Alfred Witte, a German astrologer, amateur astronomer and surveyor, was born in Hamburg in 1878. He was the founder of Hamburg School of Astrology that was associated with the Bangkok Astrological School at some point of time. The Hamburg institution also has a link with the Uranian Astrologers Club of Bangkok established in 2001. Meanwhile, the German company Zeiss has manufactured projectors for more than 631 planetariums across the world, including those for the Bangkok Planetarium in 1964, and the Hamburg Planetarium in 1957. Both planetariums have a Zeiss Mark IV Projector in place. For installations of such projectors, engineers often had to take a flight from Hamburg to Bangkok.
Werner Sobek is the chief architect and designer of Suvarnabhumi Airport in the Thai capital city of Bangkok. He happens to be a structural engineer, who was born in Hamburg. Sobek also designed the roof of AM Rothenbaum Stadium of Hamburg. In terms of air passenger footfall, Bangkok is the biggest offline route from the German city. For flights that have no direct connection, travelers often change at another airport. More than 72,000 passengers take a flight from Hamburg to Bangkok every year. While other global stopover airports like Miami handles 46,000 passengers and Singapore 40,000 people every year.
In 1858 the first trade contract was signed between the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck with the Thai capital Siam. Siam is now known as the city Bangkok. Paul Pickenpack, born in Hamburg in 1834, established the first German company in the Thai capital. He was the consul of hanseatic cities Bremen and Lübeck. In 1860, Paul returned to Hamburg and handed over the company to his brother, who became the general consul of Siam. While famous Thai linguist, Oskar Frankfurter, born in Hamburg would have enjoyed simply taking a flight from Hamburg to Bangkok to work as a translator, but at that time traveling to Thailand was quite difficult and expensive. He helped Thai king Chulalongkorn translate Thai-German projects. In 1905 Oskar was made the senior librarian at National Library of Thailand in Bangkok. He was offered the central storage of writings of the Siam dynasty and collected famous Siamese works. Thus, Hamburg and Bangkok were culturally, financially and politically connected even in ancient times.