Hamburg's Chinese Quarter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Schmuckstrasse with memorial plaque, 2013
Situation around Schmuckstrasse around 1944

The Hamburg Chinese Quarter , also known as the Chinese Colony or Chinatown , was the name given to a small quarter around Schmuckstrasse in the border area between St. Pauli and the city of Altona, which was independent until 1938 . From around 1890 onwards, it was increasingly animated by Chinese seafarers, business people and migrants and dissolved by the National Socialists in 1944 with mass arrests and internments during a so-called Chinese action.

Originated at the end of the 19th century

In terms of numbers, the Chinese in Germany were a rather small group of immigrants; they came to Hamburg mainly via merchant shipping . When the working conditions for seafarers changed significantly from the middle of the 19th century with the industrialization of seafaring and the development of steamships , European shipping companies increasingly hired foreign workers, including Chinese workers. These usually came from the port cities of Guangzhou (Canton) in the province of Guangdong and Ningbo in Zhejiang and were mainly used as stokers by the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) and the North German Lloyd (NDL) in Hong Kong and Shanghai or trimmer used. These were activities that were considered to be the heaviest and most stressful on the large ships, if only because of the depth of the engine room and the heat development there.

Both their employers and other team members, but also the proletarian interest groups , brought racist clichés and resentments towards the so-called “colored sailors” on various levels. On the one hand, they were considered to be “cheap and willing” workers, on the other hand, their presence alone often conjured up the image of the yellow danger .

"With great preference, Lloyd now employs Chinese stokers and coal-pullers on its ships because they are supposed to be 'more resistant to the heat', but in fact, as we have already emphasized several times, because they are less needy, that is, cheaper and more submissive."

- Hamburger Echo of May 24, 1892

The Chinese seamen came to the European port cities and sometimes stayed for longer periods of time, including in Hamburg. During this time transformed with the growing port of the importance of the former suburban St. Pauli , the image has been re-shaped by just the foreign sailors on shore leave , which is a "place of pleasure, distraction, the frivolity and - the vice" offered . As for men from other nations, an infrastructure was established among the Chinese within a few years, Chinese sleeping quarters provided places to stay, cooks in cookshops and restaurants offered local meals, ship chandlers sold special seamans' supplies and services, entertainment and loans were arranged among compatriots.

Other migrants from China, who temporarily settled in Hamburg at the beginning of the 20th century, were small traders who mainly sold porcelain goods in markets and on front doors. Most of them came from the Qingtian area and spoke in the Wu dialect, unlike the sailors' Cantonese . They were often pejoratively called the suitcase Chinese .

Memorial stone for Chinese seamen and citizens who died in Hamburg in the Ohlsdorf cemetery

Even if Hamburg's Chinatown was only very modest in size compared to that of New York or San Francisco , a Chinese quarter in St. Pauli was noticed by the public from the beginning of the 1920s, especially around Schmuckstrasse directly on the border with Altona . The few hundred people enjoyed a certain protection by the Chinese embassy in Berlin and the Foreign Office, since the developing economic relations with the Chinese Republic, which were stabilized with a trade agreement of 1921, were not to be marred by the discrimination against Chinese citizens.

Media interest in the 1920s

In the 1920s, operated Chinese owners on St. Pauli several local , food stalls and shops , like the Chinese restaurant Chop Shuy in the jewelry road 18 or the cigar shop Ah Wan on the ground floor of the jewelry street 7. In the adjacent Great freedom that were dance hall new China and the Cheong Shing café and ballroom are popular meeting places for both the Chinese living in Hamburg and the local St. Paulians and Altona residents. They became known nationwide with their mix of Asian food culture and Western entertainment. The atmosphere found its way into an article by Kurt Tucholsky in 1927 :

"In the Chinese restaurant they sang while dancing, the whole staff, in unison and roaring."

- Kurt Tucholsky : On the Reeperbahn at half past twelve, 1927

In police reports as well as in press publications, the tension between the criminalization of the unfamiliar and the staging of exotic flair is clearly formulated. On the one hand, the Chinese migration was described as a "land plague", a sanitary hazard for the Hamburg population was conjured up and a notorious crime was assumed, which mainly involved the smuggling of opium and the establishment of opium caves , the operation of gambling and the maintenance of a secret tunnel system the district should exist. For example, on August 4, 1921, a raid took place in Hafenstrasse 126 and Pinnasberg 77, during which an " opium den disguised as a laundry and vegetable shop" was discovered and 50 people - Chinese, Japanese and Germans - were arrested. In October 1922, during a search of the cellar bar at Schmuckstrasse 7, opium and weapons were found. This cellar bar was mentioned several times in the following years. It is said to have consisted of twelve nested rooms in which opium was smoked and a gaming room was operated. A man by the name of Wong Chu was murdered here on New Year's Eve in 1925; the criminal case attracted a great deal of attention because of the milieu, but could not be solved. The Langemaack case is also worth mentioning : in 1926 it became public that the police in St. Pauli were involved in drug deals with Chinese.

