Butter ride

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A typical butter ship : the Baltic Star (ex Helgoland ) of the Förde Reederei Seetouristik (1987)
The Hansaline in Sønderborg, built in 1968

The butter journey is colloquially referred to as a shopping trip on an excursion boat, which was offered from around 1953 to 1999 and led across Germany's customs border at sea .

advantages

The short stay abroad made it possible to buy numerous items cheaper and import them to Germany tax-free. This included above all butter , which was much cheaper in Denmark at that time , from which these companies got their name. In addition, were tobacco , spirits and perfume like to buy.

Since the trips themselves were offered almost free of charge, i.e. for a symbolic price, and in Flensburg were partly free of charge thanks to generously distributed advertising cards , the trip was often taken as an excursion with additional benefits. Until the end of the 1990s, butter cruises from many ports were common in the Baltic Sea . Later butter trips were organized by bus to the Netherlands and Poland .

There was a special feature in the border area between Germany and the Czech Republic in the area of ​​the Upper Elbe : Because the Schmilka - Hřensko border crossing on the federal highway 172 was closed for many months after the Elbe flood in 2002, an inland passenger ship drove daily for several months from Bad Schandau to the Czech Republic National territory. The ship only docked there very briefly and sold the tax-free goods typical of a butter voyage (the Czech Republic has only been part of the European Union since May 2004).

One of the last ships in the so-called “white fleet” made up of butter ships in the port of Flensburg , the Jürgensby , which burned out in July 2017

Regulations

On July 7, 1981, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the exemption from taxes on the so-called “butter ships” that sail on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to be incompatible with EC law.

As a result of political pressure from the German economy , aggravating regulations were issued, such as that the ship had to dock in ( customs ) abroad before the duty-free shopping was released . This led to the curious situation that a German “butter ship” headed for the nearest Danish or Polish port and threw a rope there , which was looped around the bollard on the quay and loosened again after a few seconds, with which the ship had formally docked and could return .

Since July 1, 1999, such journeys are no longer permitted in the EU.

Remains of former butter ships

The coat of arms of Flensburg

The consequence of the ban on butter journeys was that numerous people lost their jobs and many ships had to be moved to new locations. The former butter ships include the Apollo , built in Papenburg in 1970 , which was transferred to Newfoundland in 1999 , the now scrapped Stella Scarlett , who came to Casablanca at that time , the Hansaline , which, despite its small size, set out for the Panama Canal on its own keel in 2003 , which is now to the Cruise ship converted Helgoland and the 1964 built Afrodite , which was used at times as a party ship in the Middle East . The Poseidon , built in 1964, was used as a ferry between India and Sri Lanka under the name Pearl Cruise II from 2003 and was so badly damaged in an attack by Tamil Eelam militias in 2006 that it was scrapped in Alang a year later . The Flensburg coat of arms , built in 1960, was demolished in Turkey in 2012 after it had been used as a sightseeing ship from Malta , and the Fehmarn I was scrapped in Mexico . The former Käpt'n Brass , later Hormuz 2 , landed in Iran for scrapping in 2016 . The Langeland III was sold to Croatia in 1998 and has since been baptized after Petar Hektorović . The former Sydfyn sank as Vicente in January 2015. The island of Föhr , built in 1968 and later Thor Viking or Adler Germania , was scrapped in 2011. The former Orange Moon , built in 1959, later called Tom Kyle and Sealord , is now used as a party ship under the name Blue Dawn , and the former Kollund has been converted into the luxury yacht Oceanwolf .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See for example: MoinMoin from November 1978, December, January 1979 and February 1979 etc .; The Moin Moin is an advertising paper distributed free of charge .
  2. ^ Judgment of the court of 7 July 1981. - REWE-Handelsgesellschaft Nord mbH and REWE-Markt Steffen v Hauptzollamt Kiel. - (Request for a preliminary ruling, submitted by the Finanzgericht Hamburg). - Butter rides. - Case 158/80
  3. ↑ Council Directive 92/12 / EEC of February 25, 1992
  4. ↑ Götz Bonsen: Schleswig-Holstein's butter ferries: Here they are stranded . October 9, 2018 on www.shz.de
  5. ↑ Götz Bonsen: The fate of our butter ferries - the tragic stories (part 2) . November 27, 2017 on www.shz.de

Web links

Wiktionary: Butterfahrt  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations