[ The Elbe:Greater Hamburg’s Lifeline ]

Hamburg is situated on two rivers, the Elbe and the Alster. Although
the Inner and Outer Alster from the picturesque heart of the city,
its blood flows through the Elbe, the river that keeps Hamburg’s
leading import and export centre, and the home of numerous banks and
insurance companies specializing in shipping and trade and of
shipping lines, Hamburg is very dependent on the Elbe’s shipping
traffic. The Upper Elbe is an important link between the seeport of
Hamburg and its hinterlnad.
940km of the, 1,165-km River Elbe are navigable for inland waterway
vessels. The Elbe not only opens up the industrial regions around
Dresden, Halle, Leipziq and Magdeburg for Hamburg but also the Czech
Republic as far as Prague and an extensive economic region from the
River Oder in the east to the Rhine and its tributaries in the west
via canals and rivers flowing into the Upper Elbe. This has meant
that Germany’s biggest seaport, Hamburg, is also one of the most
important cargo-handling centres for Inland shipping. In 1996 11,300
Inland-waterway vessels carrying 9.2mt of cargo called in at the Port
of Hamburg. 7.4mt, ie. or four fifths of Hamburg’s Inland waterways
traffic, came via the Upper Elbe. And of this total one third was
accounted for by eastern Germany.
Access to the seaport of Hamburg via the Elbe has always played an
important role for the Czech Republic. 30% of the total cargo
traffic passing the Czech-German border on the River Elbe(1996:
1.7mt) was accounted for by traffic to or from Hamburg.