The making of a socialist port: The Czechoslovak port in Hamburg in the 1940s and 1950s

The Czechoslovak port in Hamburg

The emergence of the Czechoslovak port zone in Hamburg was in itself somewhat unexpected. By the end of the First World War, the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic negotiated successfully at the Paris Peace Conference regarding its borders and population. In addition, the Treaty of Versailles guaranteed Czechoslovakia – as a landlocked country on the side of the victors of World War I – the lease of an area inside the free port of Hamburg (and an area inside that of Stettin) for the purpose of ‘the direct transit of goods coming from or going to that State’. ⁵

It took 10 years of negotiations with German representatives until finally, in 1929, the Czechoslovak Republic signed a contract with the city of Hamburg for the lease of an area in the port of Hamburg for 99 years. The two contracting parties eventually settled on two basins suitable for inland vessels (at the Saalehafen and the adjacent Moldauhafen) transporting goods up and down the River Elbe between Hamburg and Czechoslovakia. In addition to the lease of these two territories, the Czechoslovak Republic purchased another plot of land at the Peuteufer, just outside the free port, which was to house the administrative building as well as the service station for the inland vessels. ⁶

All in all, the Czechoslovak port in Hamburg amounted to about 42,000 m² – a small pocket in the vast realms of the Hamburg port as a whole. Equipped with administration buildings and storage facilities, with cranes and access to the port railway system, and with plenty of space for the river barges to moor alongside the quay, the port was ready to handle goods to and from Czechoslovakia in all shapes and sizes: both general and bulk cargo was loaded and unloaded here and transferred from and to ocean cargo vessels or freight trains. In anticipation of a thriving economic exchange, the Czechoslovak Elbe Shipping Stock Company (Československá plavební akciová společnost Labská, ČPSL) was founded in a joint venture by the state and several banks as early as 1922. This company became the main Czechoslovak operator of cargo transportation along the Elbe, and in due course became the operator of the port zone in Hamburg as well. ⁷

Despite stiff competition from ports on the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, by the 1930s, Hamburg had established itself as the most important port for Czechoslovak trade, connecting Czechoslovakia via the Vltava and Elbe rivers with the North Sea and onwards to global markets. However, political changes soon complicated matters. The worldwide economic crisis strongly affected the general turnover of the port of Hamburg, and the subsequent rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany raised fears about their unilateral termination of international contracts – as eventually happened to the international agreement on the internationalization of the major waterways through German territory (including the Elbe) in 1936. ⁸ Despite these intensifying signs of crisis, in 1936, the amount of goods transiting through Hamburg to and from Czechoslovakia reached an impressive 914,541 tons, or 10 per cent of all cargo transported by inland water transportation to or from Hamburg. ⁹ This was surpassed in 1938 when the equivalent figure exceeded 920,000 tons, about 9.2% of the total. ¹⁰

That same year also proved to be the beginning of the end of Czechoslovak independence. Adolf Hitler’s success with the Munich Accord in late September 1938, the Anschluss of the Sudetenland to the German Reich, and the subsequent proclamation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 meant the dissolution of Czechoslovakia as an independent state. However, this affected the port zone more nominally than in practice: the German protector in Prague took over its management, secured the payment of the annual lease to Hamburg and continued operations throughout most of the war. ¹¹

In 1945, the port zone was returned to the Czechoslovak Republic. But the war had left the city of Hamburg and its port largely destroyed. Most of the sheds and warehouses, the cranes and the railways were destroyed, and 3,000 sunken vessels blocked the port basins and the River Elbe. ¹² The Czechoslovak port zone was no exception. With its only shed destroyed and the basins unnavigable, the main task was reconstruction. Equally problematic for Czechoslovak transportation was the blockage of the Elbe with wrecks and destroyed bridges. ¹³

Despite this dire situation, the Czechoslovak representatives quickly decided to retain and revive the port zone, which initially profited from its status as foreign. The British occupation forces had taken over control of Hamburg and much of the northwest of Germany, and while they had a strong interest in the revival of the port of Hamburg as the major point for delivering supplies to troops and a starving local population, they had little reason to favour German companies. The new British rule offered the Czechoslovak port zone favourable port conditions. In fact, not only the British but also Hamburg merchants and logistics companies welcomed Czechoslovak engagement at the port, hoping for a quick rebuilding of pre-war business relations with respect to both sea connections and the hinterland along the Elbe at a time when many former trading partners were shying away from doing business with German enterprises. ¹⁴

This positive treatment of Czechoslovak ventures by port officials soon changed, however. With growing tensions between what would soon become the two opposing blocs in the Cold War, relations at the port of Hamburg became strained. The Communist Party’s gains in Czechoslovakia, with its notable 37.9% win in the 1946 elections and the Communist coup in February 1948, left the Czechoslovak port zone in a complicated political situation and eventually on the ‘wrong’ side of the Iron Curtain. Czechoslovak government officials and company representatives attempted to adapt the port zone in Hamburg to socialist principles. At the same time, British occupation forces, the Hamburg port authority and not least the dock workers and bargemen on the ground also played a role in shaping the ‘new normal’ of this socialist organization.

The primacy of politics: The justification for the Czechoslovak port zone

The first reason for the Czechoslovak port zone’s existence was economic in nature. Via the Elbe, Hamburg offered the best connection to any seaport for Czechoslovak cargo, while transportation costs remained relatively low. These advantages were mirrored in the continuous use of Hamburg as a transport hub, with cargo via the Elbe rising from nil in 1945 to about 350,000 tons in 1949, 385,000 tons in 1952 and improving still until a first peak was reached in 1956. ¹⁵ And while the numbers slumped again in the 1960s, the economic relevance of transit through Hamburg was still highlighted in the 1980s, as an article in the German press stressed: ‘With 1.8 million tons, the CSSR is the most important transit customer at the port.’ ¹⁶ In purely economic terms, then, the Communist coup was not a major break with the past for the operation of the port zone. Rather, we can observe a continuous development from the early post-war years until the late 1950s.

The first notable change toward a socialist system was therefore a restructuring of the shipping company. In January 1949, the shipping company was nationalized under its new name ‘Československá plavba labská, národní podnik’ [Czechoslovak Elbe Shipping, National Company, ČSPL]. As a state-owned enterprise, it was placed under the direction of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Transport and the watchful eye of the Foreign Ministry. The new company statutes obliged it to cater to the ‘transportation needs of the state’, which were to be fulfilled ‘in the most profitable way’. ¹⁷

The ‘most profitable way’ of representing the transportation interests, however, was not necessarily the ‘most socialist way’, which put state officials and port representatives in a bind. Officially, the foreign trade of socialist countries was to be subordinated under the ‘primacy of politics’, while economic concerns were to play only a secondary role. ¹⁸ That meant both subordination under the centrally planned economy, and a reorientation of economic relations to socialist ‘brother states’. Compliance to these demands was inherently difficult in the case of the Czechoslovak port in Hamburg. Early on, a central issue of dispute was the incongruity of political ideology and economic considerations, questioning the leading role of Hamburg for Czechoslovak trade from a political perspective. In this regard, Communist officials considered not only the Polish ports as apt replacements, but also the – generally much smaller – East German ports. Much hope was invested especially in the plans by the GDR government to build a veritable seaport in Rostock or Wismar. ¹⁹ A suitable replacement for Hamburg in the East, however, was never in sight. The ports in question – all situated on the Baltic Sea – could not offer in any foreseeable future the infrastructure or the regular shipping lines provided by Hamburg, with its direct access to the Atlantic Ocean and worldwide networks.

