Once European Champions, Hamburger SV are now happy to be back playing Bundesliga football after seven years away. The ambition and history of the club-and the city-reach far beyond the docks of Germany’s famed northern port. This article is the first of a three-part longread, written by History Educator and Football Traveller Ian Wolff. It tells the story of Hamburg, its origin and modern-day connections with England through football and society.
The Gateway to the World
On the 20th of July, 2026, the only English footballer ever to win the Ballon D’Or twice died from brain cancer. Recognised as one of the most iconic players the country has ever produced, he described his recognition in characteristically simple terms.
“I did it a different way”, he told the BBC in the months before his death. He mused that he might be “an inspiration to players who don’t have, or are not blessed with, fantastic ability but make the best of it in a way that becomes a major effect on a team or a game, so, it can be done”.
Kevin Keegan is hailed in England as a former manager of the Three Lions, and, possibly in even more iconic fashion, for Newcastle United. He won three First Division triumphs and two UEFA cups with Liverpool, as well as an FA Cup and, in the 1976-1977 season, a European Cup. However, it was in a northern German city whose history of looking out upon the world from its proud and active docks and canals that his individual exploits were recognised on continental Europe. Much like Keegan, they do things a different way in Hamburg, and are very happy to tell you about it.
Travelling by foot in Hamburg is a relatively easy exercise. Places are well-labelled, and walking routes offer many pleasant views of charming streets and walking paths that all somehow seem to lead to a port that has welcomed ships from afar for nearly a millennium. It is that identity which still gives this German “city state”-one of three in Germany, along with Berlin and Bremen-it’s unique outlook, and indomitable pride.
A Free City
Hamburg, first founded in 1189, was one of the most important cities in the medieval Hanseatic League, which was a formal and flexible association of cities trading throughout the area between what is today Russia, Scandinavia, and Flanders (modern-day Belgium). Whilst the undisputed leader of the league was the town of Lubeck, it was a 1241 alliance with Hamburg that truly made the league into a powerful entity, capable of protecting both the commercial and defensive interests of its members, known as Hanse towns. Membership of the league allowed these towns to enjoy the benefits of the international trade, which consisted of flax, grain, charcoal, pitch, honey and timber coming from Russia and lands to the south and east of the Baltic Sea, in exchange for manufactured goods from the West. German grain, wine, and local agrarian produce flowed through the Canals of Hamburg and on to the rest of Europe, but were also carried overland to cities such as Venice and Constantinople (now Istanbul). The effect of these ventures can still be seen in the official name of the city: the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
“But they asked for it…”
Thinking of high-profile English footballers representing the city brings back happy memories, and the migration of dock workers from Glasgow to Hamburg created a football connection between Glasgow Rangers and Hamburger SV that continues to this day. Despite this, residents of Hamburg also acknowledge the horrific and painful events of the 20th century that all of modern Germany still finds itself staring at directly through the lens of time.
A journey to the top of the church spire at St. Nikolai Memorial, where a chapel was first built in 1195, offers stunning views. Antiquated church steeples and the City Hall at the Rathausmarkt sit alongside the modern office blocks of a city that appears eager for what the future will bring. This modernity carries with it, however, some painful acknowledgements. The high spire of St. Nikolai, once a symbol of the building’s undoubted grandeur and helping briefly make the building the tallest in the world from 1874-1876, served as a landmark for approaching Allied bomber pilots during the Second World War. Below the modern church, an exhibit tells us that it was once the German nation’s intention to “Coventrize” English cities. This term, used in reference to the especially devastating bombing of the English city of Coventry in 1940, represented what infamous Minister of “Propaganda and Enlightenment” Joseph Goebbels wanted to do to as many enemy cities as possible. It is taught in-depth in the underground museum exhibit in parallel to the story of the Great Fire of Hamburg.
“The reports from Coventry are horrendous. An entire city literally wiped out. The English are no longer pretending; all they can do now is wail. But they asked for it”.
–Joseph Goebbels, November 1940.
Less than a year later, in September of 1941, hundreds were left homeless due to British Royal Air Force bombing in Hamburg. This bombing was hardly unpredictable. Hamburg had retained its important economic and industrial role from its days in the Hanseatic League straight through until the 20th century, and had been given the title Furherstaft (Fuhrer city) in the 1930s, with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler personally involved in the city’s redevelopment. Many residents of Hamburg were quite excited for their city’s role in being the Third Reich’s “gateway to the world”.
