Kungsholm (ship, 1928)
The Kungsholm was a Swedish passenger ship of the Svenska Amerika Linien , which was built by Blohm + Voss in Hamburg from 1927 to 1928 .
background
The Kungsholm was the sister ship of the Gripsholm , which had been put into service two years earlier. Both were used by the shipping company Svenska Amerika Linien in Atlantic traffic between Gothenburg and New York and both were powered by diesel engines, which was new and unusual for liners at the time. Their appearance was similar, black hull and white upper part, a bow at right angles to the waterline and two pale yellow chimneys with the Swedish coat of arms, three crowns in a light blue oval. On December 3, 1928, the Kungsholm reached New York for the first time on her maiden voyage.
Facility
The special thing about the Kungsholm , however, was its facility. While the Gripsholm was still equipped in the heavy, traditional style of the New Baroque and British clubs, the Kungsholm was supposed to show the world and especially the USA what the Swedish art industry and Swedish handicrafts were able to do in the field of Art Deco and the Kungsholm was supposed to be a floating shop window be for it.
The Art Déco style , the Swedish interpretation of which was christened Swedish grace or Swedish modern abroad , had its heyday in Sweden in the 1920s and now an entire ship was to be furnished in this style.
The renowned architect Carl Bergsten was chosen to be responsible for the artistic design , who had already made a name for himself a few years earlier with the designs for Liljevalchs Konsthall . Bergsten gathered the best of the Swedish designers and artists of the time, including Carl Malmsten , Simon Gate , Edward Hald , Wilhelm Kåge and Isaac Grünewald . The furnishing and furnishing of Kungsholm was the most thoroughly worked out of the 1920s in Sweden, comparable only to the Stockholm stadshus of 1924. The positive international reactions showed that Bergsten and his employees had successfully completed their task. It was felt that not even the French could have presented anything better.
Interior pictures
First class lounge
First class smoker
The pool
First class stairs
The heyday and war
The heyday of the Kungsholm lasted about ten years. Many well-known personalities traveled with her across the Atlantic, among them Greta Garbo , Sigvard Bernadotte and the celebrity couple Alva and Gunnar Myrdal . With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, trips to the Atlantic became too dangerous and the Kungsholm was used for cruises in the Caribbean . The writer JD Salinger worked on her in 1941 as a cruise director or member of the entertainment crew.
When the United States entered the war in 1941, the American government unceremoniously confiscated (but paid for it later) the Swedish ship that happened to be in New York Harbor. The Kungsholm has now been converted into a troop transport with the name John Ericsson . The entire interior such as furniture, fittings, dishes and art objects were torn out, thrown away or scattered undetectably.
post war period
After the war, the ship was decommissioned and badly damaged by fire in New York Harbor in 1947. In the same year Svenska Amerika Linien bought back their previous ship and had it repaired. In the 1950s it went under the name Italia and during the 1960s it functioned as a floating hotel in the Bahamas . In 1965 it was finally scrapped in Bilbao .
Practically nothing of the fantastic original interior of the Kungsholm has been preserved. However, when looking at the numerous drawings and colored presentation sketches by Carl G. Bergsten Arkitektkontor , which are archived in the Architecture Museum in Stockholm and the Maritime Museum in Gothenburg, you get a good impression of the unique, cultural and historical value of the Kungsholm facility .
Data
- GRT : 20,223
- Dimensions: length 181.3 m; Width 23.9 m
- Machine: Burmeister & Wain diesel engines that drive two screws
- Speed: 17.5 knots
- Passengers: 1544
literature
- Anne-Marie Ericsson, M / S Kungsholms inredning, mästerverk i art deco , Signum, Lund 2005
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Harald Focke : "White as a swan, the ITALIA glided up". The Home Lines New York Liner first came to Cuxhaven 65 years ago . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 807 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven March 2017, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 5.9 MB ; accessed on July 17, 2019]).
- ↑ Kungsholm 1928–1941. In: www.salship.se. Retrieved February 22, 2018 .