By 1953, the question whether to continue shipment via Hamburg remained unresolved. The Czechoslovak state administration still argued vehemently for keeping the port in Hamburg despite ideological misgivings. The argument was made in purely economic terms, as the Polish ports (and even more so the East German ones) were described as badly equipped for Czechoslovak trade. A report explained that Szczecin and other Polish ports offered:

practically only connections to Scandinavia, the English ports of London and Hull and irregular connections in longer intervals to the Near East, some countries in South America, with India and Pakistan, while Czechoslovak foreign trade also imports and exports cargo to countries in the Middle East, to all countries of Africa, Central America, Australia and adjacent islands, and the Far East, which Polish ships do not cater to, while from Hamburg there is a favourable connection . . . ²⁰

The benefits of Hamburg were enhanced by the low cost of transporting cargo via the Elbe river. Finally, Hamburg also offered more favourable financial terms than those the Czechoslovak shipping company was offered by Poland: the foreign currency fee of overseas transport on Polish ships was sometimes higher than the entire overseas transportation costs via Hamburg. This report concluded more broadly that ‘the possibilities of overseas transport from popular democratic seaports are absolutely insufficient for Czechoslovak foreign trade’. And yet, the report asserted, with an air of the political correctness of its time, that ‘under these circumstances, it often is a difficult choice’ between Hamburg and its eastern competitors. ²¹

By the mid-1950s, it seems, the importance of the ideological aspect had increased, as a second reorganization of the company had introduced a clearly ideological realignment directly into the statutes. With the merging of the two state-owned shipping companies for the Elbe and the Oder rivers into the ‘Czechoslovak Elbe and Oder Navigation National Corporation’ [Československá plavba labsko-oderská, národní podnik, or ČSPLO], ²² the new statutes now obliged the company to adhere to the state-planned economy, and also added the position of a deputy to the director for political concerns, and thus ensured a tighter alignment of the company to ideological guidelines. ²³

This new alignment to ideological demands, however, did not lessen the use of Hamburg as a transit hub. On the contrary, we can observe a steady increase in Czechoslovak transit through Hamburg to a new peak in 1956. What did change was the argument for the preservation of this valuable transport route, which had happened to end up on the other side of the ‘Iron Curtain’. A secret report from 1955 by the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry no less attempted to square the circle by propagating an accordance of Czechoslovak political and economic interests in Hamburg. Entitled ‘The Problem of Czechoslovak Transportation in Hamburg’, ²⁴ the document outlined the underlying discrepancy between the claim and reality within the first couple of pages: Hamburg was praised for its location and easy access, as ‘Hamburg is, from an economic point of view, the most profitable port of all’ (p.2). Still, the argument went, it ‘would not be right to neglect already existing possibilities in the people’s democracies’ (p.2). It was only logical to reduce the dependence on Hamburg, especially by increasing transportation via the ports on the Baltic Sea. Some pages later, however, this ideological argument was implicitly turned around, with the author pointing to the high percentage of East German and Czechoslovak cargo; according to his calculations, the two countries together accounted for almost 60 per cent of the entire cargo transited through Hamburg (p.12). On the basis of these data, the author suggested Hamburg depended on Eastern Europe rather than the other way round, which was then turned from an economic argument into an ideological one: the Americans, who used the port of Hamburg for the shipment of military equipment for their troops stationed in Germany, would be pleased if the Eastern European countries withdrew from Hamburg, as it would open up more port capacity for them to exploit. The report uses this argument to conclude that this ‘is the reason why it is necessary to use our position in Hamburg to its full capacity’ (p.12). With this twist, the required ‘primacy of politics’ over economics was restored, and the ideologically accepted use of the port of Hamburg was secured, at least on paper. With this political legitimization of its economic success, the Czechoslovak port zone in Hamburg was one step closer to being integrated into the logic of the socialist system.

The making of socialist workers

While, as we have just seen, the economic importance of Hamburg as a transport hub was widely acknowledged, the question of how to organize a socialist port – and more so in a capitalist environment – remained unanswered. One of the main issues for both the leadership of the company ČSPL/ČSPLO and state officials (representatives of the ministries and the State Security StB) was the suitability of the workers and administrative personnel stationed at the branch in Hamburg, as well as the crews on the barges travelling up and down the Elbe. After 1948, this issue became a problem on various levels as not only vocational training, but also political loyalty was expected from all those working at the port, especially as a territory exposed to the West.

The crew was quite diverse. In December 1948, a total of 52 permanent employees were listed for the Hamburg branch, 37 of them administrative personnel (from a procurator to clerks, secretaries, stenographers or warehouse masters) and 15 responsible for the handling of cargo at the port, such as boat operators, dockers, quay workers and crane operators. Twelve employees were German. ²⁵ Additionally, more than 100 German dock workers were contracted on a non-permanent basis. ²⁶ Some employees had been hired immediately after the war, while others had been employed since the interwar years. ²⁷ All these ‘pre-Februarists’ were eyed sceptically after the February coup, and soon after the nationalization of the company in 1949, the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior administered an inspection of their political loyalty. ²⁸ This examination yielded rather devastating results: many workers were accused of ‘not knowing what is happening in Czechoslovakia’ and of having ‘a relationship with [their homeland] like countrymen living far away, rather than like Czechoslovak employees of our company abroad’. ²⁹ A veritable cadre crisis with a lack of politically conscious workers was diagnosed. ³⁰ Soon, non-communist workers were to be exchanged for the more class-conscious, which was seen as especially significant for workers with exposure to the West. This new hiring procedure went hand in hand with new political training courses that both the newly recruited and the more seasoned employees were to attend. All of this consumed precious time. This political training took several weeks or even months and had to be completed by employees before they took up a new position in Hamburg. ³¹

The crisis caused by a lack of suitable workers was enhanced when, early on, the British occupation forces noted the Czechoslovak practice of exchanging workers on the basis of their political convictions. ³² To undermine this practice, in 1949 the British administration informed the relevant authorities in Czechoslovakia that henceforth Czechoslovak citizens would need a special permit to enter the British zone. ³³ This method proved effective in keeping newly hired Czechoslovak workers from starting their jobs in Hamburg. In 1951, the British authorities declined more than 60 permit applications by ČSPL employees, while in 1953 some 234 permit applications had piled up without being processed. ³⁴

The resulting shortage of workers affected the port operations, both in the administration and the manual work at the docks and depots. The ensuing lack of available workers on the Elbe and in Hamburg had to be compensated, and the company soon relented by hiring German workers. This new policy was highly unorthodox in the quest to build a socialist port; as a result, political screening was much less rigorous for German workers than for those from Czechoslovakia. Allegiance to the Communist Party was not required, nor was membership of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) an obstacle. Just a couple of years after the war, German workers were only vetted for possible former membership of the National Socialist paramilitary, the SS, but even that criterion, as a report stressed in 1951, was easily circumvented. ³⁵ This led to the curious circumstance that a German worker who had been a member of the National Socialist Party was more easily employed at the Czechoslovak shipping company than a Czech with affiliations to the Communist Party (due to British reluctance), or a Czech without either affiliation (due to the new socialist cadre policy).

Nonetheless, this new hiring procedure proved effective: in the 1950s, the Czechoslovak port employed 126 Germans compared to 26 Czechs, ³⁶ the number rising to over 200 West German workers in 1962. ³⁷ However, this hiring process led to further unintended consequences. Firstly, German workers received higher pay than Czech workers, which by the 1980s amounted to eight to 10 times the wages their Czech co-workers received, and led to tensions between the workers. ³⁸ Other issues involved the political convictions of the German workers. In the early years, the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry suspected that many German employees were ‘reactionaries’, and actively tried to increase the number of fellow communists, ³⁹ even considering recommendations by the German Communist Party (KPD) for workers suitable both professionally and politically. ⁴⁰ But after the KPD was banned in 1956, its members became a liability: with active members of a banned political party on the Czechoslovak premises, and more who were suspected of being undercover agents for the German intelligence service posing as members of the Communist Party, the Czechoslovak State Security – instead of embracing the comrades as proof of the superiority of the socialist system – were increasingly worried about attracting the attention of Western secret services and of being especially vulnerable to espionage and sabotage. ⁴¹

Finally, by the mid-1950s, the tense situation relaxed somewhat. The British blockade opened up, and newly vetted employees arrived in Hamburg, including a new director for the Hamburg branch, mostly replacing the old directorate. ⁴² By the mid-1950s, then, the company could finally present a management team with a largely socialist orientation.

The challenges of a socialist space

In addition to the nationalization of the company and the hiring of new workers in order to build a socialist port, the location itself was under scrutiny. Ports are by their very nature open spaces with movement of goods, people and vehicles. The Czechoslovak port zone in Hamburg was no exception. From the perspective of Czechoslovak officials and especially the secret police, this must have been a nightmare scenario in terms of control and surveillance, but possibly also an unexpected opportunity for socialist representation. In the eyes of those involved, the port zone became both a socialist outpost and a socialist showcase in the West, as will be discussed below.

The geopolitical changes in 1948 and the heightening of the Cold War prompted Czechoslovak authorities to see the Czechoslovak port zone as a socialist outpost in the West. As such, the port was perceived to be of great interest to the secret services of Western powers such as Britain, the USA and West Germany. Suspected scenarios included infiltration by spies or agitators, foreign secret services recruiting informants among the workers, and outside assistance for people seeking to abandon the company and leave the country for good. ⁴³ Reports by the State Security mention plenty of cases. Anybody could be recruited by foreign secret services or by the West German police: the port workers and bargemen, the secretary of the port office and West German business partners were contacted by Western authorities to obtain information about the Czechoslovak port zone. Even taverns or kiosks close to the vicinity of the port were suspected of being infiltrated by foreign intelligence services. In an extensive operation in 1962, the State Security covered the dealings of a nearby tobacconist popular with Czech bargemen. This tobacconist was suspected of establishing contacts with persons in West Germany for Czechoslovak boatmen, and ‘presumably’ of informing the West German secret service. ⁴⁴ Similar reports reveal that a broad range of people with whom sailors and workers came into contact were considered possible informants in a position to extract relevant information. ⁴⁵ From the StB’s perspective, the enemy was lurking everywhere.

In addition to these external enemies, the State Security observed Czechoslovak employees too. The worst crime that could be committed by an employee at the port zone in Hamburg was defection to the West. Early on, Czechoslovak officials dreaded the area as a potential ‘loophole to the West’. Despite increased preventive measures – examination of the political stance of those workers dispatched to Hamburg, increasing the number of informants of the State Security in Hamburg, or restricting family members’ access to the city – the State Security’s defection statistics noted a high number of incidents in the 1950s and again in the early 1980s. ⁴⁶ Based on a multitude of these reports, the State Security painted a picture of a threatened socialist exclave on enemy territory. Everybody could be an informant, a spy or even a double agent. ⁴⁷ Everyone was a potential defector. This scenario demanded even tighter control. In 1954, the ‘V. Administration’ was founded as a division of the Ministry of the Interior in order to control Czech nationals travelling to the capitalist West, and especially to observe employees of the ČSPLO. ⁴⁸

Despite these threatening scenarios, the exposure to the West was soon also considered an opportunity. As mentioned in several sources, the port zone was to pose as a showcase of socialism to the West, proving the superiority of socialism to the world. ⁴⁹ Only a few years after the war, when Hamburg was still suffering from a lack of basics such as living space or food, socialist superiority could already be represented by proper appearance and correct behaviour on the part of workers and employees. State Security reports document that at least some of the workers agreed with these claims of superiority, but also that these expectations were disappointed, at least until the mid-1950s. As one of the local workers noted in a report to the State Security in 1954: ‘The boatmen from Czechoslovakia go to work at the depot or on their boats badly dressed. [Their clothes] are often dirty and torn. This does not help our propaganda at all.’ In this self-critical manner, he continued to reflect that ‘at our [Czechoslovak] facility, which is a representative of socialism, the care for the worker should be better than at other facilities’. ⁵⁰ He was not the only one to criticize the local conditions from an ideological standpoint. In the early 1950s, it was pointed out that the Czechoslovak territory in Hamburg did not conform to the high standards of a socialist operation regarding care for the workers, and that from a political point of view, the port was ‘not worthy of representing a socialist state in a capitalist country’. ⁵¹ Confronted with this failure to represent socialism, the company planned a visual make-over. The same year, 1954, it distributed uniforms for all bargemen, port workers and employees, which were intended – as stated in the disciplinary code – to ‘strengthen the feeling of pride in being an employee of the Czechoslovak shipping company, standing in the first rows of the builders of a socialist society’. ⁵²

