Norddeutscher Lloyd

he German shipping company North German Lloyd (NDL) was founded by the Bremen merchants Hermann Henrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann on 20 February 1857, after the dissolution of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, a joint German-American enterprise. The new shipping company had no association with the British maritime classification society Lloyd's Register; in the mid-19th century, "Lloyd" was used as a term for a shipping company (an earlier user of the term in the same context was the Trieste-based Österreichischer Lloyd).

H. H. Meier became NDL's first Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and Crüsemann became the first director of the company (German Aktiengesellschaft – AG). Crüsemann was in charge of both cargo services and passenger transport, which, as a result of emigration, was growing significantly. The company was also active in other areas, including tugboats, bathing, insurance, and ship repair (the last of which it still provides). The first office of the shipping company was located at number 13 Martinistraße in Bremen.

The company started with a route to England prior to starting a transatlantic service. In 1857, the first ship, the Adler (Eagle), began regular passenger service between the Weser region (where Bremen is located) and England. On 28 October 1857, it made its maiden voyage from Nordenham to London.

Just one year later, regular, scheduled services were started between the new port in Bremerhaven and New York using two 2,674 GRT steamships, the Bremen and the New York. International economic crises made the start of the NDL extremely difficult, and the company took losses until 1859. However, during the succeeding years, passenger connections to Baltimore and New Orleans were added to the schedule, and the company first rented and then in 1869 bought facilities on the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey.

In 1867–1868, NDL began a partnership with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which initiated the Baltimore Line; until 1978, this had its own ships. In 1869, Crüsemann died at only 43 years old. From 1877 to 1892, the Director of NDL was Johann Georg Lohmann. He established a new policy for the company, emphasizing fast liners. Eventually, however, H. H. Meier and Lohmann fell out over the direction of the company. In 1892, a 5,481 GRT twin-screw steamer, the company's first, was christened the H.H. Meier after the founder; this helped to heal the breach between them.

Foundation of the German Empire[edit]

Headquarters of North German Lloyd in Bremerhaven in 1870

During the Gründerzeit at the beginning of the German Empire, the NDL expanded greatly. Thirteen new ships of the "Strassburg class" were ordered. A route to the West Indies offered from 1871 to 1874 proved unprofitable, but was followed by a permanent line to the east coast of South America. On the transatlantic route, the HAPAG, the Holland-America Line, and the Red Star Line were now all fierce rivals. Beginning in 1881 with the Elbe, eleven fast steamships of from 4500 to 6,900 GRT of the so-called "Rivers class" (all named for German rivers), were introduced to serve the North Atlantic trade.

In 1885, the NDL won the commission to provide postal service between the German Empire and Australia and the Far East. The associated subsidy underwrote further expansion, beginning with the first large-scale order placed with a German shipyard, for three postal steamers for the major routes and three smaller steamers for branch service from AG Vulcan Stettin. It was in fact a requirement of the commission that the ships be built in Germany.

By 1890, with 66 ships of a total 251,602 GRT, NDL was the second largest shipping company in the world, after the British Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, with 48 ships of a total 251,603 GRT, and dominated shipping to Germany, with 31.6% of the traffic. NDL was also the carrying more transatlantic passengers to New York than any other company, due to its dominance in steerage, which consisted mostly of immigrants. In cabin class, it carried only slightly more passengers than the British Cunard Line and White Star Line. 42% of NDL's passenger traffic was to New York, and 15% to other US ports, but only 16.2% eastward-bound from New York. Its westbound South Atlantic service represented 17.3% of its passengers; eastbound from South America, only 1.7%.

In 1887, the NDL withdrew from the route to England in favor of Argo Reederei. However, it continued to provide tug services through participation beginning in 1899 in the Schleppschifffahrtsgesellschaft Unterweser (Unterweser Tug Association, now Unterweser Reederei).

One of the four-stackers of the NDL, SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse

SS Kronprinz Wilhelm

SS Kaiser wilhelm II

SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie

Expansion and dominance[edit]

Bond of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, issued 1 March 1908

H. H. Meyer stood down from the board in 1888; he was succeeded by Friedrich Reck. Johann Georg Lohmann became Director of the company; following his death in 1892, Reck stepped down and Georg Plate became chairman. The lawyer Heinrich Wiegand became Director; from 1899 onwards, his title was Director General. He held this position until 1909, and presided over appreciable expansion.

