At first glance, Hometown Hamburg looks like a book from a bygone era. Frank Domurad acknowledges as much when he describes it as rejecting “recent cultural, linguistic and post-structural turns” (ix) in historiography as “… derivative and passive characterizations of German handicraft[,] as a vain effort to push artisans into explanatory schemata of modernization or class development that simply do not analytically work” (x). Instead, the author wants to focus on “images of social order and social relations” (x) by letting the sources speak for themselves, by interpreting them as material that offers unique insight into the subjective meaning generated by Hamburg's artisans. The author is interested in a structural history of this group within Hamburg society in particular, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany history in general.

Hometown Hamburg consists of six chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to explaining what Handwerk means in a German context. Domurad highlights the very specific set of norms and social institutions that have tied German artisans (Handwerker) together and contrasts this with the more functionalist English term handicraft. The second chapter offers a first glimpse of the city at the center of this book: Hamburg. The port city is portrayed as both an outlier in German urban history due to its maritime history and as one of the cities in which German Handwerk was at its most influential. According to Domurad, Hamburg's Handwerker were particularly well connected and aware of themselves as elite within the city. The third chapter is a very convincing social history of Hamburg's Handwerker. Chapters 4 and 5 finally focus on questions of social order and social relations as sketched out in the book's preface. The fourth chapter looks at the Handwerker's reaction to the various political and economic crises of the Weimar Republic, and the fifth chapter deals with the difficulties that arose from the intersection of a modern republican constitution, such as that of the Weimar Republic, with a group like Hamburg's Handwerker, whose institutions and norms derived from the premodern era.

The artisans felt strongly the dichotomy between a modern industrialized society and their consciousness as a social group with strong guild traditions. Domurad shows how they successfully bridged that gap. They could voice their ideas for change in Hamburg's economic and social order. In doing so, they were part of a heterogeneous, entrenched political culture. At the same time, they were successful in maintaining their prominent role in the city's society and politics. Frank Domurad describes these processes and how they unfolded as a “road map stretching back over centuries” (257), thus highlighting the continuity within which the artisans acted.

In the sixth and final chapter, the author focuses on the political landscape in which the Handwerker operated. He emphasizes the importance of corporate economics for the artisans and shows how these ideas were incompatible with the liberal Weimar Constitution. Although this claim is not very convincing for the interwar years in general since corporate ideas were floated and promoted throughout the genesis of the Weimar Constitution in 1919, it has its merits in the particular case of Hamburg's artisans. After all, guild values were at the core of the artisans’ belief system. Thus, Domurad points out that the Hamburg Handwerker found natural allies not in the trade unions or economic liberals, but in illiberal conservative or right-wing circles.

Domurad characterizes the transformation of the political position of Hamburg's Handwerker during the economic crisis of the 1930s as “from the politics of Barter to Volksgemeinschaft” (259). Here, Domurad touches on a very important historical debate on the concept of Volksgemeinschaft. Was it merely a term used by the political right, was it commonly used and appropriated in Weimar politics, or did the political right slowly take control of the notion? Domurad portrays Volksgemeinschaft as a focal point of the political evolution of Hamburg's artisans, thus positioning himself between the second and the last option outlined previously.

The book's conclusion highlights the three key aspects of the book: the importance of “institutionalized normative structures as a bedrock of historical continuity”; the detection of a “bürgerliche social order” that continued throughout the years of the Weimar Republic; and the role of Handwerk corporate politics in the rise of the Nazis. Hamburg's artisans had more in common with National Socialist ideology than with republican liberal ideas in the economic crisis of the early 1930s (316–17).

Overall, Hometown Hamburg offers a fascinating insight into the world of German artisans during the Weimar Republic. Frank Domurad reveals both the importance of social ties and the continuity of milieu-specific sets of norms. Unfortunately, the author does not fully acknowledge the extant, recent literature on the Weimar Republic. This is especially regrettable because his findings are highly relevant for recent studies on the political culture of the Weimar Republic, such as the works of Kathleen Canning (referenced only once), Thomas Mergel, and Moritz Föllmer, to name just a few. A deeper reading of works on the cultural history of Weimar Germany might have led to an even more fruitful reading of the source material of Hometown Hamburg. The book also would have benefited from an even closer, clearer case study of Hamburg's Handwerk. Although the artisans of the port city are clearly the focus of the book, many of the chapters have long, general passages on the situation in Weimar or even Imperial Germany. It is not always clear what the relation between those general observations and the specific Hamburg situation is.

Despite these shortfalls, the book offers a very welcome socio-historical corrective on political actions of groups and individuals in Weimar Germany. By focusing on Hamburg, the author illustrates the importance of social history for economic as well as political history within the established bounds of a single case study. He demonstrates effectively the staying power of structures such as guild institutions in German history.