Search

After 1945, the Iron Curtain cut off half of the hinterland of Germany's largest seaport, Hamburg. Located in the middle of Europe, the city found itself at the periphery of the Federal Republic and Western Europe. The political and economic elites of the city-state conceived the Policy of the Elbe to deal with this situation. Its proponents pursued apolitical strategies to reconnect it to Eastern Europe despite political obstacles and against national foreign policy principles. This article sheds light on the ideas and practices of a city forced to redefine its position in Cold War Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience of cities is usually tested by acute catastrophes such as physical destruction by natural disasters or wars or long-term processes of economic decline. This article discusses another type of catastrophe and the response of the political and economic elite of the city to it in the form of a case study on Germany's biggest seaport city Hamburg in the aftermath of World War II. Although the air war of 1943-1945 had seriously damaged large parts of the port of Hamburg, the physical reconstruction began soon after the end of the war and made steady progress. This aspect of the disaster of war was to be overcome within a few years. But the war and its aftermath of political confrontation between East and West had changed the geopolitical position of Hamburg and moved it from the center of Europe to the periphery of the West. The hinterland of the port in Eastern Europe was cut off. The founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 with its focus on the Rhine-Ruhr area further seemed to marginalize Hamburg. These developments were quickly perceived as a greater disaster than the physical destruction. This article examines the strategies developed by the political and economic leaders in Hamburg in the late 1940s and 1950s for dealing with processes they had no control over and could not directly influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]