The limits of growth

The criticism, coming mainly from young people and focussing on issues such as nuclear arms, the Vietnam war, authoritarianism and thoughtless consumerism reflected a fundamentally critical view of the established, prosperous society that had emerged in Germany by the 1960s. It was becoming clear that there were limits to economic growth and that many social problems remained unsolved. The three traffic-free Sundays during the oil crisis of 1973 were both an essentially symbolic attempt to master an international problem and a demonstration that the world's natural resources were not infinite.

A scandal erupted in 1979 over the Stoltzenberg chemicals factory, where large amounts of dangerous chemical warfare materials and other noxious substances were stored carelessly with the connivance of the authorities. This was not the first incident that made the need for a healthy environment a popular concern. Many Hamburgers also demonstrated (to no avail) against the planned nuclear power station in Brokdorf on the lower reaches of the Elbe.

In the 1970s, housing shortages and rising rents drew attention to deficits in housing policy and to landlords speculating with vacant properties. In spring 1973, around 200 youths occupied a house threatened with demolition in Ekhofstrasse in Hohenfelde. They were evicted by a large police operation, but buildings in other parts of Hamburg were subsequently squatted by protesters. The occupation of dilapidated houses in Hafenstrasse and Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse in the Sankt Pauli district between 1981 and 1995 attracted attention far beyond the borders of Hamburg.

Developments in Hamburg society from the 1970s were characterized by new lifestyles and by a critical attitude among sections of the community as regards politics, business and the environment. Homelessness and drug-related fatalities showed how many problems the city still had and how wide the gap between rich and poor, conformists and outsiders among its inhabitants was.


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)