Pauli and the Reeperbahn - these two names are known all over the world and for most people are synonymous with shady characters, immorality, pleasure of every kind and sex. The people of Hamburg and St. Pauli know better, but what is this reputation based on? A tracing of the past by Ortwin Pelc. Pauli's special role as a district and entertainment centre arose from its location metres between Hamburg and Altona.
Trades that were not welcome in the city or took up too much space had to settle here. When Hamburger Berg became a suburb in , it was named "St. Pauli Vorstadt" after its church. From Hamburger Berg there was a magnificent view over the Elbe. The busy tourist traffic attracted travelling showmen, tightrope walkers and jugglers, and the Spielbudenplatz was first mentioned in In , in order to bring some organisation to the growing chaos of wandering merry-go-rounds, Punch and Judy theatres, stalls and tents, the Hamburg City Council set aside plots of land for permanent buildings.
Well-funded showmen could now move into these permanent buildings and offer their shows regardless of the weather. Quite different businesses also discovered that money could be made in St. Pauli with unusual things. In , fishmonger Gottfried Carl Hagenbeck put seals in wooden tubs on display in Lincolnstrasse.
They aroused so much public interest that he expanded his business to include a brisk trade in live animals. His son Carl joined the business, expanding it to include animals from overseas such as elephants, giraffes and lions, and in moved it to Neuer Pferdemarkt, where he also ran a zoo and organised ethnological shows.
When he ran out of space there, Hagenbeck built today's zoo in the Prussian town of Stellingen in In , Ernst Renz opened his "Olympic Circus" and had a permanent circus building built on Circusweg, which became the model for circus buildings throughout Europe. Increasing competition and the growing demands of the public meant that new forms of entertainment had to be created and the changing tastes of the time had to be taken into account.
