The term Hansalinie (Hansa line) refers to the part from Lübeck (north of Hamburg, thus overlapping the Vogelfluglinie) south to the Ruhr Area (near Dortmund).

In Schleswig-Holstein, the initial section of the A1 (which belongs to the so-called Vogelfluglinie) begins at the junction Heiligenhafen East as a four-lane extension of the B 207 coming from the ferry port Puttgarden on the island of Fehmarn.

In the area of the Bay of Lübeck, for a length of about 10 km the Baltic Sea coast is touched, which is approached up to about one kilometer at Haffkrug.

Before further south the Hanseatic city of Lübeck is reached, at the triangle Bad Schwartau the A1 joins the A 226 coming from Travemünde and becomes a six-lane highway.

From here the highway leads in a southwesterly direction through the district of Stormarn, past the small towns of Reinfeld and Bad Oldesloe to the motorway junction Bargteheide, the current terminus of the A 21 from Kiel.

After the occupation of Denmark in the Second World War, a bridge connection over the Fehmarnsund (bird's flight line) and an extension of the Reichsautobahn to Copenhagen was planned.

Just as the motorways north of the exit Lübeck Zentrum today show, they exist essentially since 1975, when the A 1 direction Neustadt / Holstein was extended.

At that time, the motorways in this area were thoroughly renewed: The 2 × 2 lane highway then came from the direction of Hamburg only until today's exit Lübeck center.

When the A 1 was extended in the early 1970s towards Neustadt, the Ratekauer branch line was cut off from the motorway network and downgraded to the national road.

These building constructs were by no means intended as provisional in the 1930s, but it was thought even in the future a full expansion would not be necessary due to the lower expected traffic.

Something similar had to be taken into account when crossing the Teutoburg Forest south of Osnabrück, but the motorway still has a height difference of about 100 m on a relatively short section.

The realization of the already planned before the war route between Daun and Saarbrücken was resumed in the 1960s, but initially as a single lane B 408th This should lead from the triangle Dernbach to Landstuhl.

North of Lübeck was the motorway junction Bad Schwartau in the form of a fork, from which the previously continuous connection from Hamburg to Lübeck-Siems now branches off as A 226.

After the introduction of the new numbering system, this highway was initially designated as A 48 and was originally intended to lead from Luxembourg via Trier, Daun, Koblenz, Wetzlar and Gießen to the Hattenbacher Dreieck.

First emerged in the 1970s in the context of a full expansion of 1960 and 1964 as federal highway 268 or 327 built single-lane and 1969 in A 171 umgewidmeten[5] track sections Saarbrücken-Riegelsberg and Illingen-Eppelborn.

The section Riegelsberg-Saarbrücken, was indeed developed in 1960 as a federal highway four lanes, but originally had no structural separation, which accidents due to wetness on the winding route were common.

In the early 2000s, both the continuation from Oldenberg in Holstein to the north and the gap closure in the Eifel between Blankenheim and Daun were planned and partially realized.

Due to bridge damage in 2011 between the junction Osnabrück-Hafen and the Kreuz Lotte / Osnabrück one lane per travel direction is permanently blocked.

Throughout the congested area between Hamburg and Cologne, basic renovations and almost continuous expansion to at least three lanes per direction and the development of many crossings and junctions have either recently been completed, under construction or in planning.

In connection with the construction of the Fixed Link across the Fehmarnbelt, there are also plans to expand the existing Federal Highway 207 as an extension of the A 1 between Heiligenhafen-Ost and Puttgarden in four lanes.

This section of the hinterland connection is approximately 22 kilometers long and classified in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2003 in the emergency level Other needs.

Plans have been made to complete the remaining 21 km over the Land borders between North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, but this will take till 2018 before it is ready.

When the large number of potholes no longer permitted orderly operation, the old carriageway was put back into service as a last resort.

The traffic researcher Michael Schreckenberg criticized that the construction site sections were "made by technocrats," "without regard to the psychology of motorists."

Already shortly after the beginning of the work, the operating company A1 got into financial difficulties on the move, which were not made public by a standstill agreement with the financing banks.

The operators of the Niedersachsenpark and regional politicians are calling for an additional connection between the Neuenkirchen / Vörden and Bramsche junctions to start traffic to and from the final 400 hectare intercommunal commercial and industrial park.

In November 2010, the Lower Saxony State Authority for Road Construction and Transportation issued a plan approval decision for part of the extension of the A 33.

For the following section between the bridge over the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal at Amelsbüren in a southerly direction to the Kamener Kreuz, the expansion to six lanes in the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan was classified as a priority with the elimination of bottlenecks.

Conversion and refurbishment of the valley bridge Höllenbach was delayed and lasted until the winter of 2017/2018, which is why in 2018, the six-lane traffic guidance will be established in this section.

In the course of the existing four-lane Camphauser road as a continuation of the A 623 from the junction Ludwigsberg and then the piece of the B 268 to the West Spangenbrücke autobahnmäßig, d. H. be provided with central separation and without parallel intersections, expanded and then upgraded to A 1.