Greten Handorf

Margaretha "Greten" Catharina Handorf (born April 13, 1880 in Wrohm , † January 18, 1944 in Cuxhaven ) was a shipowner in Cuxhaven. It operated the first organized ferry connection between Brunsbüttel and Cuxhaven .

Life

Greten Handorf, b. Rohwer was born the daughter of a shoemaker .

At the beginning of the 20th century, she moved to Cuxhaven with her husband and son because the fish market there, founded in 1908, promised good earnings.

At first the family lived from catching and selling crabs. After her husband was unable to work fully after an accident, she had to support the family and sold bread to marines. She learned from pilots that due to the Kiel Canal opened in 1895, a ferry connection between Cuxhaven and Brunsbüttelkoog was urgently needed so that the pilots accompanying the ships to and from Brunsbüttel could get to their work and home more quickly.

In 1919 she started ferry operations with her husband's fishing cutter and was listed for the first time as a shipowner in the register of North German Lloyd in 1924 ; she initiated the re-establishment of the occasional ferry connection, which had been closed up until then, and built up a regular ferry service. To do this, she had her husband's shrimp cutter Grete converted. At first it was only poorly prepared for passenger and pilot traffic and soon became too small for the increasing number of passengers. In the period that followed, not only pilots used the ferry, but also bathing trips and visits to relatives became possible; In addition, trips were made to Helgoland . From 1926 she continued to operate the ferry with the converted fishing cutter Anne-Marie . However, the passengers could only stay in the former fish room; It is said that there was room for 84 people. In 1927 she bought the tugboat Merkur , which now has space for 184 passengers, general cargo and two cars. The ferry ran three times a day on Sundays and twice a day on the remaining days. The passengers were also provided with food and drink, which opened up another source of income. Their ships sailed even in storms and fog; Guests who inquired whether the ship also sailed in such weather received the Low German answer: Mien Schipp drives jümmers!

Greten Handorf was an original and developed her own ideas to attract guests. So she hung up front and stern signs that read that Grete would soon go on a moonlit trip to sea.

In 1924, after a long correspondence, she obtained the concession required for ferry operations , which she needed to cross the Reichswasserstraße Elbe , personally from the Reich Ministry of Transport in Berlin . To do this, she took the train to Berlin and asked the Ministry of Transport in Low German who de Böberste was here. After she was told that the minister could not be spoken to, she replied ick can töben , took off her shoes and ate her sandwich, which was topped with Limburg cheese. After a while, she became impatient and with her loud organ managed to get her to the minister. However, this happened so quickly that she couldn't slip back into her shoes - because she did n't and went on stocking socks. When she saw the minister, she opened the conversation with Kiek, there sitt he jo! You, Minister, we will not do it again ... The Minister understood, and Greten Handorf's arguments were so well founded that he immediately granted the license.

She was professionally active until 1938, when HAPAG took over the service. After that she lived in Cuxhaven until her death in 1944. In the vernacular she was also called Captain Grete .

Greten Handorf was married to the shrimp fisherman Hannes Handorf; together they had two children, of whom their son died of diphtheria in 1917 . In 1919 the daughter Lilly was born.

Trivia

After suffering from rheumatic health problems, she bought a Mollmobil that a cabin boy was supposed to drive, but which could not couple, so she decided to drive the car herself. On her first trip, she lost control of the car and stood upright in the vehicle, arms stretched to the sky and constantly shouting to hell, to hell until she came to a stop on a bridge railing. To learn to drive, she looked for a practice area and went to the officer on watch at the Grimmershörnkaserne, whom she asked for permission to practice driving in the barracks yard. When the latter refused permission, she bought a pony cart and drove it through Cuxhaven; she kept the leather cap on her head from driving. But because the pony started trotting as soon as it got Huh! heard, and the pilots and fishermen made fun of it when they saw the carriage abandoned on the road, she invented her own brake patent and put a heavy weight around the horse's neck when she had to stop.

Honors

From 2015 to 2017 the Elb-Link shipping company tried to operate the ferry connection between Brunsbüttel and Cuxhaven again and named the ferries of the ship class MM 90 FC after the first ferries from Greten Handorf with Grete and Anne-Marie .

literature

• Greten Handorf . In: 1880–1944 Greten Handorf - Shipowner ( pdf ).
• Peter Bussler: The shipowner Greten Handorf from Cuxhaven. The original in Cuxhaven died in January 75 years ago . In: Men from Morgenstern, Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 828 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven December 2018, p. 2–3 ( digitized version [PDF; 3.1 MB ; accessed on August 24, 2019]).

Web links

• Greten Handorf . In: Landesfrauenrat Niedersachsen - Frauenorte .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jörn-Hinrich Laue: Traveling with Hurtigruten and other ferries - encounter with tugs and remarkable ship conversions: Volume 90 in the maritime yellow book series by Jürgen Ruszkowski . neobooks, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7380-9541-8 ( google.de [accessed on August 24, 2019]).