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Show j i 11 Scene In the Port of Hamburg. (Prepared by the National Geographic Society. Washington. -D. C.) MEMORIES of the prosperous era of the Hanseatie league are stirred by the proposal that has recently been made tor joining the one-time Hanseatie :ltles of Hamburg and Luebeck. The :Ities, which were both leaders in the Did league, lie only about 40 miles apart In northeastern Germany, one Dn the Elbe river near its mouth Into the North sea, and the other on the River Trave," only ten miles from the Baltic sea. The object of the association associ-ation of the two ports would be to eliminate competition and to overcome the effects of the depression that both bave felt. Hamburg Is both a free port and a free city ; and he who sees Hamburg quickly learns that both appellations save practical consequences. The visitor vis-itor starts forth, wisely enough, to see Hamburg's best advertised spectacle, its harbor. He finds it has not been overrated. It is one of the most amazing amaz-ing industrial spectacles in the world ; that vast sweep of cluttered water, pierced by hundreds of land fingers separating the rectangular water sheets which are basins, skylined by monster skeletons of mitrhtv shins in the building, often smoke-screened by the chimney outpourings of myriad factories. For six miles along the broad Elbe, 75 miles up-river from the sea, extend the massive docks, the hippodrome landing stages, the Intricate jumble of cranes, derricks, and elevators. The landing stages are necessary because Hamburg has an "open harbor," accessible acces-sible to the tide, In contrast to the dock-basins and flood-gates of much of the Port of London. A ferry Is the proper sightseeing vehicle. ve-hicle. For the port is a 15-square-mile area, strewn with every type of modern vessel, from huge ocean liners down through lazy barges, Alert yachts, energetic motorboats, chugging chug-ging tugs, and busy ferries. "You have your pass, of course," Inquires the master of the "circular ferry" "circular" applying to the trip, not the craft, "A pass, what for?" "A part of this harbor Is a free port, sir," patiently explains the boatman. "And you will wish to come back." What the Free Port Means. You get your pass, your boatman threads his way for miles and miles through a floating traffic jam, but an orderly one that makes crossing Fifth avenue seem child's play to the landlubber land-lubber mind. You visit the free port, then your ferry heads back toward . your embarkation place. On the way you pull up at what seems to be a customs cus-toms house, displaying a sign which marks the free port limits. You show your pass; the boat Is searched. You understand the need for the pass, and you realize, too, that you have just seen one key to the prosperity pros-perity of the foremost continental port. The huge free port, with its mammoth warehouses, cluttered with silks from China, beef from Argentina, coffee from Brazil, harvesters from the United Unit-ed States, all bearing addresses for transshipment to strange-named Baltic ports, none to pay a cent of duty into Germany's treasury. One-third of Hamburg's harbor, you later learn, Is .given over to this free port ; In its zone are employed some 20,000 of the city's 110,000 industrial workers. Hamburg entered the German customs cus-toms union in 1SSS, thus enabling it to sell its own goods to Germany, tariff free, but its canny senate maintained its free port priviliges, which arrangement ar-rangement makes it the great trans-ocean trans-ocean department store of the Baltic. A senate in a city? Yes, a senate which clings to its stiff Spanish dress as loyally as it guards the ancient rights and privileges of the free city the "Free and Hanseatie City of Hamburg." Ham-burg." There are only throe German survivors sur-vivors of that mighty Hanseatie merchandising mer-chandising chain of the Middle ages Bremen, Luebeck and Hamburg. Of these three the mightiest is Hamburg. Once the senators of Hamburg were elected for life. Their rule of Hamburg Ham-burg was as autocratic, to our modern way of thinking, as that of the doges of Venice. That has changed now. There is a house of burgesses, giving a legislative balance much like that under the United States capitol dome. Where Hamburg's Senate Sits. The senate sits in the town hall. Perhaps . vou have heard of the famous Ratsweinkeller, beneath the central building, with its Jolly stone Bacchus frankly enthroned at the entrance to a vestibule adorned with stained glass window portaitures of the John Paul