St. Louis (ship, 1929)

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St. Louis
The St. Louis in Hamburg
The St. Louis in Hamburg
Ship data
flag German EmpireGerman Empire German Empire German Empire German Empire
Nazi stateNazi state 
German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) 
Ship type Passenger ship
Callsign DIFG
home port Hamburg
Shipping company HAPAG
Shipyard Bremer Vulkan (Bremen)
Build number 670
Launch August 2, 1928
Commissioning March 1929
Whereabouts Wrecked in 1952
Ship dimensions and crew
length
174.90 m ( Lüa )
width 22.10 m
Draft Max. 8.66 m
measurement 16,732 GRT
Machine system
machine 4 double-acting MAN - six-cylinder - two-stroke - diesel engines
( under license Bremer Vulkan)
Machine
performance 		12,600 hp
Top
speed 		16.5 kn (31 km / h)
propeller 2
Transport capacities
Permitted number of passengers 1st class: 270
2nd class: 287
Tourist class: 413

The St. Louis was a 1929 transatlantic passenger ship of the Hamburg America Line (HAPAG), which was used in passenger traffic to New York .

The ship

Under the hull number 670 St. Louis expired on August 2, 1928 at the Bremer Vulkan in Bremen- Vegesack from the stack . It was 174.90 m long and 22.10 m wide and measured 16,732  GRT . Four double-acting six - cylinder two - stroke diesel engines (type MAN , licensed by Bremer Vulkan) with an output of 3150 hp each  enabled a speed of 16.5 knots . The passenger capacity was 270 passengers in first class, 287 in second class and 413 in tourist class.

Sister ship was the 16,699 GRT Milwaukee launched at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg-Steinwerder on February 20, 1929 .

history

The St. Louis ran from Hamburg on March 28, 1929 on her maiden voyage to New York City and was then mainly used in the North Atlantic service from Hamburg to Halifax (Nova Scotia) and New York. In addition, however, especially in autumn and spring, she also undertook cruises of 16-17 days each to the Canary Islands , Madeira and Morocco . From 1934 onwards, she was also chartered by the Office for Travel, Hiking and Vacation ( RWU ) of Kraft durch Freude (KdF) in order to travel to Norway with 900 vacationers each .

Odyssey

The St. Louis became known to the world public through its odyssey with Jewish emigrants from mid-May to mid-June 1939. The ship left Hamburg on May 13, 1939 for a special trip to Cuba . On board were 937 passengers, almost without exception German were Jews , after the violence of the six months November pogrom from Nazi Germany had fled. On May 27, 1939, the ship reached Havana , where it anchored in the bay, as the Cuban government refused to moor at the pier. The Cuban visa regulations had recently been changed and the authorities there refused entry to the passengers. After negotiations by the captain Gustav Schröder , 29 passengers were allowed to disembark. On June 2, 1939, the ship had to leave Cuba. It then cruised off the coast of Florida while Captain Schröder, HAPAG and Jewish organizations even asked US President Franklin Roosevelt for help in person, but on June 4, 1939, Roosevelt refused to moor the ship in the USA and to enter the country due to domestic political pressure of the refugees. The same fate befell them on Canada's coast. Finally, the St. Louis had to return to Europe on the orders of the shipping company. It was only shortly before the St. Louis reached the English Channel that the World Jewish Organization and HAPAG Director Holthusen were able to persuade the governments of Belgium , the Netherlands , France and Great Britain to accept the emigrants. The Belgian government allowed the landing in Antwerp , and on June 17, 1939 the refugees disembarked there. They were included by Belgium (214), the Netherlands (181), France (224) and Great Britain (254).

With the occupation of Belgium, the Netherlands and France by the Wehrmacht in the summer of 1940, however, the majority of the emigrants accepted by these countries came back under the control of the Nazi regime. Kurt Stern mentions in the diaries about his internment in France that survivors of the St. Louis were also interned in the internment camp Stade Olympique de Colombes in Colombes . According to recent research, 254 of the survivors were murdered in the Holocaust .

Second World War

The St. Louis then went back to normal service. She managed to leave New York (without passengers) shortly before the start of the war and thus to escape internment in the USA. Between September 4 and 8, 1939, she crossed the Denmark Strait undetected by British ships and arrived in the Soviet Murmansk on September 11, 1939 . It was there until December 1939. Then it drove along the Norwegian coast to Germany, and on January 1, 1940, it finally reached Hamburg.

For the attempts to return by German cruise ships at the beginning of the war, see the history of the Columbus and the Bremen .

After a renovation in May 1940 in the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven , the German Navy used the St. Louis as a barge in Kiel , and briefly in Stettin from September to December 1940 . During an Allied air raid on Kiel on August 30, 1944, it received several bombs and partially burned out. The heavily damaged ship was set aground on September 22nd so as not to sink.

post war period

In 1946 the ship was lifted, towed to Hamburg with the permission of the British occupying forces and makeshift repairs carried out. Moored at Altona Landungsbrücke, the St. Louis served HAPAG as a hotel ship from April 1947 to April 1950. The St. Louis was then sold to Bremerhaven for demolition and broken up there in 1952.

literature

  • Gödecke, B. Bleicken: “St. Louis ”and“ Milwaukee ”- the two new twin-screw cargo and passenger motor ships on the Hamburg-America Line. In: Journal of the Association of German Engineers , Volume 73, No. 29 (July 20, 1929) and No. 31 (August 3, 1929), pp. 1015-1021 and 1092-1094.
  • Georg Reinfelder: MS "St. Louis ”. The odyssey to Cuba in spring 1939. Captain Gustav Schroeder saves 906 German Jews from being attacked by the Nazis . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-933471-30-3
  • Sarah A. Ogilvie and Scott Miller: Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust . 2006, ISBN 978-0-299-21980-2
  • Georg Mautner Markhof : The St. Louis Drama. Background and riddle of a mysterious operation by the Third Reich. Leopold Stocker, Graz / Stuttgart, 2001, ISBN 3-7020-0931-0 .
  • Stefan Lipsky, Manfred Uhlig, Jürgen Glaevecke: Captain Schröder and the odyssey of the St. Louis . Mittler, 2019, ISBN 978-3-8132-0995-2 .
  • Alan Gratz: The sea in front of us . Hanser, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-446-26613-1 (English: Refugee . New York 2017. Translated by Meritxell Janina Piel).
  • Matthias Loeber: The last voyage of a Hapag steamer. The story of the St. Louis and its captain Gustav Schröder . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 843 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven March 2020, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 5.9 MB ; accessed on August 1, 2020]).

Web links

Commons : St. Louis (ship, 1929)  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 22 German Jews whose visas were recognized as valid, as well as four passengers with Spanish and two with Cuban passports and one who had attempted suicide .
  2. ↑ a b c Eigel Wiese: The “St. Louis “was her fate. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 3, 2014, p. 20.
  3. ↑ One passenger died during the journey.
  4. ↑ Kurt Stern: What will happen to us? Diaries of internment in 1939 and 1940 , construction, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-351-02624-2 , p. 52