HAMBURG ART GALLERY

German Hamburger Kunsthalle, art gallery in Hamburg, founded in 1850, with paintings and sculptures of all periods, drawings (notably by German Romantics), prints, coins, and medals. The collection of paintings is strongest in works of the later 19th and the 20th centuries. The building that originally housed the gallery dates from 1869. A new building opened in 1919. History Early settlement and medieval growth Hamburg's history begins with the Hammaburg, a moated castle of modest size, built in about AD 825 on a sandy promontory between the Alster and Elbe rivers. In 834, during the reign of the emperor Louis the Pious, the castle's baptistery became the seat of an archbishopric, and Archbishop Ansgar made the young city of Hamburg the base of his missions to the heathens of northern Europe. Vikings burned the city in 845, and the rebuilt Hamburg was burned down again eight times in the following 300 years. By the end of the 11th century, Hamburg's role as the spiritual metropolis of the north was over, and henceforth commerce rather than religion was to be the principal raison d'tre of the city. Between 1120 and 1140 some trading businesses were installed, and the foundation of Lbeck, on the Baltic, by Adolf II, count of Holstein, further promoted the economic development of Hamburg as Lbeck's port on the North Sea. In the autumn of 1188 a group of Hamburg entrepreneurs received from their feudal overlord, Adolph III of Schauenburg (Schaumburg), count of Holstein, a charter for the building of a new town, adjacent to the old one, with a harbour on the Alster River and with facilities for the use of the Elbe River as an outer roadstead. On May 7, 1189, the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa confirmed Count Adolph's dispositions in a charter granting special trading rights, toll exemptions, and navigation privileges. In the 13th century Hamburg grew steadily in both area and economic importance, owing to the development of the Hanse (an association of merchants trading in a particular area) into a widespread association of north German merchant cities, the great Hanseatic League, in which Hamburg's role was second only to Lbeck's. A major entrept for the trade between Russia and Flanders, Hamburg proceeded to safeguard the trade routes by acquiring tracts of land along the branches of the Elbe in the immediate vicinity of the town and also on the estuary farther downstream (Ritzebttel, nucleus of the later Cuxhaven, was acquired by Hamburg in 1393). It thus came to control the use of the river and to be recognized as the protector, in the emperor's name, of navigation on its lower course. Some political complications arose with the death, in 1459, of the last Schauenburg count of Holstein, since his princely rights in Germany passed thereafter to the royal house of Denmark, but Hamburg scarcely recognized Danish suzerainty in any but a formal way. Evolution of the modern city Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League gradually dissolved. Hamburg then went its own way and by 1550 had surpassed even Lbeck in economic importance. A stock exchange was founded in 1558 and the Bank of Hamburg in 1619; a convoy system for shipping was inaugurated in 1662, Hamburg's merchantmen being the first to be escorted on the high seas by men-of-war. About the same time marine insurance was first introduced into Germany. There were two causes for this new ascendancy: first, the wars of religion in the Low Countries in the second half of the 16th century had prompted many Dutch merchants to emigrate to the Unterelbe (Lower Elbe) region, with the result that Hamburg was henceforth to be the focus of their already established international commerce; second, the city had been so efficiently fortified in the decade 161625 that it could pursue its business untroubled throughout the worst crises of the Thirty Years' War (161848). By the end of the 17th century, Hamburg, with 70,000 inhabitants, was the largest city in Germany after Cologne. The Treaty of Gottorp, concluded with the Danes on May 27, 1768, released Hamburg from theoretical subjection to the king of Denmark and so paved its way to being acknowledged, in 1770, as an immediate imperial city of Germany (that is, having no overlord other than the emperor). In addition, the treaty ceded to Hamburg the islands, from Veddel to Finkenwerder, that lay between the city and the left banks of the Elbe River and that, a century later, were to be the site of new docks. Hamburg, however, was not to enjoy its new advantage for long: the Napoleonic Wars overthrew the old order in Germany, and in 1810 the little state was annexed to Napoleon's French Empire. After Napoleon's downfall (181415), Hamburg became a member state of the German Confederation, with the designation Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg from 1819. Prosperity was quickly recovered, as Hamburg's trade was extended to newly opened territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Even the great fire of May 1842, which devastated one-fourth of the city, did not check the booming economy, and the harbour was converted into one accessible at any time, without ships' having to depend on the state of the tides in the Elbe Estuary. Under the German Empire, founded in 1871, the political status of Hamburg was maintained, and development proceeded unchecked. The splendid Baroque houses of the densely populated Brook Island were demolished in the 1880s to make room for the warehouses of the new free port. By the end of the 19th century, in the course of which the population grew from 130,000 to 700,000, Hamburg had expanded far beyond its previous limits, absorbing such former suburbs as Sankt Pauli and Sankt Georg and spreading its tentacles into the countryside, toward Eimsbttel, Eppendorf, Harvestehude, and Barmbek. Hamburg entered the 20th century determined to maintain and to strengthen its position as Germany's gateway to the world; new docks and wharves were constructed on the left bank of the Elbe River. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought progress to a standstill, however. Hamburg's international trade collapsed, and its merchant fleet of 1,466 ships was virtually confined to port. After the war the victorious Allies demanded nearly all of Hamburg's ships by way of reparation from Germany. For many years after the war, Hamburg could undertake no further development because it had already exhausted all the potentialities of its territory. The Greater Hamburg Ordinance of January 26, 1937, changed this situation by allowing Hamburg to incorporate the neighbouring cities of Altona, Wandsbek, and Harburg, which until then had belonged to Prussia. The immediate prospect of expansion, with the development of these areas on a basis of large-scale planning, was shattered by the outbreak, in 1939, of World War II, during which repeated air raids demolished 55 percent of Hamburg's residential area and 60 percent of the harbour installations and killed 55,000 people. When the war ended in 1945, only the most strenuous efforts could supply the elementary needs for Hamburg's survival. Reconstruction proceeded rapidly, however. Symptomatic of the city's postwar commercial efflorescence is the vast new business district City-Nord, built in the 1960s. Hamburg's cherished traditions, together with its thriving business and cultural life and the energy of its inhabitants, make it one of the most vibrant cities in the world.