In 1897, with the commissioning of SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, the NDL finally had a major ship for the North Atlantic. This was the largest and fastest ship in the world, and the company benefited from the reputation advantage of the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, with an average speed of 22.3 knots. Between 1897 and 1907, the line followed with three further four-screw and four-funnel steamers of the Kaiser class, of 14,000–19,000 GT: the SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II and the SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie. With these the company offered a regular service across the Atlantic to its docks at Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. On June 30, 1900 over 300 persons were killed in a fire at the Hoboken docks.

North Germany Lloyd's docks in Hoboken, 1909

So began the "decade of Germans" in transatlantic shipping, in which the NDL and the HAPAG dominated the routes with several record-breaking ships and vied with the British Cunard Line and the White Star Line as the largest shipping companies in the world. In 1902 and 1904, two NDL ships again won the Blue Riband: SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, now with an average speed of 23.09 kn (26.57 mph; 42.76 km/h) for the westbound passage from Cherbourg to New York and Kaiser Wilhelm II at 23.58 kn (27.14 mph; 43.67 km/h) on the eastbound passage. In 1907, RMS Lusitania, and then in 1909, RMS Mauretania, both of the British Cunard Line, won the Blue Riband back for the British, and Mauretania then retained it until 1929.

Between 1894 and 1908, NDL ordered many other freight and passenger steamers from several German yards. These included the Barbarossa class (over 10,000 GRT, for Australia, the Far East, and the North Atlantic) and the Generals class (approximately 8,500 BRT, for the Far East and Australia).

NDL in the 20th century[edit]

Kaiser Wilhelm II speaking at the departure of SS Friedrich Der Grosse with German troops to put down the Boxer rebellion in China

Beginning in 1899, the NDL expanded into the Pacific, acquiring the entire fleets of two small British lines, the Scottish Oriental Steamship Company and the Holt East Indian Ocean Steamship Company, and setting up between 14 and 16 passenger and freight routes in conjunction with the postal service. In 1900, 14 of NDL's passenger ships were requisitioned as troop transports due to the Boxer Rebellion in China; on 27 July, Kaiser Wilhelm II delivered his "Schrecklichkeit" speech, in which he compared the military of the German Empire to the Huns, at the departure ceremony for Friedrich Der Grosse. This inspired Britain later, when they seized a number of German ships, to rename them to names beginning with "Hun", such as "Huntsgreen" and "Huntsend". In German, these ships were collectively named "Hunnendampfer" (Huns' steamers).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. banking magnate J. P. Morgan began to acquire a number of shipping companies, including the White Star Line, the Leyland Line, and the Red Star Line, to build a transatlantic monopoly. He succeeded in signing both HAPAG and NDL to an alliance, but was unable to acquire the British Cunard Line, and the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT). HAPAG and NDL gave Morgan the largest U.S. rail company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and so Morgan offered to divide the market. The Holland-America Line and the Red Star Line together divided a contract for the passengers of the four companies. Ruinous competition was prevented. In 1912, the Morgan Agreement was terminated.

In 1907, the Norddeutscher Lloyd's fiftieth anniversary, it had 93 vessels, 51 smaller vessels, two sail training vessels and other river steamers. NDL had around 15,000 employees. Because of the high investment costs and an international economic crisis, the shipping company celebrated at this time but also had considerable financial difficulties.

NDL Headquarters Building built in 1907–10

Despite the financial difficulties, between 1907 and 1910 the company built a new headquarters on Papenburgstrasse in Bremen, the prestigious NDL Building to plans by architect Johann Poppe, who was also the lead interior designer for the company's liners. The building, the largest in the city at the time, was in eclectic Renaissance Revival style with a tower. It was sold in 1942 to Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau and when the company was broken up into its constituent parts after World War II, passed to AG Weser. However, it had been severely damaged by bombing and was ultimately demolished and a Horten department store built on the site in 1969. The adjacent new shopping mall bears the name Lloyd Passage.

