Hamburg's New International Maritime Museum by Ge rnot Ga bel, PhD
F
or centuries the city of Hamburg prided itself on being the major Germ an port and "gate to the world." Vessels of all kinds have been built in its shipya rds and goods from all over the wo rld have landed o n its wharves. With this in mind, the Ge rman collector Peter Tamm chose Hamburg to showcase the thousands of maritime artifacts he has assembled during his li fet ime. Peter Tamm was born in Hamburg in 1928 and began his professional career as a journalist in his native city at age rwenty. Two decades late r, he was the CEO of Germany's Springer newspaper gro up, then the leading media ho use in West Germany. Today, at eighty, Tamm is still a publisher and owner of a publishing gro up. Peter Tamm was given his first model ship when he was just six, but his real love for the sea was kindled during his few weeks of service in the German navy at the end of the Second World War. W hile working as a journalist as a yo ung man, he began coll ecting model ships and maritime items such as paintings, maps, and weapo ns. Thanks to his personal fort une, he was able to assemble an impressive and volumino us collection within a relatively short time. Today it is the larges t private collection of shipping and m arine historic artifacts in the wo rld. When he ran out of storage space in his stately home, he purchased a spacious villa on the banks of the river Elbe, where, in 1991 , he fo unded the
Peter Tamm (left) welcomes President H orst Kohler at the museum's opening on 25 Ju ne 2 008.
Institute of Navigation and Marine History.
In 2002 Tamm established a fo undatio n to provide an enduring legal framework for his venture, a prerequisite for the establishment of a public museum. Since the 1990s, the old warehouses along H amburg's wha rves became obsolete. Similarly to what happened to London's dockyards, the brick buildings with their solid va ults were partly co nverted into posh lofts for an affiuent dientele. Peter Tamm espied the oldest and largest storehouse, a neogothic building completed in 1879, choosing it for a new museum , and he persuaded the H am burg city council to lease the edifice to him for ninety-nine years, rent-free. A shrewd negotiator, Tamm also convinced Hamburg's mayo r to grant thi rty million euros (nearly US$50 million ) fo r the renovation and convers ion of the warehouse into the International Maritime Museum (IMM). The museum's te n floors-now called "decks"-offer 130,000 square feet of exhibition space. Each deck is devoted to a
theme, ranging from the history of discoveries and shipbuilding techniques to exhibits about th e merchant marine and the German navy. One deck is devo ted to paintings and prints, another to a huge model collection with more than 35,000 vessels of all types, represented in both large and sm all scale. The development of navigatio n and co mmunication is presented on another deck, and so is shipboard life, naval uniform s, decorations, and weapo ns. There is even a section called "Treasure," which holds the museum's most valuable items made from ivory, am ber, and precious m etals, amo ng them a silver table decoration in the shape of a German battleship and a small rep lica of Columbus's Santa Maria in solid gold . Other attractio ns are thirty-five "bone ships," rare models carved from animal bones by impriso ned French seamen afrer the battle ofTrafalgar, and a fifty-five-foot model of the Queen Mary 2, assembled from thousands of Lego pieces. The largest item in the collection is a rwoman submarine developed by the former East German navy; the sm allest is a sailing boat that measures a m ere one-fifth of an inch. Som e critics have argued that the museum caters too much to the to urist an d model-ship buff, or that it focuses too much on naval history and weaponry. The
The International Maritime Museum occupies a prominent place along Hamburg's historic wharves.
26
SEA HISTORY 125, WINTER 2008-09