My Trip to Hamburg

In the week after Pentecost I actually planned a city trip within Germany, but due to Covid-19 I cancelled all plans weeks ago. As however some restrictions were relaxed in early May, I still spent a day in Hamburg. There I visited two museums.

The first one was the Hamburg Archaeological Museum. The Hamburg Archaeological Museum is Hamburg's state museum for archaeology and the city museum for the Harburg borough. Along these lines also the permanent exhibition is divided between two exhibition spaces located close to each other. It is home to one of the largest archaeological collections in Northern Germany, but as the exhibition about the city's history is currently under construction, both exhibition spaces can be easily visited within an hour. Nonetheless the museum is quite interesting. Only postcards about the Archaeological Exhibition Building were available and unfortunately none about the Main Building, which currently only shows special exhibitions and which will later be home to the city's history exhibition. 

At the museum I was also able to buy two older (2005) postcards showing even older (circa 1900) views of Harburg. Until 1937 Harburg belonged to the Prussian Province of Hanover, where it served as the capital of the Harburg district. Following the Greater Hamburg Act passed by the government of Nazi Germany Harburg was incorporated into Hamburg, however still served as capital of the Prussian district until 1944. The Town Hall of Harburg, shown on the first card, was built when Harburg was still an independent city. Built between 1889 and 1892 in the Renaissance Revival style, the photo on the card was taken shortly after in 1895. During World War II it was badly damaged, but was already rebuilt until 1951, however the tower on the top is now missing. Today it is home to the diet of the Harburg borough.

What else does an independent city need? For sure a train station. Last year I began a new collection of German postcards about the biggest and most important train stations in our country, which are luckily bound together by the Deutsche Bahn in the first and second of seven railway station categories. Collecting these will be very hard, as train stations are not so common here to be shown on postcards and I already know of some stations which are definitely not shown on cards. So getting a new one is quite a surprise. The Hamburg-Harburg Station is a train station in category 2 and was originally opened in 1897 as main station of Harburg. Today it is one of four operational main-line railway stations in Hamburg. Unfortunately this card is not ideal. I actually like that it is an historic view, but I would rather prefer an outside view over an inside view, but for the moment it will do. It shows the first-class waiting room around 1900.

The second museum I visited was the Museum am Rothenbaum, one of the largest museums of ethnology in Europa. Its full name is Museum am Rothenbaum - Cultures and Arts of the World, which leads to the German abbreviation MARKK. Known as Museum of Ethnology until 2018, it was renamed, as the old name evoked negative associations and emotions in a cosmopolitan and multicultural society (the original German name Museum für Völkerkunde sounds even harsher than the English translation). Together with the renaming the museum also underwent a content-related reorientation. This for example includes a constructive dealing with a restitution of objects to their original countries and societies.

I really liked this museum. Beside the walkable Maori house Rauru (the fourth object card shows a wooden panel from the house showing Maui), I especially enjoyed the special exhibition about Korea called Calm in Acceleration. It was created in cooperation with the National Folk Museum of Korea in Seoul and combines historic artifacts from Hamburg with modern exhibits from Seoul to paint an image of the modern Korean sense of life and its historic roots. Unfortunately no cards printed for the exhibition were available, but I got five cards showing Korean artifacts of the MARKK which were shown in the exhibition.