Große Freiheit in Hamburg

5 April 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Hamburg Reading Time:  6 minutes

© flickr.com - IKs World Trip/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – IKs World Trip/cc-by-2.0

The Große Freiheit (German for: “Great Freedom”) is a cross street on the North Side to Hamburg‘s Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli quarter. It is part of the red-light district. The street was named in 1610 after the fact that Count Ernest of Schaumburg and Holstein-Pinneberg had granted religious freedom to non-Lutherans such as Mennonites and Roman Catholics to practise their faith here and commercial freedom for handcrafters not enrolled in the else compelling guilds.   read more…

Theme Week Hamburg – St. Pauli, Reeperbahn, St. Pauli Landing Bridges and Fish Market

30 January 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Hamburg Reading Time:  15 minutes

St. Pauli Theater and police station Davidwache © Andreas Praefcke

St. Pauli Theater and police station Davidwache © Andreas Praefcke

St. Pauli
St. Pauli located in the Hamburg-Mitte borough is one of the 105 quarters of the city of Hamburg, Germany. Situated on the right bank of the Elbe river, the Landungsbrücken are a northern part of the port of Hamburg. St. Pauli contains a world famous red light district around the street Reeperbahn. Around 28,000 inhabitans are living here. At the beginning of the 17th century it developed as a suburb called “Hamburger Berg” (Hamburg mountain) outside the gates of the nearby city of Hamburg and close to the city of Altona. The name comes from a hill in that area that was planed by Hamburg in 1620 for defence reasons (free field of fire for the artillery). Therefore, settlement was initially allowed there, but soon businesses, which were not desired inside Hamburg, e.g. for their smell or noise, were relegated to “Hamburger Berg”. Also the rope makers (or “Reeper” in Low German) went here because in the city it was hard to find enough space for their work. The name of St. Pauli’s most famous street Reeperbahn, or “Rope Walk”, harkens back to its rope making past. When people were officially allowed to live in St. Pauli at the end of the 17th century the city government moved workhouses and (pestilence) hospitals out of the city to “Hamburger Berg”, which later was named after its church, “St. Pauli” (Saint Paul).   read more…

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