Portuguese-Hanseatic Society
The PHG - Portuguese-Hanseatic Society was founded as a non-profit association in Hamburg in 1996 and today has around 300 members. Founding members were u. a. the literary translator Maralde Meyer-Minnemann and the author Dr. Peter Koj . With its name, the company would like to build on the centuries-old relationship between the Hanseatic city of Hamburg and Portugal . The PHG's central publication is a magazine, Portugal-Post , which is published every six months ( not to be confused with the Portugal Post newspaper ). A large part of the articles appears bilingual. One deals mainly with cultural issues, which affect not only Portugal, but the entire Portuguese-speaking area. The articles are collected in a comprehensive WEB archive and are available for evaluation. Wikipedia also uses these articles as a source of information in many areas.
Portugal in Hamburg
At the time of the Hanseatic League, Portugal was the leading seafaring and explorer nation. Hamburg owes its connection to the new world markets in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in the Far East. Traces of this early connection can still be found on the Elbe today: from the statue of the discoverer of the India route, Vasco da Gama , on the Hamburg Kornhausbrücke (the monument to his compatriot and circumnavigator Magalhães / Magellan on the south side of the same bridge fell victim to the bombs of the Second World War ), to the “Portugaleser”, a coin “after Portugalis shot and grain”, which is still awarded as a medal today, to the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery on Königstrasse in the Altona district with its 2,000 magnificent graves that has been around since the end of the 16th century Portuguese merchants, doctors and scholars based in Hamburg .
The sailing ship Rickmer Rickmers , lying on the landing stages, shows that these maritime connections have never been broken. The “Sagres” served as a training ship for the Portuguese Navy for over 40 years and is now a very special German-Portuguese meeting point. With the recourse to the Portuguese-Hanseatic past, the association also wants to point beyond Hamburg, because after all the Elbe metropolis was only one of many Hanseatic cities and they all cultivated trade and cultural exchange with Portugal . Today's Portugal, its culture and language, its people, its landscape are the focus of club life. In a series of events (lectures, exhibitions, reading evenings, guided tours, social gatherings) members and guests of the society will convey a lively and unadulterated picture of the lusophone countries. Society wants to express that Portugal in particular - despite all the clichés of mass tourism and the negative headlines of the debt crisis - is a country worth striving for: Portugal is Europe's oldest nation-state with a rich cultural heritage, which existed within its original borders.
Other activities of the association concentrate on the organization of lusophonic music and cultural events in the Hamburg area. In 2010 the 90th birthday of the famous Portuguese fado singer Amália Rodrigues was celebrated with a festival and a cultural event.
The PHG wants to contribute to international understanding with its work and opposes any kind of xenophobia and exclusion. Hamburg, with its strong Portuguese presence (more than 11,000 Portuguese citizens, a large number of Portuguese restaurants, cafes, shops, companies and leisure organizations) offers a rich field of activity here. The great Portuguese culture and folk festival ("Arraial português"), in which all Portuguese and German-Portuguese associations participated, attracted thousands of visitors to the Museum of Ethnology every year until 2012 and is an example of this collaboration. New Portuguese literature is presented monthly.
Individual evidence
- ^ [1] Archive of the Portugal Post
- ↑ [2] List of Portuguese restaurants in Hamburg
- ↑ [3] List of Portuguese cafés in Hamburg
- ↑ [4] Book of the Month