The modern metropolis

At the end of the war, Hamburg was among Germany's most heavily destroyed cities. Half of the city's housing lay in ruins, with only 20 percent entirely undamaged. Of the port facilities, 80 percent were destroyed. Before gradual rebuilding could begin, the rubble had to be cleared. In the period to 1949, 53,000 homes were either built or restored, and in 1952, the 100,000th new apartment was completed. Alongside big housing blocks, there were also showcase residential projects as at Hohnerkamp in Bramfeld. The 12 Grindel tower blocks, originally planned in 1946 for British soldiers and finally completed in 1956, became a symbol of large-scale housing development in postwar Germany.

For urban planning at the time, the war damage of 1943 was the crucial turning point. As a result, the development blueprint of 1947 and the reconstruction plans of 1950 and 1960 were all based on concepts dating from 1944. The aim was to create a more spacious, functional city with lower population density and more parks. The bombing in fact enabled the creation of a new east-west road through the inner city in the early 1950s, which had been in planning since 1940. Rising levels of motor traffic over the following decades made further modern transport projects inevitable, including the new Lombards Bridge (1953), the Wallring Tunnel (1966), the new Elbe Tunnel and the Köhlbrand Bridge (1974). In spite of continual increases in traffic, plans to replace the airport in Fuhlsbüttel with a larger facility in Kaltenkirchen could not be implemented until 1983.

To avoid overburdening the downtown area, the City-Nord commercial center was created during the 1960s to the north of the Stadtpark. At the same time, large-scale housing projects were planned for peripheral districts, including Osdorfer Born, Mümmelmannsberg and Steilshoop. Attractive shopping malls in many neighborhoods now offered the kind of variety once only found in downtown stores. As Hamburg's catchment area gradually extended far into the neighboring states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, the new Hamburg Transportation Network of 1965 considerably improved local transport.

After the devastating storm tide of February 16-17, 1962, which burst the dykes of the Elbe and cost 317 lives, plans had to be drawn up for totally new flood defenses that were not completed until the end of the 20th century. As the decades passed, bombsites were replaced by large numbers of modern buildings, all of which are symbols of their times, including the university (from 1959), the Unilever House (1964), the television tower (1968), the Congress Center (1973) and the Fleetinsel (1990s). Plans for the new dockside commercial center "Hafencity" take these developments into the 21st century.


Hamburg in the 20th. century (2)
-    Winter food shortages, refugee misery, black market trading
-    From occupied city to federal state
-    The modern metropolis
-    The exhileration of the consumer Society
-    The ups and downs of the Economic Miracle
-    Social policy and alternative politics
-    The limits of growth
-    Cultural city Hamburg
-    At the end of the Millennium

Hamburg in the 20th. century (1)