A new ex­hi­bi­tion on the Old Elbe Tun­nel

The pro­ject’s be­gin­nings

Every­thing began in an attic. High up in the build­ing of the St. Pauli Elb­tun­nel, HPA worker Jan-Peter Hein came across a unique find per­chance in 2017: dozens of cases, around 900 pho­tos and hun­dreds of tech­ni­cal draw­ings – all of which doc­u­ment the plan­ning and con­struc­tion of the tun­nel. 

To as­sess the value of these doc­u­ments, HPA com­mis­sioned the Ham­burg his­to­rian Daniel Frahm. The sci­en­tist spe­cial­is­ing in pub­lic his­tory, in other words his­tory be­yond the aca­d­e­mic realms of the uni­ver­sity, has worked for var­i­ous Ham­burg com­pa­nies. He ex­am­ined the ma­te­r­ial and de­ter­mined them to be ex­tremely valu­able. HPA wanted to share this trea­sure with the pub­lic and gave Daniel Frahm the task of com­pil­ing an ex­hi­bi­tion on the St. Pauli Elb­tun­nel. 
 

The struc­ture’s full his­tory

When the Elb­tun­nel was opened in 1910, it was con­sid­ered a mile­stone in tech­nol­ogy. The newly dis­cov­ered pho­tos now fill 24 boards of an ex­hi­bi­tion giv­ing vis­i­tors a fas­ci­nat­ing look into the de­vel­op­ment and long his­tory, as well as the re­fur­bish­ment work which HPA is cur­rently per­form­ing, of the Old Elbe Tun­nel. “What’s in­ter­est­ing is that not only is the tun­nel’s his­tory on dis­play, but also the cur­rent re­fur­bish­ment mea­sures and thus the ef­forts of HPA to re­tain this his­tor­i­cally valu­able struc­ture. The im­por­tance of the tun­nel in terms of its ar­chi­tec­ture and trans­port con­nec­tion will not be for­got­ten,” says his­to­rian Daniel Frahm. 

Open­ing hours of the ex­hi­bi­tion

The ex­hi­bi­tion can be seen in the foyer of Ham­burg’s Town Hall from 1 to 17 March 2019.

The open­ing hours are:
Mon­day to Fri­day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sat­ur­day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sun­day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Ad­mis­sion is free of charge. Af­ter­wards, the ex­hi­bi­tion will be on dis­play for a few weeks di­rectly in the St. Pauli Elb­tun­nel. 


HPA on In­sta­gram