Freie und Hafenstadt Hamburg? Maritime Pfadabhängigkeiten in Hamburg seit den 1950er Jahren

Abstract

The concept of path dependency is frequently being used in research on ports and port cities. It seems obvious that politics, economic development, urban planning, and the image of port cities are under the spell of the maritime. But does this really create path dependencies? The article discusses this question by analysing the economic and port policy of the city government of Hamburg in the second half of the 20th century. The article asks about positive feedback effects after 1945 and identifies potential turning points in the late 1940s, 1960s and 1980s. However, after 1945, fears about the future encouraged adherence to the traditions of port and trade, and, from the mid-1950s, the economic revival of the port seemed to make policy changes unnecessary. In the late 1960s, high financial investments in the modernisation of the port stood in the way of change. Key players in economic policy were closely linked to the port industry until the 1980s, and interest groups such as the Chamber of Commerce saw themselves as advocates of port and trade. The political upheaval of 1989/90 revived the informal „grand port coalition“, so that in retrospect there was just a short window of opportunity in the mid-1980s in which a reorientation of Hamburg’s economic policy was discussed more openly.