INTRODUCTION

The former ‘free imperial city of Hamburg’ (since 1806 ‘the free Hansa city’) was situated with its northern boundaries about 15 miles from the mouth of the Elbe. Ever since the foundation of Hamburg the harbour has played an important economic role in determining urban location. Nevertheless, the area of the old town (the Altstadt and the Neustadt), which was fortified until the Napoleonic Wars, did not show any distinct functional or social differentiation until well into the second half of the nineteenth century.

INNER-URBAN CHANGES IN POPULATION GROWTH AND STRUCTURE

The pre-industrial town naturally did not lack a structural framework nor elements of planning, especially with respect to the construction of streets, public buildings and churches. Its inner-urban structure was based primarily on concepts of urban political power and incorporated certain values and social positions. The decisions affecting economic location were of secondary importance, although there was a natural preponderance for urban economic life to be based in the harbour area of Hamburg. However, Hamburg's development was not accompanied by a clear separation between housing and working areas which is considered to be the most important spatial characteristic of the process of urbanization and industrialization. Preindustrial Hamburg witnessed its first important changes only after the devastating fire of 1842 which destroyed sections of the Altstadt (Faulwasser, 1892). But it was not until the 1860s that industrialization and urban growth in Hamburg finally disturbed the once picturesque Alt-Hamburg. During a period of rapid economic and social change new inner-urban structures typical of an industrial city replaced the former concepts of urban organization.

The turning point from an earlier process of slow city growth to rapid urbanization in Hamburg in the second half of the nineteenth century came in the 1860s. The demographic signal for this change was a migration surplus which amounted to about 25,000 people in the decade between 1855 and 1865 and escalated substantially in the following decade to nearly 60,000 individuals. However, this period also coincided with many political reforms which altered the constitution, the acquisition of citizenship, restrictions on marriage and freedom of movement and of trade (Seelig, 1907).