Rathausmarkt

This guide to Rathausmarkt in Hamburg returns to a single day in 1962, when as many as one hundred fifty thousand people filled this square to mourn after a North Sea storm breached Hamburg's dikes and flooded the city overnight. It follows Mayor Paul Nevermann's speech from the city hall steps, and the improvised, unreligious ceremony a stunned city built for itself with no priest and no hymn. It also touches on the two earlier disasters he invoked from Hamburg's past. Look down at the plain granite paving beneath your feet as you listen.