Albert Ballin, the managing director of the mighty Hamburg America Line, had a personal slogan: Mein Felt ist die Welt (My field is the world)! During his tenure (1886-1918), the self-made wunderkind German Jew built HAPAG into the largest and most profitable shipping line in the world, with passenger and shipping routes that truly did span the globe. He built an immigrant processing center in Hamburg, which received tens of thousands of people by railroad from all over Central and Eastern Europe before they embarked for the New World in his ships. Many of these were Jews escaping persecution and poverty under the Russian czar. He also pioneered leisure cruising to the Caribbean, as well as the idea of extra-tariff restaurants for first class passengers (managed by the Ritz Carlton Company). His culminating achievement was the construction of the three biggest and most luxurious liners the world had yet seen: SS Imperator, SS Vaterland, and SS Bismarck, able to carry 4,000 passengers each, most in either third class or steerage. First class passengers could enjoy a two deck high, columned swimming pool almost identical to the one at the Londons Royal Automobile Club and public rooms modeled on the palace of Versailles. Ballin was very close friends with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who generously supported his passenger ship building program. The Kaiser felt that a vast fleet of luxury and immigrant ships announced Germanys arrival on the scene as a world power, a development that especially irked his British cousins. Ballin however was a dedicated pacifist who staunchly opposed Germanys military build up and subsequent entry into World War I. Ballins catchy slogan inspired Viennese composer Karl Michael Ziehrer to write a march with the same name. It was first performed on 18 March 1900 at Ronachers, at one of Ziehrers regular Concert Academy concerts. Ballin tragically committed suicide in November 1918, a few days before the signing of the Armistice. The Allies seized almost all of his companys ships, including the three giants, which served under different names and flags (Cunards Berengaria, U.S. Lines Leviathan, and White Stars Majestic) until the end of the 1930s. The immigrant processing center survives today as the BallinStadt - Auswanderermuseum Hamburg, a reminder of the millions of people (including possibly some of my own ancestors) who came to America via the ships of the Hamburg-America Line. Mein Felt ist die Welte!
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 12:15:54 +0000
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