Lives, Fates and Scandals Behind Elegant Façades

Hamburg personalities and their luxury residences on the Alster.

“Bringer of many pleasures” – that is how the poet Friedrich von Hagedorn raved about the Alster some 200 years ago. It even made it into the charts: “Moonlight on the Alster” became a worldwide hit. This originally inconspicuous stream, rising some fifty kilometres outside Hamburg, has grown not only into a lake but into an El Dorado.

A storybook career!

The Outer Alster has always been a hotspot of the rich and beautiful. After the Great Fire of 1842 and the abolition of the city-gate curfew in 1860, Hamburg’s wealthy merchant families had their summer residences built here.

Harvestehuder Weg is regarded as the millionaires’ mile and Hamburg’s most expensive street.

The surrounding districts of Harvestehude, Pöseldorf and Rotherbaum are among the wealthiest in the Hanseatic city. On our walk we encounter international fashion designers, star architects, merchant dynasties, industrial magnates, screen icons and tennis legends – the who’s who of Hamburg’s haute volée.

Our tour takes us past magnificent estates, and along the way we take a little peek behind the exquisite curtains. Out come moving stories, twists of fate and the odd scandal. We learn which poets and musicians immortalised the Alster in words and music – and why our swans rightly count among the city’s great personalities.