On the other hand, authors described the "intangible mystery", which at the same time emphasized the attraction and the ambience of the St. Pauli district, for example in an essay by the local poet Ludwig Jürgens :

"St. Pauli's China has never harmed any guest, calm, peace and an eternal smile is his face. But no one can say whether it is also his truth. House by house in Schmuckstrasse is inhabited by the yellow race, every cellar hole has its strange characters next to or above the entrance. The windows are tightly draped over narrow cracks of light, shadows flit, no sound penetrates outside. Everything bears the veil of a great secret. [...] Whether they really indulge in opium or pursue their second great national passion, gambling, nobody can say. "

- Ludwig Juergens : Chinatown, 1930

At the beginning of the 1920s, Chen Jilin, a seaman who had come to Hamburg from Ningbo in 1915 and was now working for the North German Lloyd Seemänner, founded a sailors' club, which later became the Chinese Association in Hamburg . Its founding on October 10, 1929 in the Cheong Shing ballroom an der Große Freiheit received some public attention, especially against the background of the growing importance of the German Reich's trade relations with China.

Persecution during National Socialism

With the transfer of power to the National Socialists from 1933 onwards, the racist discrimination against the Chinese also intensified. Seafarers were initially withdrawn from the large shipping companies, but were hired again from 1935 when the number of unemployed fell. From 1936 onwards, the Chinese resident in Hamburg were monitored and monitored more closely, both by the Gestapo and by the criminal police and the customs investigation office , who suspected that street vendors and innkeepers were violating the stricter provisions of the foreign exchange ordinance.

Memorial plaque for Hamburg's Chinese Quarter on Schmuckstrasse, corner of Talstrasse (2020)

With a decree of January 25, 1938 and the establishment of a central office for the Chinese under Reinhard Heydrich in Berlin, the port cities of Hamburg and Bremen were advised that "particularly tough" action should be taken against increased immigration of Chinese. The racial orientation was clearly evident in point 12 of the decree, according to which “Chinese who live with German women or have produced illegitimate children with them” should be refused further residence permits and expelled from the Reich. Concrete effects were felt in the period that followed through increased raids in Hamburg's Chinatown, for example on October 13, 1938, when after a search of several apartments in Schmuckstrasse 69 men of Chinese origin were brought to the Gestapo headquarters . Ten of them had no valid papers, the others could not prove any offenses.

In World War II

At the beginning of the Second World War , in addition to the Hamburg Chinese, there were also around 100 Chinese seamen in the port of Hamburg who were initially interned, but were able to leave Germany for China in autumn 1939. In the further development of the war, China declared war on the German Reich on December 9, 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor . For the Chinese still resident in Germany, this meant the loss of the last diplomatic protection that had been given by the Chinese Consulate General in Hamburg. Chinese seamen captured by British merchant ships who had been seized by the German navy were also affected. In the spring of 1942, 165 Chinese were transferred to Hamburg for work; they did forced labor in laundries and in inland waterway transport. Many of them found shelter with their compatriots in St. Pauli and the surrounding area, some managed to travel back and forth with the help of the German Red Cross .

Chinese action

On May 13, 1944, the Gestapo organized a large-scale raid and mass arrest called the Chinese Action. Criminal and law enforcement police cordoned off some streets around the Chinese quarter and arrested a total of 130 Chinese men and some German women who were friends with them or who lived together. The collective accusation was that they were favoring the enemy , since the departure of Chinese seafarers had been carried out and those arrested had known that those who had emigrated would return to English service. They were first taken to the Davidwache and later to the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel . There was severe abuse and torture that some of the prisoners did not survive. In the fall of 1944, 60 to 80 people were transferred to the Langer Morgen labor education camp , where 17 people are known to have died from the inhuman camp conditions and arbitrary abuse, but the number of deaths is actually much higher.

