2000 Hamburg 4

Every time I listen to the song "Vision Thing" by The Sisters of Mercy I wonder what the lyric "Two thousand Hamburg four" refers to:

Twenty-five whores in the room next door
Twenty-five floors and I need more
I'm looking for the can in the candy store
Two thousand Hamburg four

I never really bothered to look it up though. Until now, because I'm bored. Just thought I'd post it here in case anybody else is vaguely interested...

It turns out 2000 Hamburg 4 used to be the postcode of the Reeperbahn in the red light district of Hamburg.

West Germany used to have a four-digit number for postal codes. Large cities would have postal codes ending in three 0's (Berlin was 1000, Hamburg 2000, etc.) Smaller cities would end in two 0's. In general, the smaller the locality, the fewer 0's at the end of the postal code.

The four digit number came before the city name, i.e. 1000 Berlin. The postal code may have been shortened to reduce the 0's (1 Berlin, 2 Hamburg, etc.). If a large city was divided into further areas, that number would follow the city name, i.e. 1000 Berlin 36. That is how we get 2000 Hamburg 4.

In 1995, Germany revised its postal codes to be five-digit. Often a locality in (West) Germany had the same postal code as a town in former East Germany. After unification in 1990, the Deutsche Post got around this for a few years by having people write W (West) or O (Ost) before the postal code. When the new five digit numbers came into use, the W and O were no longer necessary.

So, in 1990 when the song Vision Thing was written, there was a 2000 Hamburg 4. Today it is something else, and the new postal codes do not necessarily follow the internal city division.

Source of info: Heartland:: The Sisters of Mercy Forum

Thanks Malcolm.

Spent most of '95 writing and testing tools to do the conversion, seems like I would have been better off listening to the Sisters.

Although I didn't know for sure, I guess it had something to do with a whore house or red light district. I used to have a t-shirt with those lyrics on... great song to sing along to

fünf ist trumpf!

8000 München 40

was it really that long ago...

They did 'Temple of Love', right? That is one great song.

Yup, in 1983 I think and then again in 1992 with the late Ofra Haza

One of the ironies was that both Bonn and Weimar had identical postcodes under the four digit system.

And the only old postcode district in the whole of Germany that wasn't split up, amalgamated but simply renumbered:

8000 München 5 became 80469 München!

yeah around then. i remember it well as i was in my teenage goth stage. saw them in concert in hull in '84. smoked to much drank too much and puked in the toilet. fine days they were.

Come to the concert on 26th April, everybody!

Urban Angel is paying

just found this little gem in the grauniad

If you guys were really bored, I could tell you that the Reeps current post code varies between 22767 at the Großer Freiheit end and 20359 at the St Pauli end, not that I'm an expert on that part of town, but I did used to live there.