Undine (ship, 1910)
 The Undine 2016 in the city harbor of Rostock, in need of renovation
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The Undine is considered the oldest surviving seaside service ship in Germany. The steamship Kronprinz Wilhelm , built in 1910, was renamed Kronprinz in 1920 and, after being converted into a motor ship , was used by the Stralsund White Fleet under the name Undine . The ship, which is now under monument protection , of which only little more than the hull is left, should be completely restored from April 2007 at a Dresden shipyard. Due to a lack of funds and the bankruptcy of the Laubegast shipyard , the hull has been in the Rostock city harbor since October 2014 .
history
Until World War I
The on behalf of the Rostock captain Paul Mestermann on the Neptun Shipyard built ship had on March 9, 1910 as Crown Prince Wilhelm its launch . Disagreements with the administration of the Rostock harbor caused Mestermann to move the permanent berth of the ship to Greifswald.
When the Crown Prince Wilhelm wanted to moor at the pier at Binz on Rügen on July 28, 1912, the pier , which was overloaded by numerous people, collapsed. Although the ship was not to be blamed, in Greifswald they were held to be jointly responsible. Mestermann, who had come to an agreement with the Rostockers, therefore moved the berth back to Warnemünde . During the boom in spa shipping between 1912 and 1914, Crown Prince Wilhelm headed for the seaside resorts of Arendsee , Heiligendamm , Graal-Müritz , Brunshaupten (today Kühlungsborn ) and occasionally the Danish island of Møn .
With the beginning of the First World War , the excursion traffic was stopped. The Imperial Navy hired the Crown Prince Wilhelm as an auxiliary ship and used it as a tender to supply the naval units lying in the roadstead from Wilhelmshaven . After the mutiny on the SMS Prinzregent Luitpold in August 1917, the arrested sailors and stokers were transported to Wilhelmshaven on the Kronprinz Wilhelm . After the war ended, the ship returned to Warnemünde.
Until World War II
In 1919 the seaside resort traffic was resumed with little success. After an overhaul and renaming to Crown Prince , it was briefly used in 1920 for the East Prussian sea service on the route to Pillau . The ship then went back to the old routes and partly in bathing traffic. The global economic crisis led to the collapse of the company. In a foreclosure auction in April 1932, the ship was acquired by the Rostock shipowner and ship chandler Carl Cords. In 1934 he sold it on to the captain Paul Hahn, who used it again in passenger traffic in the Baltic Sea region.
During the Second World War , the ship was used as a minesweeper and guard ship by the Navy from 1940 after a conversion at the Neptun shipyard . On July 29, 1943, the ship was hit by a bomb during an American air raid on the Arado aircraft factory , causing it to catch fire and killing five people. The Navy had the undamaged boiler and machinery removed from the otherwise badly damaged ship. Paul Hahn, who was transferred to Rostock as port commander shortly before the end of the war , bought the ship lying aground on the Gehlsdorfer Ufer from the Navy .
Post-war and GDR times
After the war, the Red Army used the ship as a refuse tender until 1948. Afterwards, Paul Hahn left Otto Ludewig jr. convert the former steamer into a motor ship. In 1951 the ship was entered in the shipping register under the name Undine . The Undine worked as a salvage ship until 1955 and occasionally took on freight orders.
From 1955 the use in excursion traffic began again. The shipping company Paul Hahn had to become a contractual partner of the White Fleet in 1957 . After some passengers had used trips near the Danish waters to escape from the GDR , the Undine was only used for harbor tours and shorter distances, such as to Kühlungsborn. In 1972 the shipowner was expropriated and the Undine was incorporated into the fleet. Since then, some necessary repairs have been carried out at a shipyard in Szczecin . The Undine has also served as a backdrop for film and television productions on several occasions, for example in the DEFA film The Dream Ship in 1956 .
