It was bred there in the 1870s by A.D. Wichmann, a Hamburg shipowner, who selected white birds from the heterogeneous population of local farm chickens of the area and cross-bred them with Andalusian, Cochin and Spanish stock to produce a pure white chicken with slate-blue legs.

[4][11] In the early twentieth century it was an important commercial chicken, and became widespread through much of Germany.

[11] As with many other traditional dual-purpose breeds, numbers declined rapidly after the Second World War for reasons including the effects of the war itself, the advent of specialised single-purpose layer and meat breeds, and the industrialisation of chicken farming from the 1960s.

[11][12] In the twenty-first century it is an endangered breed: its conservation status is listed as "at risk/endangered" in DAD-IS, as stark gefährdet, 'seriously endangered', by the Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung [de], and as Category I, extrem gefährdet, 'extremely endangered', by the Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung alter und gefährdeter Haustierrassen.

[3][13][2] It is included in the Ark of Taste of the international Slow Food Foundation.