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Situated in northern Germany near the mouth of the Elbe River on the North Sea, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg formed an enclave between the Prussian provinces of Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein.
Hamburg began as the Carolingian castle of Hamburg, which was built by Charlemagne in the early ninth century as a defense against the Slavs. The settlement grew to commercial importance by the thirteenth century, and in 1241 Hamburg formed an alliance with Lübeck, which later became the basis of the Hanseatic League. In 1558 the first German stock exchange was founded in Hamburg. With the arrival of Dutch Protestants, Portuguese Jews, and English cloth merchants (expelled from Antwerp), and with expansion of commercial ties to the United States after 1783, Hamburg continued to prosper. In 1770 Hamburg was acknowledged as an "immediate" imperial city of Germany (that is, having no overlord other than the emperor).
The Napoleonic Wars overthrew the old order in Germany, and in 1810 the little state of Hamburg was annexed to Napoleon's French Empire. After Napoleon's downfall (1814-15), Hamburg became a member state of the German Confederation. From 1819 it was formally known as the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Hamburg maintained its independent status under the new German Empire (1871), and its economic development proceeded unchecked. By the end of the nineteenth century Hamburg had expanded far beyond its previous limits, absorbing such former suburbs as Sankt Pauli and Sankt Georg and spreading its tentacles into the countryside toward Eimsbüttel, Eppendorf, Harvestehude, and Barmbek.
For many years after World War I, Hamburg could undertake no further development because it had exhausted all its territory. The Greater Hamburg Ordinance of January 26, 1937, changed this situation by granting Hamburg the neighboring cities of Altona, Wandsbek, and Harburg, which until then had belonged to Prussia. During World War II, Hamburg was severely damaged by aerial bombardments and some 55,000 people were killed. Hamburg is the second smallest of the sixteen Länder of Germany. (en-US)