However, a new look was not the only change. Political, cultural and not least sanitary provisions were also to be provided for all employees at the Czechoslovak port zone, as they:

work under extremely difficult political and moral conditions. They are exposed to constant influence from their surroundings, where on the one hand hostile, fascist, revanchist elements as well as emigrants are active, and on the other hand many temptations are waiting in this international port city. ⁵³

Eventually, a decision was made to improve the social and cultural care of workers and boatmen alike by creating a recreational area at the port for leisure, hygiene and education. This social space was to be situated on a boat, and when this ‘culture boat’ (kulturní loď) was built in 1952, it comprised showers and lavatories as well as guest rooms; it also had a canteen, a library, film screening equipment and space for political and educational schooling. ⁵⁴ This was the first space for workers, bargemen and administrative personnel at the Czechoslovak port zone to gather, relax or eat, and it became highly popular. Especially the canteen, with its Czech cuisine and Pilsner Urquell at Czech prices, was widely frequented, and motivated the workers to spend their breaks and evenings at the Czechoslovak port, forgoing the canteens and taverns in Hamburg proper, which were often beyond their financial means and were seen by the State Security as a potential threat to the socialist character. ⁵⁵

The ‘culture boat’ thus fulfilled its purpose on multiple levels. It provided an improvement in working conditions, it largely kept Czechoslovak workers away from capitalist temptations, and it offered education for the workers. But workers also used it for their own purposes; for example, they held meetings on the boat criticizing the company management or fighting for higher wages. ⁵⁶ And while the ‘culture boat’ was invented to actually keep the workers away from Western influences, its growing popularity among all workers at the port not only encouraged Czech and German workers to mingle in the Czechoslovak port zone, but somewhat paradoxically helped the Czechoslovak port zone gain some fame and, in time, a positive image.

Building and resisting the socialist project from below

These examples show the immense interest on the part of governmental institutions such as ministries, the State Security, and the management of the nationalized company in building a specifically socialist port zone in Hamburg and in protecting it as such and the lengths they went to do so. These processes were clearly based on top-down measures, although due to its specific location, the transformation of the Czechoslovak port zone into a socialist entity was complicated by the involvement and influence of foreign powers, above all the British occupation forces. However, besides these deliberate attempts to interfere in the political metamorphosis of the port, the employees themselves found ways to adhere to, circumvent or profit from the newly installed system and its defects. This heterogeneous group – Czechs and Germans, white- and blue-collar workers, Communists and non-Communists, longtime workers and newcomers – interpreted the new rules their own way and tested their flexibility.

In order to understand the agency of employees at the port zone in Hamburg, it is useful to consider the concept of Eigen-Sinn, as a way of highlighting their actions not necessarily only in the binary logic of support or opposition to the new regime, but also beyond these categories for other reasons. As Thomas Lindenberger explains, this concept is based on the assumption that no rule is quite as effective as rulers imagine it to be. Eigen-Sinn, then, ‘stands for the frictional losses [. . .] intrinsic to the “operation” of any form of domination’. In fact, the appropriation of social relations by citizens, workers and employees is not only inherent to any political system, but also necessary for its preservation. ⁵⁷

Frictions and tensions occurred frequently in the Czechoslovak port zone of Hamburg, with its conflicting impact by two competing political and economic systems. This left room for appropriation, interpretation and negotiation by those on the ground. Most frequently, these frictions and tensions between East and West at the port zone were exploited in the area of theft, smuggling and black marketeering. A report gathered by the Czechoslovak secret police from 1951 came to the devastating conclusion that ‘all employees of the branch in Hamburg enrich themselves at the expense of the company, or they enlist employees on the ships in order to transport goods from Czechoslovakia to Hamburg’. ⁵⁸ Another report confirmed this statement: ‘It is known to us that among the bargemen of the company there is not one person who has not enriched himself at the expense of ČPSL when the opportunity arose.’ ⁵⁹ Reports by the State Security described quite elaborate schemes, such as one involving employees of the shipping company, Czechoslovak emigrants at a refugee camp in Hamburg, and a German restaurant owner located in close proximity to the port as an accomplice. While these phenomena already existed in the early post-war years and were indeed partially recognized as necessary to ensure the operating of the port in the form of bribes paid to the British occupation forces, this perspective changed when the company was nationalized in 1949: thenceforth, theft, smuggling and black marketeering were seen as part of a grander scheme to harm a socialist company and the national economy itself. ⁶⁰ In contrast, sources suggest that port workers and boat crews generally interpreted the diverting of cargo rather as one of the perks of the job. ‘Sampling’ cargo such as sugar, wine or shoes for personal use or small-scale peddling was common and not considered a criminal act. ⁶¹

