beginning of the A7. From the south (Hanover) coming vehicles had there at the threading to the A1 in the direction of west (Bremen) drive through a steep curve for many years. The section Echte-Seesen was opened on 14 November 1959. The section Seesen Hildesheim was opened on 15 December 1960 by Secretary of Transportation Seebohm. From 1956, the seven sections between Hamburg and Hanover were handed over to traffic. In 1960, the 21 km section between junction Berkhof and the cross Hannover / Kirchhorst was opened last. The four remaining sections in between were opened in 1958. The gap closure was achieved with the 35 km section between motorway junction Hannover / Kirchhorst and junction Hildesheim in 1962. In the 1960s, the A7 was then built on a slightly different route. The first to be opened in 1965 was the 10.9 km section north of the Biebelried interchange to the junction Würzburg / Estenfeld. 1966 followed the adjacent section to the present cross Schweinfurt / Werneck and the 14.8 km long section between Fulda North and Fulda South. The northernmost section from the Hattenbacher Triangle to Fulda (32 km) and the middle section between Fulda and Schweinfurt (68 km) were finally handed over to traffic in 1968. In the 1960s and 1970s, the highway was built in the Hamburg area and the so-called north axis to Denmark and handed over to traffic. The construction took place in nine sections. An important milestone was the opening of the New Elbe Tunnel in 1975. On 13 July 1976, Ernst Haar, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Transport, and Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of the Interior Rudolf Titzck solemnly opened the motorway section from Tarp to Handewitt. Only in 1978, the last vacant space between Tarp and Schuby was closed, so that the highway could be driven from Hamburg to the federal border. On 13 June 1978, Queen Margrethe II and President Walter Scheel opened the border crossing Ellund, accompanied by Prime Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg and the Flensburg Mayor Ingrid Gross. At 10.55 clock they officially released the freeway and passport control, at 12.32 clock rolled the first car through the new border crossing. Ellund developed into the most important transit point of German-Danish border traffic. In 1979, 3.2 million travelers passed the counters; until 1997, the number had more than quintupled at 16.7 million. In the preliminary draft for a motor