Germany (ship, 1909)
 Railway ferry Germany in Trelleborg (Sweden)
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The railway ferry Germany was a Trajektschiff , which was used in service to Sweden.
Construction and start of service
After the conclusion of the contract of November 15, 1907 on the establishment of a railway ferry connection between the German Empire and Sweden , two ferries each were initially built by both states . The Deutschland was laid on Kiel in 1908 at AG Vulcan in Stettin under construction number 292 and christened on February 17, 1909. From July 4, 1909, she was used on the German side together with the sister ship Prussia on the Sassnitz - Trelleborg ferry line , the so-called " King's Line ".
First World War
During the First World War , the Imperial Navy put so-called auxiliary mine layers into service due to the lack of suitable mine-laying vessels . The two ferries of the "royal line" were not spared. In August 1914, both were taken over by the Navy and converted into auxiliary miners. The Deutschland was deployed several times at short notice in the North Sea, but spent most of her life as an auxiliary mine-layer under the command of Corvette Captain Wilfried von Loewenfeld in the Baltic Sea. She was involved in the laying of various defensive barriers as well as in all major offensive actions, such as the advance into the Riga Bay in August 1915 and the battle in Moon Sound in October 1917. She also transported locomotives and railroad cars to Libau ( Latvia ) in several missions .
Interwar years
After the war, the Deutschland did not have to be delivered as a reparation payment , as it had not been classified as a ship but as a "rail transport vehicle", and was used again as a ferry. She got stuck in the ice on January 25, 1924 and was only freed after three weeks by the liner SMS Braunschweig . On January 18, 1929, the Germany stranded at Kullagrund east of Trelleborg.
Second World War
At the beginning of the Second World War , the ship was requisitioned by the Navy in August 1940 , renamed Stralsund and prepared for the Seelöwe company . It was again equipped as an auxiliary mine-layer and moved to Le Havre in September 1940 . After a bomb hit and the invasion of England, which was postponed for an unspecified date, the use as a mine ship was abandoned in November 1940 and the ship was used again as a ferry to Sweden until September 1944. The Sassnitz - Trelleborg line was of considerable military importance in terms of supplying the German troops in Norway at this time. On October 19, 1942, the stern of the ship was so badly damaged by a torpedo hit by the Soviet submarine D 2 that it had to be repaired at Kockums in Malmö . At the end of September 1944, the ferry service Sassnitz - Trelleborg was stopped. Afterwards the Germany was used for military and refugee transports in the Baltic Sea area.
Post-war years
In the post-war period , the ship was used from Trelleborg to return German troops from Norway from the end of May 1945 to February 1946. It also brought Polish citizens who had been forced laborers in Germany from Lübeck to Gdynia .
In March 1946, the Deutschland was handed over to the Soviet Union as reparation in Lübeck , which renamed the ship Orion . In 1948 it was renamed Aniva ( Анива ) and transferred to the Far East , where it was scrapped in 1963.
Individual evidence
literature
- Gert Uwe Detlefsen: The ships of the railways. Urbes, Hamburg, 1996, ISBN 3-9248-9630-5
- Wolfgang Kramer, Horst-Dieter Foerster, Reinhard Kramer: The ships of the royal line. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1981, ISBN 3-7688-0360-0