Polizeimuseum Hamburg

Police Museum - A museum, called “Polizeimuseum Hamburg” in German, about the history and work of the police in Hamburg , Germany , covering several dark aspects and a few (in)famous high-profile crime cases. It’s pretty well made and of interest not just for locals. > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos What there is to see: Quite a lot actually, more than I had anticipated. Once you’ve passed the security gate , where you have to show ID, you follow the signs to the building that the museum mostly occupies. Inside is the reception desk where you have to buy your ticket, and there’s also a cloakroom and a small café (with a giant teddy bear in police uniform in one corner – at least when I was there). The first exhibition room is about the older history of the Hamburg police force and hence mostly of less interest to the dark tourist more interested in contemporary history. But the displays of e.g. helmets, handcuffs and pistols show how these have developed over the decades. All labels and texts , by the way, are bilingual in German and good translations into English – so foreign visitors are well catered for too. It gets truly dark with the coverage of the “Hamburger Aufstand” (‘ Hamburg Uprising ’), a communist insurrection of October 1923 , in part led by Ernst Thälmann (who was later arrested by the Nazis and murdered at Buchenwald in 1944). In the Uprising police stations were stormed and 17 policemen killed. But it lasted only a day before the Uprising collapsed. Dozens of insurgents and innocent civilian bystanders also lost their lives. More violence followed from the Nazi side, e.g. in July 1932 in the district of Altona, where the SA organized a march through mostly left-wing parts of town.