While theft and smuggling were motivated mainly by access and opportunity, other activities were rather directed at negotiating the new rules or using them for one’s own purposes. Only a couple of weeks after the nationalization of the ČSPL in January 1949, an anonymous letter by ‘employees of the Czechoslovak Elbe shipping in Hamburg’ was sent to Antonín Zápotocký, the Czechoslovak prime minister. Formally, it adhered to the new rules, greeting the prime minister as ‘comrade’, promising him they would surpass the norms of the five-year plan, and ending with the Communist greeting ‘čest práci’. ⁶² The main body of the letter, however, formulated clear demands: they sought the removal of the current head of the Hamburg branch, argued that long-serving workers should be given preference over young and inexperienced ones, and even broached the issue of national tensions when they protested against co-workers whom they recognized as Sudeten Germans who had allegedly rooted for the völkisch politician Konrad Henlein and therefore for the Anschluss of the Sudetenland to the German Reich. This letter of complaint left a paper trail through the ranks of Czechoslovak bureaucracy. The Secret Service and the Foreign Ministry became involved, and the company headquarters had to respond to all the allegations. Overall, the letter was successful. Only a month later, the accused head of the Hamburg branch had left his position, against the stated interests of the headquarters in Prague. ⁶³ In this case, port workers used the new political language to get rid of their boss for what seems to have been internal work-related issues, while the company management tried to hold on to him for very pragmatic reasons – he demonstrated a good relationship with the British controllers of the Hamburg port. The Foreign Ministry again sided with the workers for political reasons.

Similar attempts to exert influence ‘from below’ were made by German Communist employees, who in a letter in 1949 decried the low number of Communists among the German workers; in their eyes, the company was not communist enough. ⁶⁴ These examples show a certain leeway for all those involved regardless of their place in the hierarchy if they knew how to play to the new tune.

Conclusion

What makes a port socialist? Czechoslovak officials struggled during the 1940s and 1950s to define and implement their understanding of a socialist port in Hamburg. The specifics of the port zone brought their own obstacles. The fact that the port was an open space in the West and that its borders were constantly crossed by people, goods and information made it virtually impossible to keep tight control. At the same time, the port received heightened attention, both from Czechoslovak officials and from Hamburg port authorities (both German and British).

Czechoslovak representatives focused on four areas to create a socialist port. The nationalization of the Elbe shipping company in early 1949 was only the first and the most obvious of them. At the core of this struggle for a socialist port lay the general tension between the ideological demand for the prevalence of politics and the simultaneous dependence on economic prosperity. ‘New socialist men’ were to guide and manage the port, while they themselves were to be protected from Western influence. Finally, the port was equipped and prepped both as a socialist outpost and a socialist showcase. But an examination of the realization shows many frictions and tensions that were not part of the original blueprints. The state-controlled top-down approach was subverted not only by British military officials or by foreign secret services, but also by the employees themselves, who utilized the new norms for their own interests, which may or may not have been aligned with those of the company or the state.

It took years to make a socialist port zone in Hamburg, and the underlying tensions would never be resolved. Resisting or tolerating these inherent tensions was evidently worth the effort. Hamburg held its role as the gate to the world for Czechoslovak goods throughout the twentieth century. With the backing and courtship of the city government of Hamburg, Czechoslovak transit along the Elbe remained strong throughout the Cold War. ⁶⁵