Cultural city Hamburg

After Hamburg's liberation from Nazi rule, the city quickly developed a vibrant cultural scene. Despite the deprivations of the immediate postwar years (or perhaps because of them), people longed for the kind of variety, entertainment and art they had been without for 12 years, but which were now reaching Germany from Britain and the United States.

In the theater in particular, recent and current events became a focus of attention, for example at the Kammerspiele under the directorship of Ida Ehre, with the staging of plays like Wolfgang Borchert's "Draussen vor der Tür" (The Man Out-side). Under the directorship of Gustav Gründgens (1955-1963), Hamburg's Schauspielhaus evolved into Germany's most important theater. And the Thalia Theater, the Opera with its ballet company, and many committed, low-budget private theaters offered a wide-ranging and attractive program. In the 1990s, musicals like "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera" were major box-office hits.
Hamburg-based movie productions were another important economic factor. The city was already a popular location for shooting international feature films; then it also proved attractive for production companies and studios, as shown by Real Film (1947) and Studio Hamburg (1960). The north German state broadcasting company NDR also had considerable impact with its numerous films and TV series, shot in a city apparently ideally suited for detective films.

For the painters and sculptors who lived in Hamburg, the city was both a place to live and a motif, but they didn't see themselves exclusively as Hamburg artists. The same applied to the works of writers like Arno Schmidt, Siegfried Lenz and Hubert Fichte, in which Hamburg only plays a limited role.

Under the influence of the American and British occupation, swing and jazz spread quickly after 1945. Then, in the 1950s, young people enthusiastically greeted rock 'n' roll. In 1960, The Beatles launched their career at the legendary Star Club, shaping the "Hamburg Sound" with other bands.

With the "Hamburg Scene" of the 1970s, and Udo Lindenberg in particular, the German language started to figure in rock music. Since then, Hamburg has also been the key location for German music producers and record companies. And in the 1990s, Hamburg became the country’s center of hip-hop.


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)