Joneses of maritime Hamburg. You climb aloft. The peculiar walls catch your eye. They, seem to be of solid wood, most delicately carved and beautifully beau-tifully decorated. Closer examination shows some to be felt, pressed to the hardness and likeness of wood, with the intricate patterns imposed by a matrix. And after a banquet hall that conjures con-jures up memories of the belted burgesses, bur-gesses, the staunch merchants and the gentlemen adventurers of medieval times, you come upon the senate chamber. cham-ber. One feature strikes a home note in the American bosom. This senate, too, has secret sessions. But when it does, it retires from the chamber with the visitor's gallery and the press gallery gal-lery into a smaller chamber that has just one entrance. That entrance Is guarded by two massive doors of Incredible In-credible thickness. it Dating back to Charlemagne, Hamburg Ham-burg is Germany's most modern city. Almost modernistic. The "fire of 1842 left few traces of its medieval arehl-ture. arehl-ture. Some of Its newer office buildings build-ings have spiraled sides, In northern search for sunlight ; others have contours con-tours that make them loom up in Ham burg vistas like a giant Europa entering enter-ing a narrow, harbor. In these office buildings are elevators eleva-tors which have dispensed with doors and operators. They run on the chain principle, like buckets in a well. They do not stop. One hops on or off as the "buckets" pass the floor. If one forgets for-gets to alight at the right floor, no harm done. Stay on, and you will be carried around the top or bottom of the shaft as on a ferris wheel. Busy but Beautiful, Industrial to its finger tips, militant-ly militant-ly so, Hamburg is a beautiful city. It leaves a confused Impression of Minneapolis Min-neapolis and Venice. For the Alster river, en route to the Elbe, splays wide in the midst of Hamburg's busiest quarter, giving it the unique spectacle of great office buildings, fine hotels, fashionable shops, all along the lake front. Clerks In the great, gray stone building which Is the office of the Hamburg-America line, glancing up from their ledgers, can look out over a glistening sheet of water, flecked with tiny yachts, motorboats, scurrying scurry-ing ferries, racing shells, and canoes; with swans and sea gulls hovering about. By night the hotel visitor can view from his window the moonlit waters, rimmed by thousands of electric bulbs, and see tiny firefly points of light bobbing bob-bing all over the surface. At one corner cor-ner are huddled hundreds of canoes, their occupants reclining on cushions, listening to the concert of the Alster pavilion. This sprightly cafe, or coffee cof-fee house along the lake front, gathers gath-ers Its daytime patronage from the great department stores of the opposite oppo-site side of the street Luebeck's Commerce and Romance. Luebeck, companion port of the north, became, during the World war, the foremost port of the German empire em-pire in foreign, water-borne trade. It is the smallest of the free cities of Germany, but richer in reminiscences of former greatness than either of the other two. Hamburg, Bremen and Luebeck joined the modern German empire as free and independent Hanseatie Han-seatie cities. Hamburg and Bremen have developed Into great stone-and-mortar hives of present-day business ; have multiplied their wealth at a tremendous tre-mendous rate; and have, more and more, grown to the International type of purely business cities. Luebeck, on the other hand, while It has maintained main-tained an Importance as a busy place of commerce, Is medieval, romantic, a breath from the past Lying ten miles from the Baltic sea, on the River Trave, the channel of which has been so Improved that boats of 10-foot draft are able to tie up at the city's docks, Luebeck has been a nerve center of North German trade with Denmark, the Scandinavian lands, and with Russia. The city has been made Into an island by its harbor Improvements, Im-provements, the Trave flowing around its western border and a wide canal around It on the east. This city enjoys a location as favorable fa-vorable as that of Bremen or Hamburg Ham-burg for the distribution of its wares over Germany. It Is reached by rail in two and one half hours from Bremen, Bre-men, and is about as conveniently near to Berlin. The port is connected with Copenhagen, Stockholm and Danzig by regular steamer services. Its chief articles of commerce are wines, especially espe-cially clarets, timber, tar, and northern north-ern consignments of German manufuc-tures. |