Pre-war Hamburg was not the most pleasant place to live. An unsentimental, bustling, industrial port city that has experienced many fires, epidemics, and destruction throughout its history. After the great fire of 1842, which destroyed the half-timbered buildings, Hamburg was rebuilt in brick. But the fire resistance of the stone building paradoxically turned into its vulnerability.
In the summer heat, Hamburg turned into what modern urbanists call a "heat island." Stone quarters built with five- to six-story buildings accumulated heat. The temperature in the center of Hamburg on July 28, 1943 was 6 degrees higher than in the suburbs. These conditions contributed to the fact that thousands of high-explosive and incendiary bombs dropped by Allied aircraft on the city ignited fires that merged into one fire tornado.
The temperature at the epicenter of the giant firebox with a diameter of more than 3 kilometers reached 800 degrees Celsius: wood, paper, cloth and people burned to the ground in a matter of minutes, steel and bricks melted in Hohenfeld, stones in Alton burned, even water in the canals burned. About 40 residents died that night. In general, the "Gomorrah" retaliation operation (the air raids lasted several days) resulted in 60 victims. 74% of Hamburg's buildings were destroyed. With the "Hamburg bill", the British Air Force took full revenge for the Nazi "Blitz" - the aerial bombing of London.
Destruction in the center of Hamburg after the bombings. Image source: ndr.de
Researcher and writer Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald, author of the book "The Natural History of Destruction", calls the reaction of German residents to information about the victims of the Nazis and the victims of the Allies "collective amnesia".
The main blow fell on the residential areas of Hamburg. Image source: ndr.de
The logic of the military, which kills so many people, including 7 children, and believes that the operation was successful at an easy cost, is absolutely incomprehensible to a person of a peaceful profession living in the XNUMXst century. However, even for the contemporaries of the tragedy, it was unthinkable. Researcher and writer Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald, author of the book "The Natural History of Destruction", calls the reaction of German residents to information about the victims of the Nazis and the victims of the Allies "collective amnesia". Unable to deal with horrors winy, those who survived preferred to focus their attention on survival and recovery.
The phenomenon of vitality
The fact that the Germans were used to the scarcity of resources and total economy since the First World War helped them psychologically to survive the tragedy of the destruction of the Second World War and the following years of famine.
Historian and writer Hans Rumpf made a detailed analysis of the destruction and casualties and published the shocking figures in the book "Firestorm". But his book is not an epitaph to Hamburg, but rather a eulogy. He summarizes: "Despite the death of more than 60 thousand people, the complete destruction of one third of all buildings in the city, the collapse of the work of all city services, Hamburg as an economic unit of Germany was not destroyed [...] it is easier to destroy the physical structure of the city than to be able to etch all its life economy".
Piles of twisted iron and mountains of rubble - this is what the port of Hamburg looked like. Image source: ndr.de
Just 5 months after the fiery summer of 1943, the economy of the Hanseatic city recovered to 80% of its previous economic indicators. Perhaps it is more correct to say "self-restored", because in 1943, although German propaganda insisted on the unprecedented prosperity of the victorious Reich and mega-plans for the construction of new cities and Speer mausoleums, the real economic situation in Germany was already deplorable.
The streets of the eastern working quarters turned into kilometers of mountains of burnt rubble, from which fragments of walls protruded. 43 million tons of rubble! This was enough to fill all the canals of Hamburg "with a slide". The city did not have enough manpower to quickly clear these debris. But, if you look at archival photos and videos, you can see that people are dreaming briskly among the ruins.
Hamburg as an economic unit of Germany was not destroyed. It is easier to destroy the physical structure of a city than to be able to etch the entire life of its economy
Despite the terrible losses and destruction, the phrase "Hamburg was wiped off the face of the earth" is an artistic exaggeration. As of May 1945, one million people lived in the city. And the surrender of Hamburg without a fight to the British command saved their lives.
The first post-war years were difficult. The Marshall Plan did not take effect immediately, and the "Rhine Economic Miracle" still had to live. Devastation, lack of housing (70% of the housing stock is destroyed or uninhabitable), hunger, mass layoffs of civil servants, denazification procedures, food on cards.
But, despite this, thousands and thousands of people - previously evacuated and refugees from the eastern territories occupied by the USSR troops - flocked to Hamburg. The city government was even forced to introduce a ban on immigration, which was in effect until 1950. It's amazing, but sometimes cities (and people) show supersurvival, some truly inhuman vitality that cannot be destroyed by fire and sword.
Queues for food in post-war Hamburg. Photo: © Nicolai O'Swald
Fair and market on the background of ruins. Photo: © Nicolai O'Swald
If, according to the reports, 70% of the housing stock was destroyed or uninhabitable, then where, one wonders, did almost a million people live? Shelters became Nissen's temporary huts, which we talked about in the article "Who rebuilt Dresden: reformers and guardians of the ruins", self-built buildings on the outskirts and bunker spaces — not only underground, but also surface structures in which anti-aircraft units were located before the surrender.
