Moorwerder is part of the Elbe island of Wilhelmsburg and is now part of the Hamburg district of the same name. The dyked and sparsely populated stretch of land is located on the south-eastern tip of Wilhelmsburg between the North and South Elbe, which divide here. The place name indicates that the settlement was founded on a Werder, i.e. on a river island in the wet "moory" area of the Elbe river cleavage.
In contrast to the rest of Wilhelmsburg, which was only incorporated as part of the Greater Hamburg Law in 1937, Moorwerder, together with the other marshlands, had belonged to the Hamburg countryside since 1395. Until 1830 it was subject to the lordship of Billwerder and Ochsenwerder, then to the lordship of the Marschlande. In 1938, when the Hamburg urban area was reorganized in accordance with the Greater Hamburg Act, Moorwerder became part of what was then District 8, from which the district of Harburg emerged in 1951 after the war. In 2008, as part of a district administration reform, Moorwerder was merged with Wilhelmsburg into the Hamburg-Mitte district. Until the storm surge of 1962, Moorwerder was independently dyked, only then was it included in the new Wilhelmsburg ring dyke as part of the construction of the new flood protection system.