Hamburger durch die Gnade Gottes flag 90 x 150 cm
Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the seventh-largest city in the European Union. The city is home to over 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (including parts of the neighboring Federal States of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) has more than 4.3 million inhabitants. The port of Hamburg is the third-largest port in Europe (third to Port of Antwerp and Rotterdam), and the eighth largest in the world.
Hamburg's official name is the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (German: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg). It reflects Hamburg's history as a member of the medieval Hanseatic League, as a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, and also to the fact that Hamburg is a city-state and one of the sixteen States of Germany.
Hamburg is a major transportation hub in Northern Germany and is one of the most affluent cities in Europe. It has become a media and industrial center, with plants and facilities belonging to Airbus, Blohm + Voss and Aurubis. The radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk and publishers such as Gruner + Jahr and Spiegel-Verlag are pillars of the important media industry in Hamburg. In total there are more than 120,000 enterprises.
The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, receiving about 7.7 million overnight stays in 2008. Hamburg ranked 23rd in the world for livability in 2009, higher in some alternate rankings and in 2010 the city ranked 10th in the world, and 2nd in Germany after Frankfurt as an innovation nexus in the 2thinknow annual Innovation Cities Index.
Hamburger Sport-Verein is a German multi-sport club based in Hamburg, its largest branch being its football department. The football team is one of the country's oldest, most well known, and best performing clubs, with the unique distinction of having played continuously in top-flight German football since the end of World War I; the team has never been relegated from any top-flight league and is the only team that has always played in the 1. Bundesliga since its foundation in 1963.
In the mid-1970s, HSV began a brilliant run that saw them capture numerous honors. In 1976 they won the DFB-Pokal and followed up the next year with a Cup Winners' Cup. They took their first Bundesliga championship in 1979, fell just two points short behind Bayern Munich in 1980, and then won consecutive championships in 1982 and 1983, led by national star Felix Magath. In 1983 they won the UEFA Champions League with a 1:0 win over Juventus, followed by another German Cup in 1987.
source: Wikipedia