The decorative clinker brick facades of Hamburg's Kontorhaus District, a World Heritage Site, are famous and much photographed. But what actually goes on behind them? Who works in historic buildings such as the now hundred-yearold Montanhof? Komrowski, for example, a medium-sized family business that has been based in this expressionist office building since 1925. Ernst Komrowski, a merchant and shipowner, commissioned it together with his business partner. A self-made man, Komrowski later became one of the greats of Hamburg's business community, but he was so hanseatically discreet that he remained virtually unknown to the public. Komrowski's company, like the Montanhof itself, is still owned by the founding family, and both thus represent a rare thing: continuity in times of change.

Their story, told here for the first time, is a lively journey through trade and shipping, through Hamburg's history as well as economic and world history, vividly reflected in the fate of the trading house and the shipping company, of their building and of the many people who have worked in and shaped them. Guided by the Hanseatic adage "a merchant's goods are ebb and flow", this book offers an exciting and candid look at an industry that combines tradition with modernity and in which the only constant is still change.