City of London strengthens Hamburg links with Freedom for top German businessman and shipowner

Notes for editors

The Lord Mayor is the annually-elected head of the City of London Corporation which provides local government services for the Square Mile, the financial and commercial heart of the UK, and which is committed to maintaining and enhancing the status of the business City as the world’s leading international financial and business centre through its policies and services. Its responsibilities also extend far beyond the City boundaries and include management of the Barbican Centre, Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, 10,000 acres of open space including Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, three wholesale food markets, as well as acting as the London Port Health Authority.

Freedom of the City

The Freedom is a ceremony of great antiquity, was functionally significant throughout the mediaeval era and remains an important link with City traditions of open and honest trade and good behaviour. All current Freemen are given a copy of the “Rules for the Conduct of Life” issued by Lord Mayor Sir John Barnard in 1737.

Freedom of the City of London gives two benefits to the recipient. If a Freeman’s children are orphaned they may be educated at The Freeman’s School at Ashtead in Surrey, at no cost to the family. Or if in old age a recipient is destitute they may qualify for housing in the Alms houses. Many of the traditional privileges associated with the Freedom, such as driving sheep across London Bridge, to be hung with a silken cord if convicted of a capital offence, to go about the City with a drawn sword, to be married in St Paul’s Cathedral, to be buried in the City and to be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest, have long since disappeared. More information

For more information

contact Greg Williams at the Press Office on 020 7332 1455 and 077889 167 205

REF: 244/081106gw(093)

Press release published Thursday 09 November 2006

The day before Hamburg sends a large delegation to the Lord Mayor’s Show (Saturday), a German Alderman will be honoured in a City of London Freedom ceremony at Guildhall.

Nikolaus Schues, a member of a well-known German business family and owner of the Laeisz shipping line, will be admitted on Friday morning to the Freedom, sponsored by City of London Alderman Alison Gowman and Kenneth Stern, a former Lloyd’s broker and underwriter and well-known link between the two North Sea trading cities.

Former Lord Mayor Sir Michael Savory will also attend the ceremony: he visited Hamburg to re-inaugurate the city’s ancient “Morgensprache” ceremonies in 2005. In a further re-inforcement of links, the Duke of Kent, President of the British-German Association, last September unveiled a plaque on the Thames near Cannon Street station, site of London’s German trading enclave, the mediaeval “Steelyard”.

Sir Michael Savory said: “Hamburg and London are sister cities in trade and our links are extremely close. As they say in North Germany ‘When it rains in London we get our brollies out in Hamburg.’”

“Hamburg has recently re-invigorated some of its ancient ceremonies, based in many cases on our common ancient history and it a great pleasure not only to honour Alderman Nikolaus Schues – but also to see such a strong contingent in the Lord Mayor’s Show.” Forty-five Hamburg representatives of craft guilds will take part in the Show, including stonemasons, plumbers, carpenters, joiners and tailors wearing traditional costumes and carrying guild banners and preceding a horse dray carrying Hamburg’s Aldermen and officers – all of whom are senior business figures and part of the powerful Hamburg Chamber of Commerce.