Arnold Bernstein

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Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company

Arnold Bernstein (born January 23, 1888 in Breslau , † 1971 in Palm Beach ) was a German -American shipowner and pioneer of car transport. He was one of the first large Jewish merchants to fall victim to the National Socialist policy of expropriation .

Life

Bernstein was the oldest child of the Jewish merchant Max Bernstein and Franziska Altmann. After the collapse of his father's company in Breslau, Bernstein went to Hamburg in 1911, where he and his father founded the company "Arnold Bernstein in Hamburg", a small trading company.

Bernstein took part in the First World War as an artilleryman , became a lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.

In 1919 he founded the Arnold Bernstein shipping company in Hamburg. His father left the company in 1924. In 1928, the Arnold Bernstein Steamship Company was founded , based in New York . The shipping company in Hamburg changed its name to Arnold Bernstein Schiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH in 1930. In 1934, after difficult negotiations with the National Socialists and in cooperation with the Zionists , Bernstein founded the Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd. for Jewish emigration . in Haifa . In 1935, Bernstein acquired the American-English " Red Star Line ". The Arnold Bernstein Steamship Company now traded as Red Star General Agency Ltd. , New York.

In 1937 the shipping company was one of the largest Jewish companies in Germany with over 1,000 seafarers. Bernstein was charged with a foreign exchange offense by Heinrich Jauch , the first public prosecutor in Hamburg . Bernstein was defended by Gerd Bucerius , among others . The trial resulted in a prison sentence and the forced sale of the company. The New Day-Book verdict: "Whereas in those days a particular research prosecutor of Berlin, on the beautiful name Jauch hears transferred to Hamburg and to the specialties of this Jauch seems to include even those coercive detention '." To the name of Bernstein from The ships of the Arnold Bernstein Schiffahrtsgesellschaft were transferred to the Red Star Line in 1938 to wipe out the public . At the end of the year, the Palestine Shipping Co. closed its service. In July 1939, Bernstein was released from prison and was able to travel to the United States .

In 1940 he founded the Arnold Bernstein Steamship Corporation in New York, which was followed in 1957 by the establishment of American Banner Lines, Inc. in New York for passenger transport. In 1959, Bernstein retired into private life.

meaning

Bernstein revolutionized car transport between the USA and Europe by transporting the vehicles without the wooden boxes that were common at the time, thereby reducing freight costs. When the global economic crisis melted the profits of the "floating garages" in 1929 , Bernstein converted his cargo ships into passenger ships, offering only one tourist class instead of the usual three transport classes .

Ship list

  • Max , cargo steamer
  • Keilberg , cargo steamer
  • Betty , tugboat
  • Odin , motor cargo ship (former coastal armored ship)
  • Aegir , motor cargo ship (former coastal armored ship)
  • Frithjof , motor cargo ship (former coastal armored ship)
  • Max Bernstein , cargo steamer
  • Falkenstein , cargo steamer
  • Johanna , cargo steamer
  • Charlotte , motor light
  • Schleswig-Holstein , cargo steamer
  • Eberstein , cargo steamer
  • Hohenstein , from 1935: Tel Aviv , passenger and cargo steamer
  • Gerolstein , passenger and cargo steamer
  • Königstein , passenger and cargo steamer
  • Ilsenstein , passenger and cargo steamer
  • Lichtenstein , cargo steamer
  • Lahnstein , freight steamer
  • Traunstein , freight steamer
  • Drachenstein , cargo steamer
  • Gravenstein , cargo steamer
  • Pennland , passenger and cargo steamer
  • Westernland , passenger and cargo steamers

under other flags

  • Panamanian , cargo steamer
  • Orbis , cargo steamer
  • Continental , passenger steamer
  • Europe , passenger steamer
  • Silver Star , turbine liner
  • Atlantic , turbine liner

literature

  • Danny B. Beatty: Bernstein's One-Class Passenger Liners. In: Marine News , year 1974, issue 9, p. 347ff
  • Arnold Bernstein: A Jewish Shipowner. From Breslau via Hamburg to New York. Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-18-7
  • Berthold Gumpel: 10 years of shipping company Arnold Bernstein 1919–1929. Hamburg 1929
  • Karl-Heinz Heine: Arnold M. Bernstein , in: Schiffahrt international , Heft 2 1977, p. 76ff.
  • Lars U. Scholl: Bernstein, Arnold . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 48-50 .
  • Björn Siegel: German, Jew, American. The Hamburg shipowner Arnold Bernstein between the worlds . In: Nele Maya Fahnenbruck, Johanna Meyer-Lenz (Ed.): Fluchtpunkt Hamburg. On the history of flight and migration in Hamburg from the early modern era to the present . transcript, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-8376-4089-2 , pp. 73 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Leopold Schwarzschild (ed.), Das neue Tage-Buch , 1937, Notes: v.5 1937 July-December, p. 940