On November 13, 1918, only days after the outbreak of revolution in the city-state of Hamburg, the Handelskammer, Gewerbekammer and Detaillistenkammer, quasi-public organizations representing large trade and commerce, small manufacture and handicraft, and small retailers, respectively, agreed to cooperate with the newly appointed Workers and Soldiers Council (Arbeiter-und Soldaten Rat). They confirmed their intention to continue leading the local economy through the formation of a joint Economic Council (Wirtschaftsrat). Less than two weeks later, on November 25, some 3,000 representatives of Hamburg's business community, the largest such gathering of businesspersons in the city-state's history, convened in the Circus Busch to elect delegates from predetermined lists, drawn up by each Chamber's leadership to ensure that “old names” were selected, to secure their discrete corporate economic and social interests.

The Economic Council initially consisted of three representatives from each of the three economic chambers, along with nine members from each of their respective economic sectors. It was subsequently expanded to include 24 delegates from the Workers Council, who with the representatives of the newly formed Consumers Chamber (Konsumentenkammer) provided labor parity with employers. Its Executive Committee consisted of one person from each Chamber, with the long-standing president of the Handelskammer, Franz Heinrich Witthoeft, appointed as chair. While its ostensible purpose was “to sustain the economy as a whole by paying attention to the justified economic interests of each of its constituent groups,” in reality it was intended by many of its most prominent members, led by the private banker Max Warburg, to “establish the foundations for a national economic ‘parliament,’ with the obvious function of absorbing the workers’ councils and reducing the power over economic affairs of a democratic assembly.”

What made Hamburg's Wirtschaftsrat so unique was not only that it was the first of its kind in the Republic, but that it was also able to survive the revolution and become incorporated into the city-state's constitution enacted in January 1921.