It is no coincidence that Hamburg is called the "city of bunkers". During the Second World War, about 1000 bomb shelters were built here. And the city authorities managed to convince the British military not to demolish these fortifications, but to provide temporary housing for the destitute. And, of course, sealing. The surviving municipal apartments were now occupied by several families, the standards of square footage per person were reduced by law.
Nissen huts, installed for the temporary accommodation of impoverished townspeople. Image source: ndr.de
The losses of the housing stock were so great that, conducting the audit, the engineers decided to save for reconstruction the buildings where at least the majority of the facade and stairwells survived. In peacetime, such ruins would clearly be considered irreparable.
In figures, damage from the destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused to Hamburg was estimated at 8 billion deutschmarks at the exchange rate of 1952. It took at least 25 years to restore the lost volume of residential and administrative buildings. Well, figuratively speaking, the Germans tightened their belts and rolled up their sleeves.
Canals of Hamburg. Photo: Nick Scheerbart/Unsplash
Coventry: brutal post-war architecture on the brink of destruction
War of paradigms: Schumacher and Gutchov
Speaking before the Hamburg Senate on October 10, 1945, city planner Fritz Schumacher said: "Many of the unpleasant things that a big city cannot but suffer from have disappeared."
A bit of retrospect: Fritz Schumacher, who served as Hamburg's construction director from 1909 to 1933, can be called a visionary. Of course, in those years, he could not assume that the "heat island" effect of the hot summer of 1943 would contribute to the development of a fire tornado. But Schumacher always considered the narrow stone labyrinths of Hamburg harmful to health.
He fought for greening the city and reducing the density of buildings. The architect reflected his vision of the future in the general plan "Schemes for the Natural and Real Development of the Hamburg Organism", presented to the Senate in 1919. Schumacher managed to contribute to the creation of a city park, he planned to create linear gardens along the canals.
The planetarium in Hamburg's main park, designed by Fritz Schumacher. Image source: wikimedia.org
In Langenhorn, a suburb of Hamburg, Schumacher built an entire village of two-family cottages and World War I townhouses for disabled people to demonstrate the benefits of outdoor living. Two-story houses with terraces were built using adobe technology using slag, and the foundations were reinforced with wooden boxes from shells. The houses were surrounded by fruit and ornamental gardens.
The area of the garden per family was 6,5 hectares, and the number of trees in the garden was regulated. Due to economy, there were no bathrooms in the houses - the toilets were moved deep into the gardens. Centralized sewage was brought there closer to the 1930s. Only one of the rooms was heated: the kitchen-dining room. It was forbidden to spend resources on heating the bedroom.
Despite all these disadvantages, Fritz Schumacher believed that life on the green outskirts of the city was much healthier and happier than in the apartments overlooking the narrow stone labyrinths of the streets in the center of Hamburg. During the bombings, this part of the city was practically unscathed, and the availability of land allowed people to more easily survive the years of food crisis from 1945 to 1950.
Townhouses on the outskirts of Hamburg, designed by Fritz Schumacher as housing for veterans of the First World War. Image source: wikimedia.org
Townhouses were built as temporary housing, it was planned that after 50 years the village would be completely rebuilt, but it still exists. In the years of motorization (60s - 80s), most of the garden area was given over to parking lots, but now the process is developing in the opposite direction.
Fritz Schumacher believed that life on the green outskirts of the city was much healthier and happier than in apartments overlooking the narrow stone labyrinths of streets in the center of Hamburg
In the design of administrative and public buildings, Schumacher preferred clinker bricks. He believed that it is possible to depart from asceticism in the design of facades, and encouraged artists and sculptors to decorate the urban landscape. In 1933, the NSDAP leadership removed Schumacher from his post. His "organic" master plan was declared obsolete. Gauleiter Karl Otto Kaufmann believed that the architect Konstantin Gutchov, who enthusiastically supported the city-building ambitions of Adolf Hitler, would be able to give the free Hanseatic city a majestic appearance.
At that time, 37-year-old Gutchev was a theorist. His practice was limited to the implementation of several private residential buildings. But he dreamed of megalithic structures and skyscrapers like the Empire State Building, and supported Hitler's dream of connecting the banks of the Elbe with a bridge similar to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Gutchov imagined himself as "Hamburg's Albert Speer."
He developed a plan to transform industrial Hamburg into a glittering and distinguished Führerstadt, where those arriving at the port would be immediately stunned by the sight of the 250-meter Gau skyscraper, decorated with a swastika, as well as wide avenues, an area for 50 thousand demonstrators and parade parks. The estimated cost of building "New Hamburg" was about 1,6 billion reichsmarks. Taking into account the scope of construction, it was planned to finish no earlier than 1965.
Altona's historic district was also to be completely rebuilt. These plans required a lot of building materials. Gutchov planned to build the buildings of New Hamburg from bricks produced by the prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp and delivered for the construction of the century by a bypass channel dug by the same prisoners. During the years of the Reich, 40 Neuengamme prisoners died from overwork and exhaustion or were killed and burned.
