Jewish immigration to port city of Hamburg, in the north of Germany, took place from the middle of the 16th century onwards. The first Sephardic Jews were Marranos - Jews converted to Christianity by force - from Portugal. Many came from Spain to Portugal before that. German Ashkenazi Jews settled in and around Hamburg from 1600 onwards.
In 1611, the Sephardic Jews bought the land for the very first Jewish cemetery in northern Germany. The cemetery is in Altona, what is now within the Hamburg municipality. In 1618, the Ashkenazi Jews establish a cemetery adjacent to the Sephardic one. For many years, the two were separated by a wall, but are now a single unit.
The Sephardic and Ashkenazi sections mirror well the development of the respective artistic expressions on their tombstones over the ages and the differences between them.
Ashkenazi vertical tombstones were initially characterised by large fields for elaborate inscriptions, to which more and more artistic designs were added from the 19th century onwards.
The Sephardic horizontal tombstones are characterised by extraordinary rich Baroque stone masonry from the beginning of the foundation of the cemetery onwards. It's a riot of putti, death’s heads, biblical figures, even two bare-breasted figures of caritas, coat of arms and heraldic symbols, family trees and many more architectonic, floral and symbolic ornaments.
