German Levant Line
The German Levante Line AG (DLL) was an existing 1889-1970 liner shipping company in Hamburg .
Preliminary remark
In maritime shipping, the Levant is the name given to the countries of the eastern Mediterranean , not exactly geographically correct . Trade between Germany and the Levant region was traditionally carried out overland, mostly via the Italian, Austrian and southern German regions. Up until the first tentative advances in 1878, there were no regular steamboat connections for sea trade with the countries in this sea area.
history
Early years
On September 6, 1889, the German Levante Line was founded with a capital of 1.5 million marks. Four steamers were initially ordered to commence regular service . The Wigham, Richardson & Company shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne delivered the first steamer, the Chios , with which service was opened on June 28, 1890. Three other ships, the Lesbos , Rhodos and Samos , were built by the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft . All four ships were measured with around 1700 GRT and each carried around 2500 tons. The construction cost around 2 million marks more than calculated, so that a priority bond of 750,000 marks had to be issued in order to guarantee the equity base. In addition to such financial problems, the young shipping company also struggled with difficulties resulting, for example, from poor harvests in Turkey, the Hamburg cholera epidemic or the loss of ships. In the years 1893 to 1895, the Euripos , the Milos and the Thasos were lost. By 1911 another five ship losses followed. By the time a dividend was paid out in 1896, equity had been reduced to 1.1 million marks . In 1898 Hans von Jacobs became chairman of the board. In 1899 the first dry spell was over and the shipping fleet increased to 21 steamers, to 30 steamers by 1903 and to 59 steamers in 1914. A characteristic of the shipping company was that the fleet was mostly expanded through the purchase of used ships. To this end, the Levante line merged in 1910 with the Bremen steamship line Atlas (six ships) and took over the seven steamers from the shipping company AC de Freitas & Co. and four ships from the shipping company HC Horn , benefiting from the good economic situation in 1911 . By the beginning of the First World War , the DDL had only received 17 new buildings. At the beginning of 1914, HAPAG took over the majority stake in DLL.
First world war and concentration
Initially, the DLL did not lose any ships through combat operations during the war. Nevertheless, she had to accept the loss of most of the ships. Ships in ports of hostile states have been confiscated. The British captured nine ships, four of which were sunk in the course of the war. The Athos was confiscated in Russia and later sunk by the German-Turkish cruiser Midilli . As a result of the subsequent entry into the war by Portugal (8) and Greece (6) as well as Italy's change of side (5), further ships were lost that had found refuge in supposedly safe or neutral ports. Ships that were in Turkish ports when the war broke out came under their management when the Ottoman Empire entered the war (October 29, 1914 on the part of the Central Powers ).
All remaining ships over 1600 GRT except for the wreck of the Thasos had to be delivered to the Inter Allied Shipping Commission after the end of the war . Despite these difficulties, the shipping company did not come to a complete standstill, as initially a few voyages could still be carried out with DLL ships to be delivered and soon limited traffic with three bought-back steamers flying the flag of the befriended Rotterdam NV Cargadoors & Scheepvaart Kantoor "Levant" could be started . On August 1, 1919, a 4½ percent bond from 1911 was repaid in order to be able to take out new loans; on December 23, 1919, HAPAG took over the DLL.
Although development in the first few years after the end of the war was still severely hampered by the lack of its own ships and the incorporation of new builds, which had originally been ordered by DLL, into the HAPAG fleet, the development of its own fleet was also slowed down, the DLL ordered in 1921 already more than ten own ships. From December 1920 to May 1922 there was also a charter of six ships of the London shipping company Olivier & Company , which were loaded under the name Oliviers Levant Line on commission of the German Levante Line .
New competitors in those years were the Deutsche Orient-Linie AG , founded in 1921 , a subsidiary of the Stettiner Dampfer-Compagnie , and the Levantienst, founded in 1922 by the Bremen Argo shipping company . The Argo Reederei merged in December 1922 with the Roland-Linie (which three years later became part of the North German Lloyd ); the German Orient Line merged with DLL on July 1, 1924. When the Stettiner Dampfer-Compagnie was also taken over by Norddeutscher Lloyd in 1931 , the German Levant trip was again in the hands of the two large shipping companies.
Reconstruction and re-establishment
In the course of 1934, the German Reich drew up a restructuring plan aimed at unbundling and concentrating the tasks of the German liner shipping companies. For this purpose, the Reich acquired a majority stake in the Hamburg-America Line and in North German Lloyd . Up to November 9, 1934, corresponding contracts had also been negotiated with the German Africa Lines and Hamburg-Süd . The spin-off ended with the founding of the new Deutsche Levante-Linie Hamburg AG with equity of 4 million Reichsmarks on July 5, 1935 in Hamburg, as well as the Atlas Levante-Linie AG (ALL) with equity of 2.3 million Reichsmarks on 26. July of the same year in Bremen. Both shipping companies signed a pool agreement and founded Deutsche Levante-Linie GmbH , in which DLL AG held two thirds and ALL one third. Several successful years followed up to the beginning of the Second World War and in 1935/36, for example, the Deutsche Levante-Linie Hamburg increased its equity capital by 1.5 million Reichsmarks.
World War II and post-war period
In 1942 the ownership of the DLL and the ALL changed. The DLL was taken over by the shipping company Bock, Godeffroy & Co. and incorporated as their subsidiary, the ALL dissolved its personal union with the Argo shipping company . During the Second World War, a number of the DLL ships were lost; the German Levante Line and the Atlas Levante Line had to return the remainder after this war. The office rooms and the remains of the fixed assets remained. In the 1950s, the DLL fleet was slowly rebuilt, but in 1956 the Deutsche Levante-Linie was taken over as a subsidiary of Bock, Godeffroy & Co. by the Oetker Group, which only continued the chimney brand and flag until 1967 and the The name Deutsche Levante-Linie finally discontinued in 1970.
The German Levante Newspaper
From 1911 to 1920, the Deutsche Levante-Linie published the Deutsche Levante-Zeitung .
literature
- Richard Stegemann: 50 years of the German Levante Voyage . 1889-1939. Ed .: German Levante Line. Self-published, Hamburg 1939.
- Hans Jürgen Witthöft: Levante course . German line trip to the eastern Mediterranean. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1989, ISBN 3-7822-0454-9 .
Web links
- The German Levante Line at Dieter Engel
- The German Levante line on The Ships List (English)
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the German Levante Line in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Otto Mathies: Hamburgs Reederei, 1814-1914
- ↑ Gottfried Lintzer: AC de Freitas & Co - Kaufmannsreeder , Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5759-6 , pp. 184/185
- ↑ Compare the information in the journal database : ZDB -ID 545080-9