History

A little port with a wooden landing stage about 120 metres long first appears in drawings dating from the 9th century. With a population of about 200, Hamburg used this to handle long-distance trade.

In 937 Archbishop Adaldag granted Hamburgians the right to hold markets. About a century before this, Vikings from Denmark had destroyed the Hammaburg. This was now rebuilt.

By 1188 the first port facilities existed on Nikolaifleet. The Port of Hamburg’s official birthday came to be celebrated as 7 May 1189. It was then that Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa granted the Hamburgians the privilege of sailing free of Customs duties along the Lower Elbe as far as the North Sea.

The next decisive milestone in the history of the port was Hamburg’s accession to the Hanse in 1321. The Hanse was the most significant economic league of the early and late Middle Ages. Orientating its trading activities westwards, towards the North Sea, Hamburg occupied a special place in this alliance. The city acquired privileges in England and Flanders, also founding trading branches in London, Bruges, Amsterdam, in Scandinavia to the North and inland Germany.

Piracy was a serious problem, Klaus Störtebeker being its most notorious practitioner. He was beheaded on Grasbrook on 20 October 1400. No established German maritime power existed at that time. However, the Hamburgians armed themselves against buccaneers by using ships in convoy. Led by Admiral Karpfanger, these successfully repelled the pirates.

All the same, the Port of Hamburg was quite soon hit by strong competition from the neighbours. The Danish Altona gained city rights in 1664. Altona had been at the mercy of pan-Danish interests for two centuries. The port in Altona experienced a remarkable upswing in the mid-18th century. It could boast three large shipyards, along with many rope makers, sailmakers and anchor forges. Napoleon’s imposition of the Continental Blockade against England in 1806 affected the Port of Hamburg. This prompted some Hamburg firms to move to Altona in Denmark, where the blockade first applied from 1807.

Trade with America commenced in 1782. As the first Hamburg ship to do so, in 1783 the "Elise Katharina" crossed the Atlantic, making for Charleston and Philadelphia. By 1788, 150 ships were already registered under the Hamburg flag. By 1799, or within eleven years, the total had risen to 280 ships. A collapse caused by the continental blockade followed in 1806. Work on expanding the port only started again after the liberation of the city in 1814. The first steamship, the British “Lady of the Lake”, appeared in the Port of Hamburg in 1816. From 1850 the Hamburg flag was to be seen on every ocean in the world.

Given growing cargo flows, extension of the Sandtor port basin in 1840 and of the lower port in 1855 did not suffice for long. In 1862 it was decided to make the Port of Hamburg an open tidal port rather than a dock port of the kind very common at the time. Johannes Dalmann as Director of Hydraulic Engineering then made a start on extensive planning for restructuring the port area. In 1866 he constructed quays and sheds along both banks of the River Elbe. The first ship-to-rail transfer then took place at the siding on Kaiserkai in 1872. This laid the foundation for Hamburg’s emergence as the largest rail port in Europe.

In 1881 Hamburg joined the German Customs Union. The city was only permitted to retain one area where goods in transit could be stored duty-free. This consisted of the Freeport with the Speicherstadt or ‘Warehouse City’. The Speicherstadt is the world’s largest warehouse complex that rests on timber (oak) piles. Since 1991 it has been protected as a monument. Building of this part of the Freeport commenced in 1883 and the first section was completed five years later. Long-term, duty-free storage as well as duty-free transhipment of goods from abroad remained possible there. After over 120 years of the Freeport, in 2013 this status was surrendered in the interest of the development of the port and the city. Today the port area is a European Customs Seaport.

Construction of the St. Pauli Landing Stages started in 1840. Their ceremonial opening followed in 1910. The nearby St. Pauli Elbe Tunnel was opened in 1911. Two years later, in 1913, Hamburg became a city with a million inhabitants, being the leading port on the continent and the world’s third largest, after London and New York. World War 2 then brought a serious reverse: 80 percent of the port facilities were destroyed

Reconstruction of the port as the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg’s vital artery proceeded apace after the war, since Hamburg’s economy and its prosperity had always been closely linked with developing the port. By 1953 the city had already invested 115 million euros in reconstruction of the port.

The “Industrialization of Sea Traffic” commenced in 1967: The Age of the Container had arrived. The new transport boxes were initially only treated in the Port of Hamburg individually as additional deck cargo. Then on 31 May 1968 the “American Lancer”, the first wholly cellular containership, berthed at Hamburg’s Burchardkai. Container traffic advanced by leaps and bounds. Nowadays 98 percent of general cargo handled is containerized.

Handling annual throughput of 135 million tons, the Port of Hamburg is the largest German universal port. Container throughput has reached almost 9 million TEU, or 20-ft standard containers. Hamburg’s facilities can clear ships of all types and handle goods of almost all categories. (Updated: 2018)

From 2003 one of the largest urban development projects in Europe began to take shape on 160 hectares of port land between Kehrwiederspitze and the Elbe bridges: HafenCity. By 2025 a vibrant and densely settled urban milieu with a strong maritime note will have been established here, combining working, living quarters, culture, leisure, tourism and the retail trade. Nearly 7,000 dwellings and over 45,000 jobs will have been created.