Hamburg
Hamburg Hamburg | |
|---|---|
       Descending, from top: View of the Binnenalster; Elbphilharmonie; St Catherine's Church; Hafencity; Speicherstadt; Hamburg City Hall; and Port of Hamburg | |
 Flag  Coat of arms | |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Kingdom of Hanover Act 1924 | 20 November 1924 |
| Government | Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy |
• Governor | Alexandra |
| Andre Käutner | |
| Emelie Handmann | |
| Legislature | Parliament |
| Area | |
• Total | 755.22 km2 (291.59 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2019 estimate | 1.841 million |
• Density | 2,437/km2 (6,311.8/sq mi) |
| GDP (nominal) | 2019 estimate |
• Total | $130 billion |
• Per capita | $70,613 |
| HDI |  0.976very high |
| Currency | Pound sterling (GBP) |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (CET) |
| Driving side | right |
Hamburg, officially the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is a self-governing Free Hanseatic City of the United Kingdom. Faced by the North Sea to the north and surrounded by the much larger Hanover on the European mainland, it has a population of over 1.8 million and a total area of 755.22 km2.
As a Free Hanseatic City, Hamburg, while not independent of the United Kingdom, is otherwise a self-governing territory with a wide range of powers and a high degree of autonomy similar to the Crown Dependencies of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Isle of Man. As such, the city's administration is headed by the Lord Mayor, an elected official appointed by the Lieutenant Governor, who represents the monarch as the city's head of state. Its current status came about as a result of extensive negotiations between the British and Hamburg governments in which the United Kingdom, hoping to seek territorial concessions from the defeated Germany, sought to incorporate Hamburg into the United Kingdom, which the latter initially resisted for fear of losing their traditionally independent status. Eventually, in the lead-up to the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War, a compromise was reached and later codified in the May 1919 Agreements in which Hamburg, while it would lose its status as an independent country, would otherwise be recognised as an autonomous self-governing territory not part of the United Kingdom, a status that it retains to this day as one of the two Free Hanseatic Cities alongside Bremen.