After the turn
After the fall of the Berlin Wall , the White Fleet was privatized. The new owner sold the old stock of ships to replace them with new ones. In 1991 a support association was founded in Rostock to preserve the Undine . The widow of the last private owner was able to purchase the ship for a symbolic price. Ralf Robrock from Hamburg was responsible for the high debts on the ship , who brought the ship into the possession of the “Ships of Labor” association, which he led. After a repair at the Hamburg “ Jöhnk shipyard ”, the ship returned to Rostock in 1992 under the name Kronprinz .
At the beginning of 1993, at the instigation of the owner Robrock, who had fallen out with the friends' association, the Crown Prince left the Rostock berth to drive to the new Barth location . After the ship had to anchor in Barhöft due to drift ice , it continued on its way to Barth on January 13, 1993 despite a storm warning. In the Grabow near Kinnbackenhagen , the Crown Prince ran aground around 12:30 p.m. Because of the storm, a tug was only able to reach the ship the following day. However, the rescue attempts failed. In the meantime, the water police established that the owner Robrock had been sentenced to a final sentence. Robrock, who did not show up for custody, was therefore arrested.
Since all previous rescue attempts had failed, the Crown Prince , located near the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park , was to be broken off and removed on site. On January 3, 1995, with the help of a tug and another ship, the Crown Prince was released during a flood and brought to Barth.
At the beginning of 1998, the Barther Förderverein für Schifffahrt, Jugend und Tourismus was able to acquire the Crown Prince and use donations to pay the accrued debts. At the Barther shipyard, the machines and equipment were salvaged and the worn superstructures and decks removed. The originally preserved hull was transferred to Rostock to the Neptun shipyard in 2000. In 2001, the city of Rostock granted a monument protection permit for the project to restore the seaworthiness of the ship's hull and to rebuild the superstructure according to a view from 1932. The total costs of around 2.3 million euros were to be raised by the development association, which since 2002 has been renamed the development association SOS Seebäderschiff "Kronprinz" ex. "Undine" wears. The "Schiffs- und Yachtwerft Dresden" was commissioned to implement the project. In 2006, the Crown Prince was towed from Rostock across the Baltic Sea, the Elbe-Lübeck Canal and the Elbe to Dresden . In April 2007, the ship was on the slipway taken the shipyard.
After the shipyard became insolvent and the restoration failed due to lack of money, the Friends of the Crown Prince ex. Undine bankruptcy and the ship was about to be scrapped. The association Freundeskreis Maritimes Erbe Rostock e. V. acquired the hull in mid-2013 for a symbolic price of 1.14 euros. In October 2014, the ship's hull reached Rostock again by water and has been in the city harbor ever since.
The Hanseatic and University City of Rostock has been the new owner of the Undine since December 12, 2018. The then Lord Mayor Roland Methling signed a purchase contract for 8,500 euros on this date, for which he received a lot of criticism with regard to the maintenance costs. A current concept of the Office for Culture, Monument Preservation and Museums provides for the Undine to be repaired and then to be set up on the former slipway of the Neptun shipyard.
literature
- Claus Rothe: German seaside ships. 1830 to 1939 (= library of ship types ). transpress Verlag für Verkehrwesen, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00393-3 , pp. 104-106
Individual evidence
- ↑ The time "after the fall of the Wall". In: Save the "Crown Prince". Retrieved August 23, 2009 .
- ↑ http://www.rostock-heute.de/undine-rettung-freundeskreis-maritimes-erbe-rostock-spendenaufruf/73097
- ↑ Peter Kleinort: "Undine" in the city harbor . In: Daily port report of October 17, 2014, p. 16
- ↑ http://www.nnn.de/lokales/rostock/undine-bald-wieder-in-rostock-id6490411.html
- ↑ https://www.nnn.de/lokales/rostock/verein-will-undine-zurueckmachen-id5722201.html
- ↑ Trouble in the town hall: Mayor Methling in Rostock secretly buys the shipwreck “Undine”. Retrieved April 15, 2020 .
Web links
- Literature about Undine (Schiff, 1910) in the state bibliography MV under the name Undine
- The "Undine" goes on her last trip on YouTube , a film about the return from Dresden to Rostock.