The third new building for the fast steamship service to East Asia of the NDL was launched on May 17, 1935 at the Deschimag -Werft AG Weser in Bremen-Gröpelingen . The ship was christened by Countess Ursula von Gneisenau. The three new buildings should occupy the lucrative line and shorten the trip rounds through modern drive concepts. The Gneisenau , however, was different from the Scharnhorst and Potsdam , as prime movers geared turbines , which gears on the two propeller shafts and the fixed propeller worked. The steam was generated in four Wagner water tube boilers .
After only a very short test phase in the North Sea, the ship left on January 3, 1936 on its maiden voyage to ports in the Far East. From 1938 the route to Shanghai developed into one of the main escape routes for German and Austrian Jews to Shanghai , since no emigration visas were required there. The ship, which was modern for the time, was in Bremerhaven when the Second World War broke out and was requisitioned by the German Navy and used as a residential ship. In 1942 the Gneisenau ( Project Jade ), like her sister ship Potsdam , was to be converted into an aircraft carrier, but was withdrawn from the aircraft carrier construction program because of its too low speed for warships. During a transfer which ran Gneisenau on May 2, 1943. Gedser on a mine and sank. With the end of the war and the clarification of the ownership claims between the USSR and Denmark, the Gneisenau was scrapped. The demolition work on site was carried out by a Danish company. This work dragged on until 1954.
literature
Claus Rothe: German ocean passenger ships 1919 to 1985 . transpress - VEB publishing house for transport, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-344-00164-7 .
.svg){kind=small}