Page 176 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 176
plex Gateways
in the interviews.2 The city is a ‘culturally coded space saturated with his-
tory and stories’ (Lindner 2008, 86). This characteristic applies particu-
larly to port cities, where many circulating narratives are part of an imag-
inary. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask whether port cities are ‘a metaphor
with a strong memory value and a weak sense of reality’ (Berking and
Schwenk 2011, 7).
The insights I gathered doing field research in the Harbour Museum
shaped my view of the port as a workplace and at the same time as a lo-
cation for cultural tourism and an event site. Analysing the media cover-
age of the last 60 years provides insight into the cultural production of
the port city of Hamburg, its maritime atmosphere, the port as a work-
space, and the implementation of social as well as cultural ideas about
the workers. An early example is the radio programme ‘Hafenkonzert’ of
the radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk, broadcasted since 1929 and
for many years directly from onboard the incoming and outgoing ships.
It reported about the port, the cargo, the shipyards, the sailors’ life, and
wanderlust. Even today, many former workers refer to the programme.
Unsurprisingly, as early as the 1950s, the port’s tourism potential in-
creasingly became the focus of tourist advertising (Amenda and Grünen
2008, 112 ff.). Furthermore, several local politicians supported the idea
of a particular image of work in the port in their speeches and actions
throughout the decades, highlighting the importance of the workplace
not only for the city’s economy, but also for the workers and inhabitants.
The proximity of politics testifies to the importance of the harbour as
an economic centre, while at the same time most mayors also drew ben-
efit from the port for representative purposes. These images of the port
and its status as a symbol for the city have to be considered when ana-
lysing the narrations on the workplace. Besides, the interviewees close-
ly observed and actively experienced the change of large parts of the for-
mer port area from a working into a cultural district. The Speicherstadt,
the old port area in the city centre, was built in 1888. The port relocat-
ed to the western and southern part of the city through containeriza-
tion, with new terminals built from the 1970s onwards. After losing its
status as a freeport zone in 2003, enterprises from entertainment indus-
tries and the creative sector began to settle in the Speicherstadt, and the
district turned into a cultural event-space. Next to it emerged the so-
2 I translated all cited quotes from German-speaking authors from German into
English.
176
in the interviews.2 The city is a ‘culturally coded space saturated with his-
tory and stories’ (Lindner 2008, 86). This characteristic applies particu-
larly to port cities, where many circulating narratives are part of an imag-
inary. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask whether port cities are ‘a metaphor
with a strong memory value and a weak sense of reality’ (Berking and
Schwenk 2011, 7).
The insights I gathered doing field research in the Harbour Museum
shaped my view of the port as a workplace and at the same time as a lo-
cation for cultural tourism and an event site. Analysing the media cover-
age of the last 60 years provides insight into the cultural production of
the port city of Hamburg, its maritime atmosphere, the port as a work-
space, and the implementation of social as well as cultural ideas about
the workers. An early example is the radio programme ‘Hafenkonzert’ of
the radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk, broadcasted since 1929 and
for many years directly from onboard the incoming and outgoing ships.
It reported about the port, the cargo, the shipyards, the sailors’ life, and
wanderlust. Even today, many former workers refer to the programme.
Unsurprisingly, as early as the 1950s, the port’s tourism potential in-
creasingly became the focus of tourist advertising (Amenda and Grünen
2008, 112 ff.). Furthermore, several local politicians supported the idea
of a particular image of work in the port in their speeches and actions
throughout the decades, highlighting the importance of the workplace
not only for the city’s economy, but also for the workers and inhabitants.
The proximity of politics testifies to the importance of the harbour as
an economic centre, while at the same time most mayors also drew ben-
efit from the port for representative purposes. These images of the port
and its status as a symbol for the city have to be considered when ana-
lysing the narrations on the workplace. Besides, the interviewees close-
ly observed and actively experienced the change of large parts of the for-
mer port area from a working into a cultural district. The Speicherstadt,
the old port area in the city centre, was built in 1888. The port relocat-
ed to the western and southern part of the city through containeriza-
tion, with new terminals built from the 1970s onwards. After losing its
status as a freeport zone in 2003, enterprises from entertainment indus-
tries and the creative sector began to settle in the Speicherstadt, and the
district turned into a cultural event-space. Next to it emerged the so-
2 I translated all cited quotes from German-speaking authors from German into
English.
176
