The owners of Hamburg's Alsterhaus luxury department store are bankrupt and their future is uncertain. Visit a house that doesn't know where to go.

At Hamburg's Alsterhaus they focus on luxury, but they don't trust it Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa

HAMBURG taz | The Alsterhaus acts as if nothing had happened. The doorman stands motionless in his dark suit next to the Gucci store and on top of the roof, where only the seagulls can see them, the flags fly. But perhaps now others will take charge here. Early in the afternoon, a Rasta man enters the Alsterhaus. He is very tall and walks leisurely, pigtails swaying slightly, passing by the bouncer, who would be too small to stop him. He passes the Omega store on the left and Gucci on the right. He approaches Christian Laaboutin, whose shoes cost a month's salary. He then he turns around.

The Alsterhaus is bankrupt, more precisely its owner, the Kadewe group, and the Ver.di union is concerned about the jobs of its employees and assures that the Alsterhaus is a piece of Hamburg. The salespeople in the luxury boutiques on the ground floor wear dark shirts and suits, and many are as young as if youth were as much a part of the shopping experience as the scent in the room.

It smells expensive and from one of the stores, which do not have price tags because money is not a problem, fragments of a conversation between three employees can be heard. “Like a soap opera,” says a woman, “this month is not working for you,” “how sad.” “You jumped off the sinking ship,” one man says, and then the man who jumped explains that his commission for the next month is uncertain.

In the Alsterhaus the sellers are more elegant than the customers; The cashier on the first floor could also be a professor at the Sorbonne. But how can you tell if people have money or not when the €490 Golden Goose sneakers on the second floor look incredibly worn and faded?

Empty floors despite sales

Despite the 60 percent sale, the plants are quite empty and the customers are unclear. Some eccentrics in expensive and colorful clothes, some in down jackets, some Eastern European tourists and some Asian tourists. A couple of solid marriages, a couple of teenagers in the boss's corner, talking about clothes for 300 euros, but it's not clear if it's in their budget or not.

At least this is noticeable: the kids also visit the Alsterhaus and you could say that either the Alsterhaus is doing something right or the kids are doing something wrong. But despite the youth and the muffled music from the speakers, something like electro rhythms, silence reigns. There is a dull silence, as if the Alsterhaus is exhausted from simply surviving.

In the late 90s, owners tried a cheaper range, but with little success. Now it's supposed to be expensive again, with 450 euro bras hanging right in the front, gray-green lace called Agent Provocateur, as if no one imagined that you can get one here for 60 euros. But they also exist and if you go up one floor above the Burberry children's snowsuit for 520 euros, you will find a Lego department that could also be in Karstadt. Anyway: What is a luxury department store that allows a transition to H&M on the first floor?

The only really busy place is the women's shoe section, where a man with gray curls in a blue wool coat sits on the armchair at the entrance. A few meters away, a saleswoman tells a cleaner: “No, we are not Karstadt,” and that should give hope. And a few steps later, a very tall man hands a paper bag to a very short saleswoman: “Cheese-Spinach” and then, in a back room, she hugs him.

A Potemkin Village

Perhaps the Alsterhaus is a Potemkin village, with cardboard walls full of luxury things, behind which they have built the upper middle class because they do not believe in one or the other.

Upstairs, behind a champagne bar where no one is sitting, is a restaurant under a colorful glass roof displaying the signs of the zodiac. This Monday afternoon, a mother is sitting with a Burberry child and next to her is an old man in a shirt and sweater who is serving soup with a spoon. And a little further away, the curly-haired man from the shoe department, who probably found refuge in the Alsterhaus, the last place one would expect to do so.

And the rasta man? He was looking for a swimsuit. And then I realized: “This is not for me.”