Undeterred in his ambitions by the autumn 1941 bombing, Karl Kaufmann, the Gauleiter (regional leader) of Hamburg, felt it rather presented an opportunity for him. He took it upon himself to request that the Jews of Hamburg be evacuated to the East, therefore making new homes available to other Germans. This was swiftly agreed to by Hitler, and was announced at the end of October.
“We received a letter, twenty-four hours prior, to report to a building near the railway station, to bring one suitcase, and you would be resettled in the East. That’s all it said…(from the neighbours) it was either an ugly word or they looked away. It made us angry, but more than that, it made us terribly afraid. We wished we could hit back, but we knew we couldn’t”.
–Lucille Eichengreen, Hamburg Deportee, 1941
Deportations such as these were carried out across Germany, as the operations of the Holocaust gathered pace. The deported Jewish population of Hamburg would end up in the Lodz ghetto, which would allow them to be transported more efficiently to death camps some time later. One of history’s greatest crimes against humanity had just been given a horrific jump-start by the ambition of Hamburg’s Gauleiter.
As the horrors of the Second World War continued to crescendo with terrifying speed, the “hit-back” that the Jewish deportees of Hamburg and many other cities wished they could return as they departed their home cities would occur less than two years later. On the 24th and 25th of July, 1943, Operation Gomorrah commenced. Hamburg had long been prepared for this event, with the Nazi regime making sure to exclude specific categories of people from the protection offered by air raid shelters. The impending doom had been seemingly giving a foreboding symbol a year earlier when the Church of St. Nikolai had burnt down in the Great Fire of Hamburg on 5 May, 1942. The residents who were lucky enough not to be among the 34,000 who lost their lives upon the arrival of the British and American fighter pilots waited with packed suitcases and tremendous fear for the next air raid warning.
“My mother had made a cake. And then at night the sirens sounded, and then we went off with our suitcases and everything happened very quickly, first the pre-warning then the full air-raid warning”.
–Ronald Korn, Hamburg resident. At the time of Operation Gomorrah, he was 8 years old.
These memories, described as “Anglo-American bombing terror” at the time, are still very much imprinted on the minds of those who live on the banks of the Elbe, who are well aware that much of the world would provide a simple and unironic reaction: but they asked for it.
Naming “HSV”
Only a month after the beginning of Operation Gomorrah, architect Konstanty Gutschow, who had already been awarded the opportunity to redesign Hamburg in a 1937 competition, made his feelings clear regarding the future of the city. “The picture of rubble and debris does not touch my soul; it rather prompts the picture of the future of Hamburg, the new Hamburg that will rise clearly and vividly before our eyes”. Gutschow found that the tremendous destruction of the city actually would serve to make his ideas more realistic, and in 1947, his plans were put into action. Hamburg would indeed rise.
Reconstruction of the city started in 1945 whilst a great many Hamburg residents lived in corrugated iron huts, referred to as Nissen huts. Hamburg was one of only two German cities to undertake a significant rebuilding project while the war was still going on: Lubeck, Hamburg’s Hanseatic brother since 1241. The memories of the unforgiving winter of 1946-1947, in which the Elbe froze, would fade into memory as only ten years after the end of the war, the annual volume of trans-shipment had already reached its pre-war levels. This was matched by another notable port, just southwest along the Weser River, which would continue to rival Hamburger SV on the football pitch today-that of Bremen.
Before any world war was fought and over a decade before the founding of SV Werder Bremen, Hamburger SV was founded in June of 1888 as Hamburger FC, making it the second oldest football club in Germany. In 1914, the club changed its name from “Hamburger Fußballclub von 1888” to “Hamburger Sport-Verein von 1888”, which gave way to the current abbreviation often used to refer to the club: “HSV”. After World War I, whilst Germany was in the midst of domestic revolts from both the left and right-wing political movements, SC Germania von 1887 and FC Falke 06 merged with Hamburger SV to form one of northern Germany’s mightiest footballing forces. SC Germania’s founding date of September 1887 is recognised by HSV supporters as the date of the modern club’s founding, though SC Germania did not actually play football until 1891, when six Englishmen joined the track-and-field athletes and demanded that football be played. Nearly two decades later, as the residents of Hamburg searched for optimism in the bitter aftermath of the First World War, the blue, white, and black rhombus was put on the club shirts, and the famous red shorts appeared (forever giving the club the nickname Die Rothosen).
