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During the German empire Jewish life in Hamburg between the years 1871 and 1918 was marked by formal equal rights as well as the effectiveness of well known jewish personalities from economy and culture. Still, Jews were excluded from many areas of professional and social life, if they confessed their belief in public. The rapid changes caused by the development of Hamburg to a modern trading and transport metropolis at the end of the 19th century led in parts of the middle class to anxiety and insecurity, of which anti-Semitic parties and organisations, who saw in the Jews initiators of the modernisation and enemies of tradition, profited. Political anti -Semitism was reinforced through growing nationalism, where national German slogans were also directed against the exclusion of the Jews. But nationalism in European states and the persecution of the Jews in eastern europe supported jewish self -confidence and the wish for an independant jewish state. The ideas found their political and organizational stability in Zionism, whose advocates aimed for the foundation of a jewish state in Palestine. In 1909 the first Zionist congress in the Third Reich, took place in Hamburg. The destination of the numerous jewish emigrants, who left Europe via Hamburg was, above all, the USA and partly Palestine as well. The First World War seemed to have been an opportunity for Jews to prove their civic reliability. At the same time a majority of them was overwhelmed by the overall enthusiasm of the war and volunteered for war service. Those who didn’t dedicated their economical power to ensure the existence of the population. Part of the Jews in Hamburg, among them the shipowner Albert Ballin, kept his distance from the increasing nationalism and the extensive strategic targets of the German Empire and fell into opposition of the leading classes in Hamburg with his demand for a democratization of the city. Jews in Hamburg - The arrival of the first Jews in Hamburg - Enlightment and emancipation - Jews in the german empire - Jews and the Weimar Republic - Persecution and the holocaust under the national socialist leadership - Jewish Schools - Jews and business in Hamburg - Living conditions and Jewish residential areas - The Synagogue
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