The History of Hamburg Mapped

Hamburg Reloaded - Koppmann 1883 is a fascinating collection of 19th century photographs of the German city of Hamburg. The photos were all taken by Georg Koppmann, who established a photographic business in the city in 1865.

If you select an individual vintage photo of the city from the photo gallery you can view a map showing you the location depicted.  Mapbox GL is used to show the location in the selected photo. The map rotates and tilts to provide a reasonable approximation of the actual point of view of the historical photograph.

You can view early 20th century photographs of Hamburg on Hamburg Reloaded - Dransfeld 1930. This sister project uses the same format to display vintage photographs taken by Carl Dransfeld. Dransfeld was an architectural photographer who worked with Hamburg architects to document their buildings in the city.


Both the Hamburg Reloaded projects use Chronograph to map the vintage photographs of Hamburg. Chronograph has also been used in Chronograph Hamburg. Chronoscope Hamburg allows you to view vintage maps of the historical German city overlain on a modern interactive map. It includes old maps of Hamburg from the 16th, 17th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The Chronoscope map viewer allows you to select a map by its year of publication. It also includes a transparency tool which allows you to adjust the transparency of the selected vintage map to view or hide the modern interactive map underneath. If you want to learn more about any the historical maps featured on Chronoscope Hamburg click on the castle logo (top right of the map). This will take you to a page which includes details about each of the vintage maps (in German).


In Geschichtomat - Explore Hamburg’s Jewish History! Hamburg school students were set the task of exploring the history of Jewish life in Hamburg and exploring the traces of the city's Jewish past in their own districts. The students achieved this by researching Jewish life in their neighborhoods, questioning witnesses and studying historical documents.

The students were then asked to present what they learned about Hamburg's Jewish history through video, photographs and text. These presentations were then added to the amazing Geschichtomat Google Map. The map not only provides a great mapped record of the students' work but is in itself a great multi-media guide to Hamburg's Jewish past.