From my first serious contribution to Wikipedia :
Hamburg owes its name to the first permanent building in the area, a castle built in 808 by order of Emperor Charlemagne. The fortification was built on the rocky bottom of a marsh between the Alster and Elbe and served as a defense against invasion slave. The name of the castle was Hammaburg, where the word burg has the meaning of the castle. Hamma The word is of uncertain origin. The Old High German hamma includes both the word angle that hamme, pasture. Angle might refer to a strip of land or a bend in the river. In any case, the language spoken in the area at the time could not have been the Old High German, as a result Spoken Low Saxon dialect. Other theories claim that the origin of the name of the castle is to be selected in a hypothetical Hamma forest, or in the village of Hamm, later incorporated into the city. The word Hamm as a place name occurs very often in Germany, but its meaning is equally uncertain. You may have to do with heim and Hamburg may be in the territory of the ancient Chamavi. However, a direct derivation from the word heim (home, city of origin) seems to be too risky, since the name was given to the city after the castle. Another theory holds that the name comes from the term ham in Hamburg which is the term in ancient Saxon for shore. Nell'834 Hamburg was designated the seat of a diocese, whose bishop, Ansgar, became known as the Apostle of the North. 845 a fleet of 600 Viking ships arrived back in Hamburg, the Elbe and destroyed it. At the time the city had about 500 inhabitants. Two years later, Hamburg was united with Bremen in the bishopric of Hamburg-Bremen.
In 983 the city was destroyed again by Mstivoj king of Abodriti. In 1030, was burned down by King Mieszko II Lambert of Poland. After further invasions of 1066 and in 1072 the bishop he settled in Bremen.
paper from 1189 by Frederick I Barbarossa guaranteed in Hamburg said the status of free city with the exemption from payment of customs duties, oltre al diritto di commerciare a sud dell'Elba fino alla foce. La veridicità di tale documento è oggi messa in discussione, dato che in quell'anno il sovrano era impegnato nella Terza crociata da cui non sarebbe più tornato. In ogni caso, il documento, datato 7 maggio 1189, rimase valido fino al 1888, anno in cui avvenne l'unione doganale di Amburgo con l'Impero Tedesco. Il 7 maggio 1189 è considerata tutt'oggi la data di fondazione del porto e ogni anno viene celebrata l'Hafengeburtstag, una delle più grandi feste portuali del mondo. La franchigia doganale, unita alla vicinanza alle principali rotte commerciali del Mare del Nord e del Mar Baltico, fecero in breve tempo di Amburgo il maggior porto dell'Europa settentrionale. Nel 1241, with its commercial alliance with Lübeck, Hamburg became a member of the Hanseatic League.
In 1529 the city embraced Lutheranism, and later welcomed Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. At that time, Hamburg was under Danish sovereignty, while continuing to be part of the Holy Roman Empire as an Imperial Free City. For a brief period (1810-14) was annexed by France under Napoleon. For over a year suffered the siege of the Allied powers (mainly the Russian Empire, Prussia and Sweden). Russian forces under the command of General Bennigsen liberated the city in 1814. During the first half of the nineteenth century, mainly in lettaratura poetry and romantic, emerged the figure of Hammon, a goddess whose name is the Latin name of the city of Hamburg, who became the patron saint and symbol of national spirit of the period.
In 1842, about a quarter of the old city was destroyed in what will later be always remembered as the Great Fire. The fire began on the night of May 4 and was subdued until 8 May. 3 churches were destroyed, the town hall and an indefinite number of other buildings. 51 people lost their lives and 20,000 were left homeless. The reconstruction lasted over 40 years.
Hamburg experienced its greatest period of growth during the second half of the nineteenth century, when its population grew by more than four times to reach its 800,000 inhabitants and becoming the third biggest port in Europe thanks to the Atlantic trade routes.
Under the direction of Albert Ballin, the Hamburg-America Line was at the turn of the century, the largest transatlantic shipping company, Hamburg and became home to several transport companies to South America, Africa, India and East Asia. The city became a cosmopolitan metropolis based on global trade. It was also the port used by most Germans and Eastern Europeans to emigrate to the New World and was the site of numerous trading communities from all over the world (there arose such a small Chinatown in Altona).
In 1903, was opened in Hamburg by Paul Zimmermann Freilichtpark the first nudist club organized. The clubhouse was located in a lake formed by the Alster river in the southern part of the City, adjacent to a beach whale.
After the First World War, Germany lost its colonies and, consequently, Hamburg lost many of its trade routes. In 1938 the city boundaries were extended with the law for a Great Hamburg, to include Wandsbek, Harburg, Wilhelmsburg and Altona.
Hamburg During World War II was subjected to a series of devastating air raids that killed more than 42,000 German civilians. Because of this, and also for the new urban plans of the '60s, the city history lost much of its architectural past.
After the war, the Iron Curtain - just 50 km east of Hamburg - separated the city from most of its hinterland and further reduced the activity of global trade. On 16 February 1962 a major storm had reached the maximum level Elba town, flooding one fifth of Hamburg and killing more than 300 people.
After German reunification in 1990 and the annexation of some Eastern European countries and the Baltic states to the European Union in 2004, Hamburg and its port began to aspire to regain primacy as a port for container ships and trading center. Since the reunification the Hamburg Metropolitan Region has grown by about 400,000 inhabitants in 2007 its population was approximately 4.3 million people.
In recent times the city of Hamburg has been frequently cited in Italian news because of its role in waste disposal of the emergency bell. To deal with excess waste, many tons of garbage were loaded on trains and in Saxony inaltre German regions. Hamburg are disposed of in the incinerator Borsigstr in the neighborhood of Billbrook. The Authority for Urban Development and Environment of Hamburg has temporarily blocked the disposal operations due to the discovery of traces of radioactivity in a load of rubbish. Operations were again permitted following the written guarantee from the Italian authorities' monitoring of radioactivity levels of the loads before the trains leave the Campania.
