Anglo-German Club

Founding

When Sir John Dunlop, the first post-war British Consul General in Hamburg, founded the Anglo-German Club in 1948, his chief aim was to revive the good relations that had formerly existed between the British and the Germans. It was a considerable challenge so soon after the war.

So, as well as recruiting high-ranking members of the British occupation, such as the Regional Commissioner Sir Henry Vaughan Berry who became the club’s first chairman, he sought out German founder members who shared his vision. 
Among these Hamburg personalities, who were often invited to the club by the British, were well-known figures such as Max Brauer, Dr Kurt Sieveking and Dr Paul Nevermann, all of them mayors of Hamburg. The publishers Axel Springer, John Jahr and Ernst Rowohlt were also part of the club from the outset, as were Erik Blumenfeld and the banker Heinrich von Berenberg-Gossler, who ran our club for nearly 30 years. He did so with political impartiality but with dedication and in a manner both locally rooted and cosmopolitan. These are values that are maintained to this day and underscore the particular spirit of our club.

Club life

Its more than 1,000 members make the Anglo-German Club an institution in Hamburg. Our building is open to both men and women, and our member’s guests are also most welcome. We are a club with set rules and an established code of behaviour, rooted in the tradition of English clubs the world over. Or, as a former mayor of Hamburg once put it, it is “the last British colony on the Continent”.

In the long history of our club there have been many special events that we look back on with pleasure even years later.
These include our regular events with speeches by prominent figures from home and abroad who address important economic, political, scientific and cultural issues – Joachim Gauck, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres and Heidi Simonis, to name but a few. When asked which prominent people had been among our guests, our president of many years, Heinrich von Berenberg-Gossler, used to answer with a question of his own: “Who hasn’t?”

In addition, we hold further social events for our members throughout the year. In spring we host a kitchen party or a jazz event. For decades we held a joint garden party with the British Honorary Consul in Hamburg to celebrate the official birthday of the British head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. In late summer we organise our golf competition and a generational evening. Our Advent Dinner, at which a well-known performer always appears, rounds off the year’s events at the club.

Social responsibility

Since the Anglo-German Club was founded shortly after World War II, the furtherance of mutual understanding between the peoples of Germany and the United Kingdom has been paramount. While this topic was of particular importance in the post-war period, it is still close to our hearts today and has recently come to the fore again with Brexit. We thus constantly devote our energies to cultivating and maintaining close and friendly German-British relations.

To this end, scholarships are still regularly awarded to German and British students of both sexes, thus encouraging mutual cultural exchange.

We also regularly support British institutions and events in Hamburg, such as the Anglican Church, British Flair, the Sir Vaughan Berry Prize awarded by Hamburg University, the Hamburg Players, plus choir and school trips to the UK, the HSBA Hockey Trophy, British films at film festivals and much else.

Although the Club is politically impartial, we attach great importance to our members’ shouldering responsibility in society.