The forthcoming decade would offer two German titles, though none had nearly as dramatic a story attached as the title Hamburg almost won in 1922. In a single-elimination playoff tournament contested by regional champions, Hamburger SV (Northern German Champions) would face off against defending champions 1. FC Nürnberg. On 18 June, the city of Berlin played host to 30,000 spectators who watched breathlessly as FC Nurnberg, only moments away from their second consecutive German title, could not prevent midfielder Hans Flohr from equalising, and sending the match into extra time at 2-2. The exhaustion and brutality of the match began to literally break the players down.
“They were staggering across the pitch…nobody had any strength left for a shot on goal, but nobody was willing to give up either”.
–Contemporary Match Report
HSV players began needing to be literally carried off the field. When returning a few minutes later, they were immediately deemed to be actors by the opposition. There was nothing fake, however, about the five teeth that FC Nurnberg defender Anton Kugler lost due to a punch from Die Rothosen striker Tull Harder. This excruciating affair was only called off after over three hours, not due to concerns for player welfare, but rather darkness (Hamburger SV players would experience stadium floodlights for the first time twenty-eight years later-in North America).
The replay would be held on 6 August in Leipzig, in a ground which had a maximum capacity of 40,000. That did not stop 60,000 from attending, however, and observing FC Nurnberg striker Willi Boss receive a first-half red card for kicking HSV defender Albert Beier in the stomach, receiving a six-month suspension for his troubles. The match would again end in a draw, this time at 1-1. The contest went into extra time, with Anton Kugler-possibly still feeling the effects of the punch to his face two months earlier-taken off. As substitutions were not allowed at the time (and would not be allowed until 1967), FC Nurnberg had to play with nine men, which they did until receiving a second red card, this time presented to left-winger Heinrich Trag. “His act was so mean that I came close to ending the match right there”, the referee later commented. This would not happen, however, until FC Nürnberg lost right-sided player Luitpold Popp, this time due to collapse. With only seven players, rules dictated that the match must be forfeited. Hamburger SV would claim the title of German champions, but after months of legal battles and an official declaration granting them the title in November, HSV would decide “not to lay claim to this year’s title” (no club would officially be crowned champions of Germany in 1922). This act may well have been prompted by external pressure, but fortunately, the club would not have to wait long for their first title, achieving it one year later by defeating FC Union Berlin (then known as Union Oberschoneweide).
The 1923 title would be followed five years later by the club’s second in 1928. This success vaulted HSV into far greater prominence in German football, so much so that in 1950, in the lingering aftermath of the terror of World War II, German expatriates in the United States invited HSV to tour the country on behalf of their newfound German American Football Association. Whilst the exploits of twenty young Jews in New York City who took the opportunity to throw rotten fruit at the players received the greatest attention of any single event on the trip, a handful of American Jewish organisations promoted the tour to their members, encouraging them to watch the football as a way of moving past recent horrors. Hamburger SV would win five of their six matches, and play in their first-ever match aided by floodlights.
Far greater success, however, would come in the second half of the century.
“Our Uwe”
For many years, Hamburger SV has been proud of its status as a family club. Whilst this has a slightly different meaning today, which I would see in person, in the middle of the 20th century, it referred to the pattern of having many members of the same family wear the blue, white, and black rhombus. The family most represented in the ranks of HSV from 1931 to 1968 was the Dorfel’s, with four different players wearing the club’s famed red shorts. The far more famous family of the time, however, would be the Seelers. Father Erwin, who joined HSV as a player in 1938, would enrol his two sons, Dieter and Uwe, at Hamburg at the first opportunity. When told that Dieter, at the time aged 18, appeared to have potential, Erwin would respond with “wait until you’ve seen our little one”!
Ironically, the “little one” was already clearly far larger and stronger than his teammates at the age of 12, who would take to calling him “fatty”. It would be Uwe who would be laughing in 1952, as he would be chosen to represent West Germany in Belgium at the FIFA Junior Tournament. In his first season with HSV, in 1954-1955, he scored 28 goals in 30 games. 32 goals would follow in the next season, then 31 in the season after that in 1857. Those 31 goals would not be enough to secure HSV the German title, however, as they would lose in the final to Borussia Dortmund. Three years later, after another final loss in 1959, Seeler would seize his moment. With 70,000 spectators looking on, a Cologne team with World Cup winners Hans Schafer and Helmut Rahm would contest a HSV that, true to form, contained a Dorfel and both Seeler brothers. The two families would combine to bring Die Rothosen its first title in thirty two years.
