Status: 11/14/2020 3:24 p.m.
On November 14, 1980, the Hanseviertel was opened in downtown Hamburg. Today it houses around 60 shops and is considered the “mother of all passages”.
At the end of the 1970s, a British real estate company wanted to build a gigantic department store between Poststrasse and Große Bleichen. But when the British pound fell in relation to the D-mark, the plans were void. Allianz insurance takes on the daring project. Because building a passage on a patchwork quilt of land, old buildings and empty spaces was considered a mammoth task at the time.
The first passage
The Hamburg architect Volkwin Marg had an idea back then. “We are restoring the perimeter of the block, preserving all the valuable buildings and building on the gaps in between,” he remembers the project in an interview with the Hamburg Journal. “And to make the whole thing worthwhile, we open up the inner block with a passage. That then became the ‘mother of all passages’ because it was the very first,” he says – not entirely without pride.
“Working like a dentist”
Individual buildings are extensively restored. But to combine old and new and that in the middle of tight buildings with different floor heights and leaseholds is more difficult than expected. “We worked like a dentist works. Some things only got a seal, some got a pin tooth that was inserted individually, elsewhere a bridge was practically built again,” remembers Marg. “It was a very differentiated, complicated restoration of the block . Old and new – but always in dialogue. What united everything was the brick building. “
Polish masons immortalize themselves
Many bricklayers from Poland help build Hamburg’s Hanseatic Quarter – and immortalize their home in the masonry.
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At that time, the construction company brought bricklayers from Poland for the complex brickwork – at a time when east and west were still strictly separated, the craftsmen secretly immortalized themselves in the facade. Colored clinker bricks result in the word “Poland” and are reminiscent of the home of work to this day. “We were impressed and irritated and thought: Hamburg should be too,” says Marg. “It’s a wonderful reference to the time before the fall of the Iron Curtain.”
Stroll and shop in exclusive specialty shops
Glass and steel domes provide light and lightness. In addition to the parking garage, hotel, offices and apartments, a roofed passage with 9,000 square meters is being created for strolling and shopping in small, exclusive specialist shops. One of them is the leather goods trade of the Müller family. “I played here as a child. While my parents were working, I skateboarded through the Hanseviertel parking garage or helped them,” remembers Andreas Müller, a trader from earlier times. “It was something like my home here because I grew up here.”
20,000 customers every day
The passage quickly established itself as a popular shopping mile – even beyond Hamburg’s borders. Initially, 20,000 people flowed through the Hanseviertel every day. The gastronomy acts like an additional customer magnet. “Everything was offered, not just breakfast, but also lunch and dinner,” says Müller. “The 100-year-old piano player who played downstairs was also special. He always added atmosphere.”
Placed under monument protection
But consumer behavior changes over the years. The customers stay away. In 2017, for economic reasons, the Hanseviertel is threatened with demolition after it has been sold to the US company CBRE Global Investor. A higher building complex with shops, offices and around 100 apartments is planned. But a year later, the existing ensemble was saved: it was placed under monument protection. Müller was relieved: “It actually fell a thousand stones from my heart. That was a relief. It would have hurt me a lot if the Hanseviertel had no longer existed.”
The large globe with the world’s shipping lines is to give way to new gastronomy in 2021 and relocated outside. A proud symbol of the trade in front of Hamburg’s “mother of all passages”.
Further information
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