Wolfgang Borchert

That's more than a heap of stones, roofs, windows, carpets, beds, streets, bridges and lamps. It's more than factory chimneys and the hooting of traffic - more than gulls' laughter, trams screaming and the thunder of railways - it's more than ships' sirens, crashing cranes, curses and dance music - oh, it's infinitely more.

It's our will to be. Not to be anywhere and anyhow, but to be here and only here between Alster stream and Elbe river and only to be, as we are, we in Hamburg!

[...]

Hamburg, city: stone-forest of towers, lamps and six-storeyed houses: stone-forest whose paving stones, with the rhythm of a song, conjure up the floor of a forest where you still hear the steps of the dead, at night sometimes.

City: primitive animal, scuffling and snuffling, animal of courtyards, glass and sighs, tears, parks and shouts of joy - animal with blinking eyes in the sunlight: silvery, oily canals! Animal with shimmering eyes in the moonlight: quivering, glimmering lamps!

City: home, heaven, homecoming - beloved between heaven and hell, between ocean and ocean: mother between meadow and mud, between river and lake: angel between waking and sleeping, between mist and wind: Hamburg!

[...]

Hamburg!

That's more than a heap of stones, inexpressibly more! It's the strawberry-laden, apple-blossoming meadows on the banks of the Elbe - it's the flower-laden, schoolgirl-blossoming gardens of the villas on the banks of the Alster.

It's white, yellow, sand-coloured and bright green low pilots' houses and captains' cabins on the hills of Blankenese. But it's also the dirty, slovenly, bustling quarters of factories and wharves with their stink of grease, scent of tar and smell of fish and sweaty breath. Oh - it's the mighty sweetness of the parks on the Alster and in the suburbs, where the Hamburgers, the genuine Hamburgers, who never go to the dogs and always steer a straight course, are made in the blissful passionate nights of love. And these truly lucky children are tossed into this immortal life on a cushion-scented boat, croaked at by frogs, on the moonlit Alster.

Hamburg!

[...]

It's these grey, vital, inevitable infinities of disconsolate streets, in which we were all born, and in which one day we all must die - and that is so very much more than a heap of stones!

Walk through it and distend your nose like a horse's nostrils: That's the smell of life! Swaddling-clothes, cabbage, plush sofa, onions, petrol, young girls' dreams, carpenter's glue, cats, geraniums, schnaps, motor-car tyres, lipstick-blood and sweat-smell of the city, breath of life: more, more than a heap of stones! It's death and life, work, sleep, wind and love, tears and mist!

It's our will to be, Hamburg!