Alstervorland

The Alstervorland is the riverside section of the Alsterpark, on the western bank in Hamburg's Harvestehude district. It begins at the Harvestehuder Weg and extends westward from the Krugkoppelbrücke. Impressive buildings line the scene: the villas along Schöne Aussicht and Bellevue, the Atlantic hotel and Martin Haller's Anglo-German Club of 1865.

The ground served as grazing land until the late nineteenth century, when plans for a public park emerged. The 1953 International Garden Show turned them into reality. Private gardens that reached the riverbank made way, some bought back, others expropriated. The garden and landscape architect Gustav Lüttge laid out paths, a pond with a bridge and a northwestern promenade of low walls. Those walls framed raised flower beds and gave exhibition sculptures an open-air stage. The idea was art in the open, with no building and no entrance fee.

Art in the open has stayed on the bank ever since. Some works have changed places, and new ones have arrived. Balkenhol's "Four Men on Buoys" of 1993 and Brandes' "Children Flying Kites" of 1963 stand out among them. Trees from the park's early decades are still going strong. An American sweetgum, a trumpet tree of 1950 and a Caucasian wingnut of 1930 grow by the Fährdamm landing stage. The green continues east into the Alsterufer in Rotherbaum, where the path runs right along the water's edge. Past the water police station and the Germania Rowing Club, it leads back to the Kennedy Bridge in St. Georg.