Hamburg · DE
Hamburg 1933-1945: Dictatorship, Firestorm, Remembrance
Nazi terror, the deportations, and the 1943 firestorm, traced through the old heart of Hamburg.
What's the walk about?
Welcome to a sober and respectful journey through the old heart of Hamburg, tracing the years between 1933 and 1945. This is not a walk of monuments to glory, but of remembrance. Together we will follow the arc of dictatorship, persecution, and destruction: from the Nazi seizure of power and the Gestapo headquarters at the Stadthaus, past the churches that lived through the firestorm and the counting houses of the Kontorhaus quarter, to the platforms from which Hamburg's Jewish citizens, Roma and Sinti were deported. At the heart of it all stands the bombed-out Mahnmal St. Nikolai, preserved to remember the firestorm of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943. We walk slowly, and we walk to remember.
What you'll see
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1
Stadthaus (Gedenkort Stadthaus)
Memorial
An elegant arcade of pale stone that was once the most feared address in northern Germany, the headquarters of the Hamburg Gestapo. Today a small memorial site preserves the memory of those interrogated and tortured behind its walls.
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2
Rathausmarkt
Square
Hamburg's grand civic square in front of the ornate City Hall, a public stage the Nazis renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz and draped in swastika banners for Hitler's balcony speeches. Spared the worst of the 1943 firestorm, it quietly took back its old name, and its democracy, only after the war.
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3
Mahnmal St. Nikolai
Memorial
A soaring neo-Gothic spire rising from the shattered shell of a bombed church, kept as a ruin so that Hamburg can never forget the firestorm of 1943.
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4
Trostbrücke
Landmark
Hamburg's oldest named bridge arches quietly over the Nikolaifleet, stitching together the medieval old and new towns. Beside it once stood the town hall where a free Hanseatic city governed itself for more than five hundred years.
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5
Hauptkirche St. Petri
Church
Hamburg's oldest surviving parish church lifts its copper spire 132 meters over the old town, and its bronze lion head door handle has been polished by hands since 1342. In July 1943 the church came through the firestorm nearly unscathed while the streets around it burned.
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6
Hauptkirche St. Jacobi
Church
A medieval pilgrims' church that survived the Great Fire of 1842 only to be gutted by bombs in June 1944, while its famous Arp Schnitger organ escaped because the pipes had been carried to safety in time.
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7
Chilehaus
landmark
A soaring wedge of dark clinker brick whose eastern corner rises like the sharp prow of a great ship. Behind its celebrated silhouette lie quieter and harder stories from the years when Hamburg lived under dictatorship.
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8
Meßberghof
building
A magnificent brick office building in Hamburg's Kontorhaus district that hid one of the darkest business addresses of the Nazi era. Behind its beautiful expressionist facade sat the firm that supplied the Zyklon B used to murder millions.
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9
denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof (Lohseplatz)
Memorial
A quiet memorial in HafenCity's Lohsepark marking the site of the former Hannoverscher Bahnhof, from where more than 8,000 Jews, Sinti and Roma were deported between 1940 and 1945. A lowered path called the Fuge traces the old railway tracks toward the remains of Platform 2.
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