Densely draped blackberry bushes overgrow the bridge to the Saalehafen pier on the Veddel. The dilapidated facility in the north of Hamburg's Elbe island is cordoned off. The wooden planks are rotten, the gray paint is peeling, at low tide the harbor basin dries up to a large extent. It has been a long time since a ship has docked here. "What can I say? The Czechs are gone,” says Magdalena Meierdirks, who has been running her snack bar “Zum Lütten Foffteiner” behind the old warehouses on the other side of the harbor basin for many years, shrugging her shoulders.
That was different. For decades, the Saale and Moldau ports right next door were the gateway to the world, first for Czechoslovakia and then for its legal successor, the Czech Republic. For the people of Hamburg it was simply the "Czech port". Germany granted free access for barges bringing goods to the port of Hamburg via the Vltava and Elbe rivers. German officials were not allowed to enter the leased area unannounced.
A club ship served the Czech crews and workers for entertainment with a cinema and a pub with Czech beer. There were repair shops for the ships and accommodation on land - until the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Velvet Revolution in 1989 not only meant a system change in Czechoslovakia, it also heralded the end of the golden era of the “Czech Port” in Hamburg.
The last bilingual information signs at the Saalehafen pier and an abandoned phone booth at the former administration building of the former state shipping company CSPL, which has long since gone bankrupt, are the last silent witnesses to the long history that still goes on today, even if the use of the port is a result of the First World War.
The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that the German Empire had to cede two sea entrances to the Czechoslovak Republic (CSR), which had emerged from the Habsburg Empire - one in Stettin, which is now Poland, and the other in Hamburg. After ten years of negotiations, the Hanseatic city and the government in Prague finally concluded a lease agreement for around 28,000 square meters of quay area at the Saale and Vltava harbors in 1929. The small Peute Peninsula further east was later purchased. The lease agreement runs for 99 years – i.e. until 2028.
In the meantime, freight forwarders have set up storage areas for containers on the areas at the Saale and Moldau ports. "The options for using these port areas are limited because there is no access for seagoing vessels," says Jan Bukovský, spokesman for the Czech Waterways Directorate (RVC), which is responsible for managing the areas in Hamburg. "That's why the loading and unloading of barges is not very important here at the moment."
Nevertheless, Hamburg remains the most important overseas port for foreign trade in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as Vladimír Dobo? knows, who looks after Czech and Slovakian customers as the Port of Hamburg representative in Prague. The only difference is that today, transport is by container – after all, to the extent of almost half a million 20-foot standard containers (TEU) per year. But 95 percent of them would be transported by rail and 5 percent by truck - there is nothing left for inland shipping.
If you stand on the Saalehafen pier and look north, you can see the future: construction cranes and shells make it clear how Hafencity is growing and how long ago it was about to jump over the Elbe. "The areas on the Dresdener and Hallesches Ufer along the Saalehafen are part of the functional urban planning of Grasbrook," says Ullrich Kerz from the Hamburg Port Authority. After the Czech lease expires, they are to be developed as new commercial locations with a connection to the port by Hafencity Hamburg GmbH.
Hamburg and Prague have been in negotiations for a long time about how to proceed with the areas. The conversations were interrupted again and again. "Negotiations are currently being held with the city of Hamburg about an area exchange," says Bukovský from the Waterways Directorate in Prague.
The Czech Republic would like to return the Saale and Vltava ports to the city and instead lease an area of roughly the same size in the port area for seagoing vessels. "Czech companies are very interested in this, which is being promoted by the current geopolitical situation," he says.
People in Hamburg are open to that. "The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg's offer to provide the Czech Republic with adequate replacement rental space beyond 2028 remains unchanged," says Kerz. According to reports, an area in Kuhwerder Hafen between the Blohm Voss docks and the Steinwerder cruise terminal is under discussion.
The aim of the Czech Republic is to obtain a lease for as long a period as possible, says Bukovský - and the quid pro quo: "In return, the area around the Saalehafen and Moldauhafen would be free for urban development projects." Otherwise, there is also an option to extend the lease Space – but probably nobody wants that.
