The Gatekeepers: Hamburg, Germany, and the Making of the Modern World

The Gatekeepers is a history of the relationship between liberalism and globalization told through Hamburg, the city known as Germany’s “gateway to the world.” It tells the story of this city’s upper stratum, a wide-ranging but remarkably durable network of people and institutions centered on Hamburg but spiraling out into the world. For one century, this network committed itself to pulling Germany into the world economy and to pulling the promises of an interconnected world into Germany—yet also to wielding the power to determine what it meant to be open to the world. As they did so, Hamburg’s gatekeepers laid key foundations for the postwar Federal Republic of Germany’s foreign affairs and the architecture of post-1945 world order.

Jack H. Guenther received his Ph.D. in history from Princeton in 2024. He specializes in German history and the history of capitalism, liberalism, and international order. His first book, The Gatekeepers: Hamburg, Germany, and the Making of the Modern World, is under contract with Yale University Press. His other research and writing have appeared in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, Central European History, The English Historical Review, German History, H-Diplo, História Econômica & História de Empresas, and in edited volumes on Germany’s export economy and contemporary European foreign affairs.