Coming home

I was born in a bed that told stories: the marriage bed of my great-grandfather, a commander in the harbour police and circumnavigator, in Kottwitzstraße in the middle of Hamburg. Yet it would be many years before I would come to feel like a proud Hamburg native.
My childhood was tinged with the spirit of the harbour city. My grandfather spoke Low German (Plattdeutsch), and words like Fisimatenten, Feudel and figgeliensch were part of my everyday vocabulary.

But my family’s deep connection to the harbour and seafaring remained a mystery to me for a long time. All my life, I had daily contact with typical local colour. Tram line 2 carried me in the mornings and out again in the evenings – from Mönckebergstraße, Rathausmarkt, and Jungfernstieg, past Gänsemarkt and Dammtor, all the way to the outskirts of the city. But it was a superficial relationship. The city was my home, but it had no place in my heart.

When I married the “Finkenwerder Jung”, a son of one of the last Elbe fishermen, I sat at birthday tables with real Finkenwerder farmers, with fat, home-caught eels on the table, and together we licked our greasy fingers. “Esso and BP”, croaked sister Ingrid in between to “whet the appetite”, but nobody really minded. I now had relatives in the Alte Land. During my short marriage, I lived right next to the Finkenwerder ferry terminal. We had celebrated our wedding in the “Finkenwerder Landungsbrücke” – the home of the plaice – and the steamer bridge became my starting block for the day.

My everyday life began and ended with the waves of the Elbe. Every day, ferry 62 carried me around the Seemannshöft pilot house, then past Teufelsbrück and Övelgönne, past the Blohm & Voss docks to the squeaking, swaying pontoons of the Landungsbrücken. The Michel greeted me every day and I could feel the Elbe becoming my main lifeline. But the city’s past, its deep roots, were still hidden from me.

The underground took me along one of the most beautiful routes in Germany through the city: past the Kajüte Claus Störtebeker and the ship chandler Schmeling, whose history I didn’t know at the time. I tiredly greeted the white cogs of the light blue Stella House, the red sandstone of the Flüggerhaus, whose large arched windows offered a revealing glimpse inside, and passed the Rödingsmarkt before the screeching wheels carried me over the steepest section that an underground railway in Germany has to navigate, into the curve of the Mönkedamm-viaduct, until I disappeared under the old stock exchange.

Years later, forced by my job, I left Hamburg. It was only in a foreign land when I was abroad that I began to miss the city. The calls of the seagulls became a melody that only I could hear. The smell of the sea, tar and oil was suddenly no longer a stench, but a message from home. But most beautiful of all was the hammering of the shipyards, carried by the wind.

When I returned years later, I was ready to see the city with different eyes. My research in the state archives opened the doors to a long-forgotten world. I discovered that my ancestors had lived at the Vorsetzen, in a neighbourhood full of sailor’s taverns and artisan alleyways. Where the Gruner + Jahr publishing house now stands, they lived in cramped shacks, battled deprivation and epidemics, lost children and spouses.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather, a whaler, started his family in Hamburg in 1754. Later, his son became a “Hausküper” for the Amsinck family and married in the senator’s house. The stories of my ancestors clung to the streets I had once passed carelessly and to the buildings that had long since disappeared. The distance, the return and the knowledge of my family’s fate transformed Hamburg into my true home. It was no longer just a city in which I lived – it was a city in which I put down roots. And so, as I stand by the Elbe and listen to the wind, I feel the inseparable connection.

 

Notes from the MeinHamburg editorial team:

There are some words and terms in the text that not everyone may be familiar with. That’s why we’ve explained them here.

Fisimatenten – old word for jokes or pranks that are perhaps a bit mean or funny.

Feudel – Low German word for a mop used to clean the floor.

Figgeliensch – Low German word meaning ‘complicated or tricky’.

Local colour – the special character of a place, for example the people, language or traditions.

Pilot house – Pilots are people who guide ships safely into harbour, especially in bad weather or difficult conditions. A pilot house is a building in which pilots work.

Pontoons – are floating platforms used as moorings or for other purposes on water surfaces.

Kajüte – living, recreation or sleeping area of a ship. In this case, it is the name of a former harbour pub.

Cogs – old, sailing ships from the Middle Ages that were mainly used in trade.

Mönkedamm Viaduct – steep ramp that takes the Hamburg underground railway over a road before entering a tunnel.

Vorsetzen – old neighbourhood in Hamburg that used to be inhabited by sailors and workers and was located at the harbour.

Hausküper – was someone in Hamburg who looked after warehouses and goods in large trading companies in the 17th to 19th centuries