The lucrative North Atlantic route was extremely competitive in this period, with new, attractive ships from other large companies including the RMS Lusitania, RMS Mauretania, and RMS Aquitania, of the Cunard Line, and the RMS Olympic, RMS Titanic, and RMS Britannic of the White Star Line. The HAPAG introduced three new vessels of the Imperator class, SS Imperator, SS Vaterland, and SS Bismarck, with a size of 50,000 GT. The NDL responded with smaller but prestigious vessels such as the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm and the SS George Washington, and transferred the SS Berlin from Mediterranean service to the New York run. Finally in 1914 the company ordered two 33,000 GRT liners of the Columbus class; however, World War I prevented their completion.

In this era of "open borders" to transatlantic travel, the largest passenger group making the transatlantic crossing were immigrants from Europe to the United States, and NDL carried more than any other steamship line. During 1900–1914, the three NDL vessels carrying the most transatlantic migrants, Rhein, Main and Neckar, each brought over 100 thousand steerage passengers to New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. The economic downturn following the Panic of 1907 led to a sharp fall-off of migrant traffic to America, only partially offset by increased steerage flows back to Europe, and this was the main contributing factor to "one of the blackest years in the Company's history."

In 1914, NDL employed approximately 22,000 people. Its success thus directly influenced the rapid growth of the city of Bremerhaven, which had been founded only in 1827.

Director General Dr. Wiegand died in 1909, and was succeeded by Director Phillip Heineken until 1920.

NDL's routes around 1907[edit]

SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm of 1907

SS Columbus of 1914

SS Zeppelin of 1915

This is a list of routes served by NDL in 1907.

Europe – America

Bremerhaven – New York

Bremerhaven – Baltimore

Bremerhaven – Savannah

Bremerhaven – Galveston

Bremerhaven – Cuba

Bremerhaven – La Plata ports

Bremerhaven – Brazil

Genoa – New York

Mediterranean

Marseilles – Alexandria

Europe – Asia/Australia

Bremerhaven – East Asia

Bremerhaven – Australia

Asia / Australia (including coastal routes)

Hong Kong – Japan – New Guinea

Hong Kong – Bangkok

Hong Kong – Bangkok (via Singapore)

Hong Kong Straits

Hong Kong – South Philippines

Penang – Deli

Deli – Singapore

Singapore – Bangkok

Singapore – South Philippines

Singapore – Moluccas (on Borneo)

Singapore – Moluccas (on Celebes)

Shanghai – Hankow

Australia – Japan – Manila – Hong Kong

German coast

Daytrip service on the Baltic coast

Tug service Bremen – Hamburg and Bremen – Bremerhaven

Passenger shipping Bremen – Bremerhaven

World War I[edit]

The second Columbus of 1924

For NDL as a civilian shipping line, the beginning of World War I was a trial, as well as a logistical challenge because a large part of the fleet was at sea around the World. However, most ships were able to reach neutral ports. The logistical operations of NDL in Bremerhaven were placed almost exclusively at the service of the German Navy. NDL owned a majority interest in the Deutsche Ozean-Reederei ("German Ocean Shipping Service"), which used U-boats for trade and made some successful Atlantic crossings.

Post war[edit]

At the start of the war, the NDL's fleet totaled more than 900,000 GRT. Under the Treaty of Versailles at war's end, all ships over 1,600 GRT and half of all units from 100 to 1,600 GRT were confiscated. The United States had already confiscated in 1917 the facilities in Hoboken and the NDL ships at the dock there. The prewar NDL fleet no longer existed. The company was left with some small ships totalling 57,000 GRT. With these the company restarted daytrip passenger service, tug service, and freight service in 1919. The 'flagship' was the 781-ton Grüß Gott. From 1920 to 1939, NDL participated in the Seedienst Ostpreußen passenger and goods service to East Prussia.

In 1920, an air transport subsidiary was founded and soon merged with Sablatnig Flugzeugbau GmbH to form Lloyd Luftverkehr Sablatnig. In 1923 this combined with HAPAG's air transport subsidiary to form Deutscher Aero Lloyd, which on 6 January 1926 merged with Junkers Luftverkehr AG to become Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G., the predecessor of Lufthansa.

