HAMBURG’S COMMODITY FUTURES EXCHANGE @museum.de

Before the Speicherstadt was built, coffee was so important in Hamburg that all the businesses involved in the coffee trade were asked how much space they would need.

In the end, interconnected coffee warehouses were built that allowed traders to move easily from business premises to counting houses.

In 1887, a year before the warehouse district was officially opened, the Hamburg Coffee Exchange began operating. It soon became the third most important coffee exchange in the world, after New York and Le Havre.

In 1943, during the Second World War, the warehouse district’s original coffee exchange was destroyed. Thirteen years went by before it reopened in a different location.

The blackboard here in the museum is from the time of that second coffee exchange. From the term “Herr”, it’s clear that even as recently as 1956, only "gentlemen", in other words, men, were active in the coffee trade. The special supplement on display here, "Kaffeezentrum Hamburg", was published on the occasion of the new exchange opening in 1956. It celebrates Hamburg as a centre of the coffee trade.

The cover picture shows the new coffee exchange building. It’s just a short walk from our coffee museum and is now part of the Ameron Hotel. As an institution, the new coffee exchange was short-lived. The trade had moved to New York and London.

After oil, coffee is the second most important global commodity. Roughly a hundred million people depend on coffee growing, trading and processing. To this day, coffee is traded as a commodity on the world's commodity futures exchanges.

In New York, the price of Arabica coffees is set by the avoirdupois pound, abbreviated as lb. It’s equivalent to 453 grammes. By contrast, the price of Robusta coffee is set in London by the tonne.

The coffee trade is highly speculative, so these days, the price of coffee is largely influenced by speculators with no interest in actual coffee, only in making money.