Speicherstadtmuseum

This guide to the Speicherstadtmuseum in Hamburg opens on the warehouse district's official opening day, October 15, 1888, built not to display goods but to hide them from the taxman after Hamburg joined the German customs union while keeping tax-free trade. It follows the quartermasters, independent brokers who stored, sampled and dried other merchants' coffee, tea and spices, and the games some of them played with how much cargo left the warehouse floors. Listen for the story of Carl Wolter's firm, one of the last quartermasters still trading in the district decades after the rest had gone.