The Hau skyscraper was to become the main landmark of Hamburg-Führerstadt. Image source: © Hamburgisches Architekturarchiv
This is how Kostyantyn Gutchov saw the government quarter of Hamburg. Image source: © Hamburgisches Architekturarchiv
And Fuhrerstadt did not happen. Hitler liked the adoration of Gutchov, but did not like his projects. Each time he returned them for revision. The army was already defeated, and Gutchev fanatically continued to draw. The bombing and the death of tens of thousands of the city's residents did not even affect him - "the bombings allow the image of the future Hamburg, the New Hamburg, to appear before our eyes even clearer and brighter."
After the defeat of the Reich, Konstantin Gutchov was punished: he was banned from professional activities for 4 years. In fact, the architect hid behind his own drawings - he claimed that he was so immersed in his work that he did not know about the atrocities of the Nazis.
Despite the difference in paradigms, architects Schumacher and Gutchov agreed on one thing: the city should not be too dense. It's just that Schumacher considered excessively dense buildings harmful to health, and Gutchov considered them unaesthetic. The modernists of the Bauhaus school, banned in the Third Reich, believed that both of these opinions were correct.
Bright new world
New times need new symbolism. The dark red clinker brick, stained with history and as if preserving the memory of the firestorm, must go into the past. It is not known for sure who exactly initiated the introduction of the rule on the use of light-colored bricks on facades into the construction regulations of post-war Hamburg. The new architecture was supposed to be bright and modernist: clean lines, flat roofs, facades without frills.
Grindelhochhäuser is protected by the status of a monument of post-war residential architecture. Image source: ndr.de
The first embodiment of this idea was the high-rise ensemble Grindelhochhäuser, built on the territory "cleared" by the bombing in the Harvestehud area. The customer of the construction was the British command. It was assumed that the headquarters of the Western Allies would be located in Hamburg, so the officers and their families needed housing for a long time. Jewish Grindel was strategically advantageously located: it had good transport links with all districts and the port.
The new quarter was designed by a group of architects who had not previously collaborated with the Nazis. They joined the company Grindelberg Architects and developed a project for the new construction in Grindel in the spirit of Le Corbusier: 12 high-rise buildings are arranged in a line of five rows, with a large interval between them. In a few years, these spacious and airy yards turned into a shady park.
The new architecture was supposed to be bright and modernist: clean lines, flat roofs, facades without frills
The foundation was laid immediately, already in 1946, but the families of British soldiers never moved into the new apartments. Even at the stage of the construction of the complex, it was decided that the headquarters of the Allies would still be located in Frankfurt, in the famous house of Hans Pelzig - the office of IG Farben. And how to dispose of Grindelhochhäuser was already decided by the Hamburg authorities.
Gustav Elsner, an architect who was a close friend of Fritz Schumacher, also fired by the National Socialists and returned as a construction consultant, recommended to the Senate that 12 high-rise buildings with 2122 apartments be completed. Grindelhochhäuser became the new home for 5400 residents of Hamburg. Grindelhochhäuser's modernist building with facades made of light bricks contrasts strongly with the block-perimeter traditional building of the neighboring blocks.
Neu Altona is a residential area designed by Ernst May. Image source: ndr.de
Hiroshima Reconstruction and new identification of the city after the Second World War
Ernst May, a radical modernist who designed a number of new cities for the USSR in the early 30s, decided to offer Hamburg a similar path. May spent the Second World War in Kenya, and in the early 50s returned to rebuild Germany as chief planner of the construction conglomerate Neue Heimat. Alton, half-destroyed by the bombings, became the point of application of his abilities. He planned Noah Altona as a spacious neighborhood with wide avenues and high-rise apartment buildings with flat roofs.
Schools, green yard, subway, central heating. Noah Altona's models were pleasing to the eye. For implementation, it was necessary to donate old houses that had survived by chance. And this became a stumbling block. The old houses of Altona were inhabited by people who at that time simply had nowhere to resettle. Instead of launching the construction equipment with a wide front, the builders had to maneuver. As a result, only 70% of the plan was implemented by the end of the 50s. Then the construction was stopped, and some of the previously built "concrete blocks" even began to be demolished. Noy Altona was inconvenient for pedestrians because of the wide highways that cut the area into parts.
Modern Hamburg
In the XNUMXst century, Hamburg is a city that outwardly has completely recovered from past disasters, but wisely took into account all the mistakes of the subsequent hasty recovery. The development of the post-industrial areas of the old port is taking place slowly, but thoughtfully. The architecture of the new neighborhoods in Haffencity is as diverse as possible, the height is limited for normal development, and the old historic buildings are protected by law as strictly as possible. We have described all current approaches in detail in the article "Operation Hafencity". The largest urban project in Europe is 20 years old."
The Elbe Philharmonic is a symbol of modern Hamburg. Photo: Michael Zapf
Historic quarters reconstructed in the post-war period are also experiencing a new renaissance. Housing is carefully modernized, the streets are landscaped and saturated with art objects. And even such, it would seem, objects that have outlived their usefulness, such as bunkers, are being converted into office centers, creative hubs, and eco-energy stations. However, Russia's military aggression in Ukraine makes us envy the Germans, who refused the idea of razing the memory of the Second World War to the ground. Perhaps a society that has experienced total destruction becomes more sensitive to the destruction of memory, whether it is a good memory or a memory of a disaster.
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