Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years 1830-1910

Abstract

In 1892 Hamburg was hit by one of the greatest urban disasters of the 19th century - in a cholera epidemic of little more than six weeks, nearly 10,000 people died and many more suffered the appalling symptoms of this terrible and degrading disease. No other city in western Europe was seriously affected. Hamburg became the focus of hostile attention from outraged and horrified international opinion. This book uses the mass of detailed source material generated by the epidemic to give a graphic portrayal of a great European city in the grip of a major social and political crisis. It also asks why Hamburg was alone in suffering an epidemic of these proportions in 1892. The search for an answer leads back into the 19th century, into the territory of environmental pollution, social inequality, municipal administration, and the development of medical science in central Europe. Richard Evans has also been awarded the William H. Welch medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine. Students of nineteenth-century German and European politics and society, of medicine, sociology, and environmental studies should be interested by this book.