The Beatles at the Ernst-Merck-Halle, Hamburg, 26 June 1966

The Ernst-Merck-Halle was an exhibition and concert hall at Jungiusstraße, now St. Petersburger Straße, beside Planten un Blomen in Hamburg. On 26 June 1966 the Beatles played two shows there, the last concerts of their German tour. The hall was demolished in 1986 to enlarge the trade fair grounds. The site is now part of the trade fair area, and there is no Beatles marker.

A trade fair hall with bad sound

The Ernst-Merck-Halle opened in December 1950, built on land that had been part of the Dammtor cemeteries. It was an exhibition hall first. For concerts it held about 5,600 people, and it had a poor reputation with audiences: the stage was too high and the sound was bad. Even so, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd and Queen all played there over the years.

Back in Hamburg for one day

The Beatles had not been to Hamburg since the start of 1963, when their club years in the city ended. They came back as the last stop of the Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee, three days of concerts organised with the youth magazine Bravo that had already taken them to Munich and Essen. Their overnight train from Essen reached Ahrensburg station at about 5:30. The band was taken under police escort to the Schlosshotel Tremsbüttel and came out briefly onto the balcony for waiting fans.

The first concert began in the afternoon, around 15:00, and the second at 19:00, with a press conference between them. Each show drew about 5,600 people. Tickets cost between 10 and 25 marks. The Beatles played the same 11-song set as in Munich and Essen.

Helmut Schmidt, then Hamburg's interior senator and later West German chancellor, sat in the audience with his wife Loki. He did not look enthusiastic at the time, but later said he had found the band quite good. Friends from the early Hamburg days also came, among them the photographer Astrid Kirchherr and Bert Kaempfert, who had produced the band's first recordings in the city. A planned trip to St. Pauli was called off for security reasons. Lennon and McCartney went anyway, late at night and on their own.

Water cannon and arrests

Outside, the day turned rough. Mounted police and water cannon were used to clear crowds around Dammtor station and in the city centre, and shop windows on Mönckebergstraße were smashed. The published arrest figures do not agree. The Beatles Bible gives 44 people arrested inside and outside the hall. German accounts put the number at 117, and say only 11 of them ever came before a judge.

The next day the Beatles flew on towards Tokyo. Hamburg was the last time they performed in Germany.

What stands on the site now

The Ernst-Merck-Halle was pulled down in 1986 to make room for a larger trade fair. Its old address, Jungiusstraße 13, is now part of St. Petersburger Straße, a busy road running past the exhibition halls. One Hamburg city guide says a trade fair hotel now stands where the hall was. There is no Beatles plaque or marker at the site.

Hamburg's Beatles memorial is elsewhere, on the Reeperbahn in St. Pauli: the Beatles-Platz. The clubs where the band learned its trade are close by, including the Indra, the Kaiserkeller and the Star-Club memorial stone.