The Best of Hamburg in One Day

Destroyed in Allied bombing raids in 1943, this Gothic church is now a museum and observation deck. It was decided after the war to not return St Nikolai to a parish church as it had been before, but to create a memorial where Hamburg could remember their dead and the atrocities of the war.

The air-raids were known as ‘Gomorrah’ because the locals felt as though fire and brimstone was raining down from the sky. Over one week, the fatal combination of using high explosive and incendiary bombs resulted in unprecedented devastation. First ‘blockbusters’ were dropped which cracked open houses, then incendiaries containing phosphorus raised a firestorm which at times reached an altitude of 6,000 metres. The entire city turned into a volcano, a gigantic stack in which hurricane-like winds drew the hot air upwards causing low pressure on the ground, which in turn sucked in oxygen, thus acting as an accelerant. The air-raids annihilated the city and left over 34,000 Hamburgers dead.  

There are two very different, modern, sculptures by Edith Breckwoldt at this historic site. One predicts the struggle of Hamburgers to pull themselves back to humanity after the Allied bombings. In perfect irony, the other depicts a prisoner of war in despair.  

The second sculpture, aptly called ‘The Ordeal’, is set atop a pile of bricks, representing the factory close to Hamburg where prisoners of war died in the production of bricks. It was not realised until many years after rudimentary repairs were made to the remains of St Nikolai, that the bricks used were from the very factory where German citizens were detained and worked to death. 

This is a deeply moving place where the lose-lose outcome of any war are palpable. St Nikolai really is one Hamburg must-see on your tour.