with our sponsor host Petra Pissulla and some of her colleagues where we discussed German politics and laughed over strange American & German traditions;
• A visit to the construction site of the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, which will become a new landmark for Hamburg when it opens in 2012 and based on the exquisite building designs I saw will be one of the many reasons I return to Hamburg;
• A sobering tour of the Concentration Camp Memorial 'Neuengamme', which housed 106,000 prisoners during World War II.

The Hamburg harbor may be known as the heart of the city, but I saw its heart in the Hamburgers themselves: people healing from the devastating impact of World War II, struggling to embrace and accept anyone and everyone, from its homeless to Turkish immigrants to its prostitutes. I leave for Barcelona with so many warm memories of my Hamburg experience, both with the locals I had the pleasure of meeting to the small group of fellows with whom I bonded.