Peter‘s Review: Where the Elbphilharmonie is now

On 11th and 12th January 2017 it was finally time. The Elbphilharmonie, the new Hamburg landmark, finally opened its doors. But what was before that at this place? My grandfather told me an exciting story. On the western tip of the old Dalmannkai, a huge store house, the so called „Kaispeicher A” was built before World War I. It was the largest and most modern storage in the Port of Hamburg, looking like a church because of its tower. On top of the tower was a real eye-catcher: a time ball – the clock of the harbour. In port cities accurate timekeeping always played an important role for navigation and for the exact determination of the longitude at sea. Every day at exactly twelve o'clock, the time-ball fell down three meters, and the sailors could adjust their own clocks. A real spectacle. It says a lot about Hamburg, the supposedly most British city of Germany, that the ball did not move at twelve o'clock Central European Time, but Greenwich Mean Time.