In August 1920, the NDL made an agency agreement with the U.S. Mail Steamship Co. (beginning in 1921, United States Lines). This made it possible to resume transatlantic service from Bremerhaven to New York with the former Rhein, now sailing under the US flag as the Susquehanna. The unfinished Columbus had been awarded to Great Britain after the war and was bought in 1920 by White Star, which had lost significant tonnage in the war and also wished to make up for the pre-war loss of the Titanic. However, work at Danzig proceeded very slowly. Finally in autumn 1921 the so-called Columbus Agreement was reached, under which the German government and NDL undertook to facilitate rapid completion of the Columbus in exchange for the British government returning ownership to the NDL of six smaller ships which had spent the war years in South America: the postal steamers Seydlitz and Yorck, the Gotha, and the freighters Göttingen, Westfalen and Holstein. The company also began to build new freighters and passenger ships and to buy back other ships. In late 1921, service to South America was resumed with the Seydlitz, and in early 1922, East Asian service with the Westfalen. On 12 February 1922, service to New York with NDL's own ships resumed with Seydlitz. The other ship of the Columbus class, the 32,354 GRT former Hindenburg, was completed in 1924 and named Columbus; she was placed in scheduled transatlantic passenger service.

Flagships of North German Lloyd in 1930 – Bremen and Europa, the biggest German liners

A brief post-war boom was followed by severe inflation in Germany, despite which NDL continued to expand their fleet. Twelve new ships of between 8,700 and 11,400 GRT were placed in service for South and Central America and the Far East, then in addition to Columbus three new ships of between 13,000 and 15,000 GRT for the North Atlantic (the München, Stuttgart and Berlin), and in 1927 the former Zeppelin was bought back from Great Britain and placed in service as the Dresden.

In 1920, Carl Stimming became Director General of NDL, while his predecessor Heineken became Chairman of the Board. Between 1925 and 1928, the company acquired a number of German shipping companies: HABAL, the Roland Line, and Argo. The acquisition of the Roland Line brought Ernst Glässel onto the Board of Directors, where he was to have increasing influence. In 1926, the company were once more able to pay a dividend. American credit financed continuing expansion and orders for new ships.

SS Bremen depicted on a German postage stamp

In 1929 and 1930, the company placed its two largest ships in service, SS Bremen (51,656 GRT) and SS Europa (49,746 GRT). With an average speed of about 27.9 knots, both were to take the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossings. In 1929, Columbus was completely refitted.

From 1928 to 1939, the volume of passengers travelling between the US and Europe declined sharply. In 1928, the NDL transported about 8% of a passenger volume of 1,168,414 passengers; in 1932, 16.2% of the 751,592 passengers transported; in 1938, around 11% of 685,655 passengers. In addition, there was significant new competition from new Italian, French and British superliners: the Italian SS Rex (51,062 GRT) and SS Conte di Savoia (48,502 GRT), the French SS Normandie (79,280 GRT), and the British RMS Queen Mary (80,744 GRT).

SS General von Steuben of 1923

The 1929 economic crisis which began in the US affected the German shipping companies. The NDL and the HAPAG therefore entered into a cooperation agreement in 1930, and beginning in 1935, instituted joint operations in the North Atlantic. The first signs of a merger were visible. By 1932, the NDL was in an economic crisis, with about 5,000 employees let go, salary cuts, and red ink. Glässel was dismissed. The government placed both NDL and HAPAG in trusteeship under Siegfried Graf von Roedern, and following the death of Stimming, Heinrich F. Albert briefly became head of the NDL, followed after some eighteen months by the National Socialist Rudolph Firle. Bremen State Councillor Karl Lindemann was Chairman of the Board from 1933 to 1945. A programme of economic recovery by divestments and restructuring was initiated. HBAL and the Roland Line became independent companies once more, and other lines took over services to Africa and the Mediterranean. The Nazi regime ordered both NDL and HAPAG to relinquish ships to other lines which were to operate in their regions without competition from other German companies, in particular to Hamburg Süd, the Deutsche Afrika-Linien and the Deutsche Levante Linie.

In 1935, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Potsdam, each with about 18,000 GRT, were placed in service for the Far East. The modernization of the fleet continued and in 1937 the line made modest profits.

On 28 August 1939 the Erlangen slipped out of Lyttelton Harbour (New Zealand) on 28 August 1939, on the eve of war, ostensibly for Port Kembla, New South Wales, where she was to have filled her coal bunkers for the homeward passage to Europe. She then headed for the subantarctic Auckland Islands, where she successfully evaded the cruiser HMNZS Leander, and re-stocked with food and wood. The freighter then made a desperate and successful escape, using jury-rigged sails, to Valparaíso, Chile, in South America. She then made her way into the South Atlantic where, on 24 July 1941, she was intercepted off Montevideo by HMS Newcastle and scuttled by her crew.

