Living in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg

Wilhelmsburg lies in the middle of the Elbe, between the Norderelbe and the Süderelbe, and belongs to Bezirk Hamburg-Mitte, having been transferred out of Bezirk Harburg in 2008. It is the largest Stadtteil in Hamburg by area, some 35 square kilometres, with around 54,000 people spread very unevenly across it. Living here means living on an island, and that is not a figure of speech: everything you do north of the river involves a bridge or a tunnel.

What it is

Several places that never grew into one. The main island was made in the eighteenth century by diking together smaller islands, among them Stillhorn, Georgswerder and Moorwerder, and the Stadtteil has no historic centre. The Reiherstiegviertel in the north-west, built from 1880 as a workers' and industrial quarter beside the port, is the closest thing to an urban core: dense streets around Vogelhüttendeich, brick tenements, and the old flak bunker on Neuhöfer Straße converted into an energy plant with a viewing platform. West of it, Neuhof and the Hohe Schaar are pure port and industry. Georgswerder in the north-east, Kirchdorf and Stillhorn in the south and Moorwerder in the far south-east are still half rural, with dikes, allotments and small houses, interrupted by 1970s housing estates around the S-Bahn station and at Kirchdorf-Süd. Down the middle run the railway and the Wilhelmsburger Reichsstraße, which for decades cut the island in two; the road was shifted 400 metres east against the railway during the building and garden exhibitions of 2013, and the land it freed became the Wilhelmsburger Inselpark and the new quarters around the new town hall district.

Who lives here

The most mixed population in Hamburg. Around 35 percent of residents hold a foreign passport against roughly 21 percent citywide, one in five residents is under 18, unemployment runs half again above the city rate and the share of people on basic benefits is nearly double it. Around a third of the flats belong to the city housing company. In practice: Turkish, Kurdish, Balkan, African and Eastern European families settled over decades, port and logistics workers, students who came for the rent, artists and musicians who came for the space, and a slow trickle of newcomers priced out of the north bank. The island has an unusually strong tradition of neighbourhood organising, partly because it has had to argue for itself for a century.

What it's like during the day

Depends entirely on where you stand. The Reiherstiegviertel feels like an inner-city neighbourhood: shops, cafes, a mosque and a church on the same street, children everywhere. Around the S-Bahn station it is estates, a bus interchange and the through roads. Ten minutes further south or east you are on a dike with fields on one side and a container terminal on the horizon. The Inselpark is a large, genuinely good park with sports facilities; the old landfill at Georgswerder has been capped and turned into a hill with a path around it and a view over the whole port. The one constant is lorries: the port surrounds the island and heavy goods traffic is part of the soundtrack.

What it's like in the evening

Quiet, local and dark in places. Bars and restaurants cluster in the Reiherstiegviertel and around the station; the rest of the island is residential or empty after work. There is a real music and studio scene, and the Inselpark venues bring events, but nobody comes to Wilhelmsburg for a night out. Coming home late means the S-Bahn or a night bus, and the walk from the station across open ground is not to everyone's taste alone.

Getting around

One railway line, and everything else depends on it. The Harburg S-Bahn crosses the island with stations at Wilhelmsburg and, at the northern tip, Veddel; it is the busiest branch of the Hamburg network, and from Wilhelmsburg it is four stops north to the Hauptbahnhof and one stop south to Harburg. There is no U-Bahn on the island. Buses run as feeders to the two stations rather than as a network of their own, so a flat that is fifteen minutes by bus from the S-Bahn is genuinely far from the city. By road, the Wilhelmsburger Reichsstraße carries the Bundesstraße 75 north over the Elbbrücken and south to Harburg, the A1 crosses the eastern side, the Köhlbrandbrücke leads west to the port and the A7, and the Kattwykbrücke crosses the Süderelbe in the south-west. The old St. Pauli Elbtunnel, which surfaces at Steinwerder north of the island, now carries only pedestrians and cyclists. Cycling is flat and Wilhelmsburg is one of the better places in Hamburg for it, with signed routes to Harburg and the city and a leisure circuit called the Loop, parts of it built as bicycle streets.

Eating and shopping

Cheap, varied and genuinely international. Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, African, Portuguese and Balkan grocers, bakeries and butchers along Vogelhüttendeich, Veringstraße and Georg-Wilhelm-Straße, supermarkets and discounters near the station, and vegetable prices that are among the lowest in the city. Restaurants are family places rather than destinations, and better value for it. For anything the island does not have, Harburg is one S-Bahn stop south and the Hauptbahnhof four stops north.

When NOT to pick it

If you need to be somewhere north of the Elbe at short notice, or if the address you are offered is not near the S-Bahn. The island effect is real: one rail line, a handful of road crossings, and when any of them is blocked the whole island feels it. Wilhelmsburg has the weakest social statistics of any Stadtteil covered here, the estates around Kirchdorf-Süd have a difficult reputation, and lorry traffic, port noise and industry are close to the housing in the west. The distances inside the Stadtteil are large enough that Wilhelmsburg is not one housing market but three or four. Against that, rents are the lowest you will find this close to the centre: expect to pay clearly less than in Altona-Nord or Barmbek and a fraction of Eppendorf.

It is the right choice if you want space and a low rent within twenty minutes of the Hauptbahnhof, you like a mixed, unpretentious neighbourhood and you will take the island as it is; the wrong one if you want an easy walk to the centre, a smart address, or a bus network you can rely on late at night. Look at the Reiherstiegviertel first, then the streets near the S-Bahn station; if you want the same rents on the mainland, look south to Harburg and Heimfeld, and if you want the island feel with fewer people, look north to Veddel.