Hamburg

Received from: Germany
Category: Postcrossing - official card
Date: July 2013
Distance: 758 km
Time of travelling: 13 days

Hamburg's official name, Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, reflects Hamburg's history as a member of the medieval Hanseatic League, as a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, and that Hamburg is a city-state and one of the sixteen States of Germany. Before the 1871 Unification of Germany, Hamburg was a fully sovereign state of its own. Prior to the constitutional changes in 1919, the stringent civic republic was ruled by a class of hereditary grand burghers or Hanseaten.