In 1939 NDL had in service 70 vessels with a total of 562,371 GRT, including the sail training vessel Kommodore Johnsen (now the Russian STS Sedov), 3 daytrip ships, 19 tugs and 125 small ships, and employed 12,255, 8,811 on vessels. Nine further freighters were completed after the outbreak of World War II. This entire fleet was either lost during the war or awarded to the Allies as reparations. Columbus had to be sunk in 1939; Bremen burned in 1941; Steuben was sunk in the Baltic in 1945 with the loss of some 4,000 lives; Europa, claimed by France, became the Liberté in 1947.

The Reich was the primary stockholder in the company, but in 1941/42, NDL was once more privatized and cigarette manufacturer Philipp Reemtsma became primary stockholder. Dr. Johannes Kulenkampff, a Board member since 1932, and Richard Bertram, a Board member since 1937, became Chairman in 1942.

After World War II[edit]

At the end of World War II the company's headquarters (which had in any case been sold in 1942) had been severely damaged by bombing and all its large vessels either destroyed or seized. It was left with only the freighter Bogotá, which was in Japan. Relicensed by the American military administration on November 29, 1945 as a "coastal shipping and stevedoring company," it started again, as after World War I, practically from zero, offering tugboat and daytripper services.

The MS Gripsholm, later the NDL's MS Berlin

Two NDL cargo ships in Antofagasta – 1963

Participants of the fourth large Bremer NDL meeting on 20 February 2013

Kulenkampff and Bertram constituted the Board and there were at first only 350 employees. In 1948, the first Hapag-Lloyd travel agency opened. Business initially consisted of emigration and a limited amount of tourism. Beginning in 1949, German companies were permitted to order and to build ships of up to 7,200 GRT. In 1950, the NDL placed its first post-war orders at the Bremer Vulkan shipyard, the Rheinstein class (2,791 GRT, 13 knots).

After the limitations on German shipping imposed by the Allies were lifted in 1951, the NDL commenced building a new fleet. First it bought older freighters (for example the Nabob, a former American auxiliary aircraft carrier) and had new freighters built between 4,000 and 9,000 GRT and 5,000 and 13,000 DWT, all with names ending in -stein. The line had routes to Canada, New Orleans, the Canary Islands, and beginning in 1953 to the Far East.

Passenger service resumed in 1955 using a rebuilt 1924 Swedish ship, the 17,993 GRT MS Gripsholm. Renamed Berlin, she was the sixth German ship of that name, the fourth at NDL, and sailed North Atlantic routes. In 1959, the company added the 32,336 GRT Bremen (formerly Pasteur), and in 1965, the 21,514 GRT Europa (formerly Kungsholm), Gripsholm's sister ship bought from the Swedish American Line, with a capacity of 843 passengers. These vessels were first placed in scheduled service to America but soon transferred to cruising. In 1967, the 10,481 GRT express freighter Friesenstein (21.5 knots) inaugurated the Friesenstein class and replaced Nabob and Schwabenstein. Passenger service was running at an increasing deficit, and the rapidly growing container traffic required cost-intensive retooling in the freight business. In 1968 NDL inaugurated container service to the USA with the 13,384 GRT Weser-Express; two more container ships were soon added.

Around 1960, NDL had 47 ships, a number that remained almost unchanged until 1970. In 1968, the fleet totaled 343,355 GRT (in 1970, 391,313 GRT) and was the 16th largest shipping company worldwide; HAPAG, with 410,786 GRT, was the 9th largest. In 1970, NDL had a turnover of 515 million DM and share capital of 54 million DM, and employed 6,200 people, 3,500 of them at sea.

In 1967, Claus Wätjen and Dr. Horst Willner, and in 1969 Karl-Heinz Sager, joined the Board. Kulenkampff served on the Board until 1968 and Bertram until 1970. Since the NDL was already executing three quarters of its freight business in association with HAPAG, a merger of the two largest German shipping companies was entirely logical.

On September 1, 1970, the North German Lloyd merged with Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) to form Hapag-Lloyd AG, based in Hamburg with secondary headquarters in Bremen.