A goal by the irrepressible Uwe Seeler to equalise would be followed by one from Gert “Charly” Dorfel to make it 2-1. A Dortmund equaliser would again tie the match, before a chipped free kick from Dorfel would be tapped in by Seeler to make it 3-2. The German title would once again return to the city on the Elbe.
The club’s domestic success in 1960 would be followed by success on the European stage a year later. Hamburg would dispatch Young Boys Berne and Burnley FC on the way to a semi-final against FC Barcelona, against whom they would be defeated 1-0 in the first leg. The Spanish press accused HSV of doping, citing “white powder” in the dressing room that was actually glucose. This had the predictable effect of lighting a fire under the team from northern Germany, who led 2-0 in the second leg after a Seeler strike which appeared to set up a European final appearance for Die Rothosen. Unfortunately, Seeler, so often the hero, would play a horrible pass in the final seconds that was intercepted by Hungarian 1954 World Cup finalist Sandor Kocsis, who would score a goal that would even the aggregate scoreline at 2-2. This meant a further playoff, in which the Catalan team was victorious. With the disappointment of the match still very much palpable, Seeler’s story-and therefore that of HSV-was not yet finished.
Only hours after the final whistle was heard, Seeler was offered a signing bonus of 500,000 Deutschmarks, and an annual salary of 150,000, to take his talents to Northern Italy and play for Inter Milan. This unthinkable nightmare involving a player who had begun being referred to as “Uns Uwe” (“Our Uwe”) in the press that season inspired the dean of Hamburg University to get personally involved. He wrote an open letter to Seeler, stating “if you manage to withstand this temptation, that would be a radiant signal, giving people cause to reflect on their ways”.
Eager to add his own influence to proceedings, West German national team manager Sepp Herberger announced: “they’ll get me before they get Uwe”! He would then use his influence to help Seeler become a paid representative of the brand Adidas. Whether this was the primary catalyst for Seeler’s decision is irrelevant. The hero of the Hamburg canals would stay at the club until 1972, scoring 404 goals in 476 appearances and living in the Norderstedt district of Hamburg with his wife until he died in 2002. Three years later, a large statue of his right foot would be unveiled outside the Volksparkstadion. To those who live beside the canals of Hamburg, the first footballer ever to be awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Germany would forever simply be “Our Uwe”.
References
Baker, A. (1995). The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. London: Pan MacMillan.
Diefendorf, J. M. (1985). ‘Konstanty Gutschow and the Reconstruction of Hamburg’. Central European History, 18(2), pp. 143–169.
Hesse, U. (2015). Tor!: The Story of German Football. London: WSC Books Ltd.
Irvine, A. (2021). ‘10 of the Best History Sites in Hamburg’. History Hit. [Online] Available at: https://www.historyhit.com/guides/historic-sites-in-hamburg/ [Accessed 24 August 2026].
Irvine, A. (2021). ‘10 of the Best History Sites in Hamburg’. History Hit. [Online] Available at: https://www.historyhit.com/guides/historic-sites-in-hamburg/ [Accessed 24 August 2026]. (Note: This is a duplicate of reference [2] and [9] in your original list.)
Kevin Keegan (2026). ‘I’m proud of it’-Kevin Keegan looks back on career highlights and legacy’. BBC Sport. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/videos/cgmkv3j3yv0o [Accessed 11 August 2026].
St. Nikolai Memorial and Museum (n.d.). St. Nikolai Memorial and Museum. Hamburg: Willy-Brandt-Straße 60, 20457 Hamburg, Germany. (Note: Multiple entries [10, 13, 15, 18] refer to the same physical location without a specific publication date or article title.)
The Nazis: Auschwitz and the Final Solution: Part 2 (1995). BBC.
‘The founding of HSV’ (2018). HSV. [Online] Available at: https://www.hsv.de/en/news/the-founding-of-hsv [Accessed 22 August 2026].
Waley, D. (1985). Later Medieval Europe: From Louis to Luther. New York: Longman.
‘Rangers and HSV — Tradition and Loyalty’ (2021). From the Stands. [Online] Available at: https://medium.com/@fromthestands1997/rangers-and-hsv-tradition-and-loyalty-dc0bb7b3c643 [Accessed 23 August 2026].
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