Other Chinese were released after several months in the Fuhlsbüttel prison or assigned to columns of forced labor, some were brought to Neuengamme concentration camp . The women who were friends with or in a relationship with the Chinese were insulted as Chinese prostitutes, stigmatized as prostitutes and sent to institutions and concentration camps as “sexually ill” . Most of the names of the victims and their number remained unknown.

Aftertaste

Hong Kong bar on Hamburger Berg
Old commemorative plaque in front of the Schmuckstrasse football field, 2011

The “Hong Kong Bar” on Hamburger Berg is a relic of the Chinese Quarter. It was opened in 1938 by Chong Tin Lam (1907–1983), who came to St. Pauli in 1926 and has been run by his daughter since his death. Chong, his partner Lina Donatius and his daughter Marieta, born in 1942, were also affected by the Chinese action, and the authorities refused to make amends after the war. In 2009 the documentary film Fremde Heimat was made , which thematizes the history of Hamburg's Chinatown and the fate of Chong Tin Lam around the Hong Kong bar.

In front of Schmuckstrasse 7, the artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block for the innkeeper Woo Lie Kien (1885–1944) . He was arrested during the Chinese campaign and abused in Fuhlsbüttel, so that he died on November 23, 1944 in the Barmbek hospital.

In 1996, the artists Gerd Stange and Michael Batz installed a commemorative plaque on Schmuckstrasse, which pointed to the Chinese quarter and its end due to the Chinese action. In September 2012, the St. Pauli Archive replaced the sign, which had become ailing over the years, with a plaque on the green strip of Schmuckstrasse and Talstrasse.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. The treatment of firemen on the ships of the North German Lloyd , in: Hamburger Echo, No. 121 of May 24, 1892, quoted from: Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese migration and their perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 ; Munich 2006, p. 40
  2. St. Pauli and prostitution. A suggestion by several St. Paulians to remediate unsustainable conditions , Hamburg 1899, p. 3, quoted from: Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese migration and its perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 ; Munich 2006, p. 50
  3. Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese Migration and Their Perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 , p. 107
  4. ^ In the middle of Hamburg - a journey through time to Chinatown , Hamburger Abendblatt from July 26, 2008
  5. Webmap Hamburg Global: From China to Great Freedom. Chinese Migration in Hamburg in the 20th Century , accessed December 28, 2013
  6. Kurt Tucholsky, Collected Works Volume 5, p. 282
  7. Renate Hücking, Ekkehard Launer: Chinatown - No great freedom , p. 71
  8. Renate Hücking, Ekkehard Launer: Chinatown - No great freedom , p. 71
  9. Renate Hücking, Ekkehard Launer: Chinatown - No great freedom , p 71; Werner Skrentny: Hamburg on foot. 20 district tours , 1992, p. 158; Ilona Kiss: Kriminalspaziergang , p. 214
  10. ^ Werner Skrentny: Hamburg on foot. 20 District Tours , 1992, p. 159
  11. ^ Ludwig Juergens: St. Pauli. Pictures from a happy world , Hamburg 1930, p. 17 f.
  12. ^ In the middle of Hamburg - a journey through time to Chinatown , Hamburger Abendblatt from July 26, 2008
  13. Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese migration and its perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 , p. 108 ff.
  14. Schnellbrief of the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior Reinhard Heydrich to all except Prussian state governments, Gestapo, RKPA, all Gestapo leaders of 25 January 1938 cited by Lars Amenda: strangers, harbor, city: Chinese migration and its perception in Hamburg from 1897 to 1972 , P. 110
  15. Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese migration and its perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 , p. 114.
  16. Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese Migration and Their Perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 , p. 129.
  17. Lars Amenda: Fremde, Hafen, Stadt: Chinese Migration and Their Perception in Hamburg 1897–1972 , pp. 115 ff., 124
  18. Article “The 'Snowflake' from Hamburger Berg ” in Hinz & Kunzt . The Hamburg street magazine. No. 302, April 2018 edition. Pages 32–37.
  19. Hamburger Abendblatt from January 26, 2012 ; Hanna Huhtasaari: Opium and Pils on tap - Hamburg's forgotten Chinatown , Spiegel online, September 2011 ( Memento from December 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ A foreign home. A documentary
  21. stolpersteine-hamburg.de: Woo Lie Kien
  22. St. Pauli Archive: Memorial plaque to the Chinese Quarter in St. Pauli ( Memento from December 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 389 kB), accessed on March 16, 2013

Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 4.5 "  N , 9 ° 57 ′ 32.2"  E