The history of Meyers Park is closely related to walking sticks. This does not necessarily have to do with a hike through the Harburg Forest Park, but rather with its namesake, Heinrich Christian Meyer.
image003 image005 image001 picture gallery His father of the same name once owned a factory for sticks, cane chairs and rattan, which made him Hamburg's first industrialist. At that time, the company was one of the best-known and most progressive companies in the city. Meyer had started out modestly. His father, a carpenter who had immigrated to Hamburg, ran a small workshop for walking sticks. And already at the age of eight, Meyer had a special skill in selling his father's goods on the street, so that he soon got the nickname "Stockmeyer" from the townspeople. In 1816, at the age of 19, he finally founded his own workshop and, within two decades, turned a tiny business into a large and modern factory by the standards of the time, the company "H. C. Meyer Jr.”. He was also interested in improving the economic structure of Hamburg and so he was involved, for example, in developing the Grasbrook and Hammerbrook, two large fallow areas outside the actual city fortifications. Furthermore, as founding director of the “Hamburg-Bergedorfer Eisenbahngesellschaft”, he helped to decisively modernize the city’s water supply. After Meyer's death in the mid-19th century, his son Heinrich Christian Meyer took over the entire company and relocated it to Harburg, where the company had already bought large estates from the King of Hanover. Since 1864, today's Meyers Park has also been family-owned. Five years later he had the so-called Villa Meyer built here in the style of Krupp's Villa Hügel. Today this building is used by the Mariahilf Hospital as a reception and administration building. In 1906, Meyer's son had a country house built by the Hamburg architect Paul Schöss in the middle of the park, about 400 meters from his parents' house, today's "Waldhaus". After the Second World War, Meyers Park came into the possession of the city of Hamburg and is now a popular conservation area and local recreation area for the people of Harburg.
Translated by Google •
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