Although Hamburg has benefited for centuries from its merchants, sailors, and shipowners, it has often been the women who have thrown open the gates to the world. In his book, Thomas Bleitner presents 16 women who have left their mark on the Alster as writers, muses, salon hosts, businesswomen, journalists, or feminists. The women of Hamburg faced the danger of being reduced to mere mercantile traits and representative functions early on. At Jungfernstieg, Heinrich Heine writes, "there strut the beautiful merchant daughters, with whose love one also receives so much ready cash"; they are, as Theodor Fontane later adds, "all so undoubtedly, have something unusually refined both internally and externally, and testify in everything they do and do not do, to the correctness of the doctrine of influence.".