Sea service East Prussia
The East Prussian Sea Service was a combined passenger and cargo ship connection of the German Reich between 1922 and 1939 .
Political background
The East Prussian Sea Service was set up in January 1920 by the Reich Ministry of Transport of the Weimar Republic to bring those authorized to vote for the referendums in East and West Prussia to their homeland, after around 25,000 people entitled to vote were denied passage through the Polish Corridor by the Polish authorities .
“The Poles not only caused difficulties for those entitled to vote traveling from the Reich on the internationally guaranteed railway route through the corridor, but also tried to deter them with harassment from fulfilling their patriotic duty. For these reasons the Sea Service East Prussia was created, which started from Pomerania's seaside resort Swinemünde to the East Prussian seaport of Pillau. In the early summer of 1920, the first airlift in world history was built on Pomeranian soil. Airplanes were deployed from the airport in Stolp and carried those entitled to vote on regular flights across the sea to the island of East Prussia. They were old German double-deckers from the First World War that the Allies had left the Germans because of obsolescence. "
It also remained in place to connect the province of East Prussia , which had become an exclave after the First World War, to the heartland of the German Empire via the Baltic Sea .
After the First World War, travel, mail and goods traffic to and from East Prussia through Poland was unsafe and arduous. When rail traffic through the corridor was blocked, only the sea voyage to Pillau or flights to Königsberg remained . Devau Airport was the first civil airport in Germany to be completed there in 1921 .
For the opening of the German East Fair , President Friedrich Ebert , Economics Minister Ernst Scholz and other prominent figures from business and politics traveled to Königsberg with the Hertha of the East Prussian Sea Service on September 24, 1920 .
The East Prussian sea service was stopped in 1939 after the attack on Poland began .
"The Sea Service East Prussia was a political shipping line that never made a profit and yet flourished."
Route and ships
Initially, the sea service was operated with chartered ships from private shipowners, such as Erich Haslinger , later empire-owned ships were used.
- The first ship of Seediensts left on 30 January 1920, the Hoernum the HAPAG , a former minesweeper, the port of Swinoujscie in the direction of Pillau .
- With the Helgoland , HAPAG used another similar ship.
- In October 1920, the HAPAG ships Princess Heinrich and Bubendey were added.
- The shipping company Braeunlich participated from November 1920 with the steamships Odin and Hertha .
- The North German Lloyd from Bremen started using the former Gruessgott tender from June 1920 .
Initially, HAPAG and Braeunlich committed themselves to four trips a week. Later, in the summer, the ships operated daily according to a fixed timetable with a guarantee for a minimum number of passengers, in the winter four to five times a week between Pillau or Sopot and Swinoujscie. In 1927 the line was extended to the northeast to Memel and in 1930 to Libau in Latvia . From 1933 the ships went in the west to Lübeck-Travemünde and from 1934 to Kiel .
The ships used at the beginning proved to be unsuitable for the long journey time of 15 hours between Swinoujscie and Pillau. The ships that were too small and not very comfortable could not be used for night trips due to the lack of sleeping cabins. The Reich Ministry of Transport therefore bought several ships that were operated by various shipping companies:
- In 1926 the Prussia (shipping company Braeunlich) and the Hanseatic City of Danzig (shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd) were put into service.
- Tannenberg (shipping company Hamburg-Amerika-Linie , Hamburg ) followed in 1935 .
- The construction of the Marienburg , which began in 1939, was interrupted due to the war; In 1950 the ship was built into a passenger motor ship in Wismar and then sailed in the Soviet Union .
The Kaiser of HAPAG was also employed from 1934 .
The Prussians , the Hanseatic City of Danzig and the Tannenberg were used by the Navy as mine ships during World War II and all three sank on July 9, 1941 in a Swedish minefield.
literature
- Claus Rothe: German seaside ships. 1830 to 1939. In: Library of Ship Types. transpress publishing house for transport, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00393-3
- Kurt Gerdau : Sea Service East Prussia . Koehler, Herford 1990
Web links
- Literature from and about Sea Service East Prussia in the catalog of the German National Library
- Shipping company Braeunlich
- Private website on the history of the East Prussian Sea Service
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Kossert: Prussia, Germans or Poles? The Masurians in the field of tension of ethnic nationalism 1870–1956 . Ed .: German Historical Institute Warsaw . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04415-2 , p. 151 .
- ^ Downfall of a miners' association on July 9, 1941