Norddeutscher Lloyd

The Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL, North German Lloyd) became one of the world’s largest shipping firms before World War I. The interruptions of trade during wars and depressions undercut its viability, but it re­covered after each major crisis until the 1960s.

Two Bremen shippers, Carl Eduard Crusemann and Hermann Henrich Meier, started the firm in 1857. Both men came from wealthy trading and shipping families in whose firms they gained experience. Crusemann served his business apprentice­ship in a Bremen firm and then decided to open his own Bremen import and shipping firm. A trip to the United States and Caribbean in 1853 made him think that a regular steamer service between Europe and the United States was both necessary and feasible. Meier had participated in the American Ocean Steam Navigation Com­pany that offered an irregular service be­tween Bremen and New York starting in 1847, but it failed. Crusemann convinced Meier to join him, and the two founded the North German Lloyd, a stock com­pany, that each headed until their deaths in 1867 and 1888, respectively. They were followed by Heinrich Wiegand, who con­tinued Meier’s policy of links to the banks and extensive involvement in other indus­trial enterprises in Bremen until his death in 1909. Wiegand placed more emphasis on freight, initiating the subsidiary Roland line to New York in 1892.

From the beginning, the main large Bremen shippers held the majority of stock in the firm, which tied the firm to the city. It proved highly profitable after overcom­ing the early difficult years. To remain vi­able and to expand, the company negoti­ated many agreements to allot the division of passenger and freight traffic with the Hapag. Those terms were continuously re­vised in the competition between the two firms. Another complicating factor was the international competition. For example, in 1902 the American banker and creator of the steel cartel, John Pierpont Morgan, tried to create a global marine monopoly, which resulted in intervention from Berlin that hindered German participation. Simi­larly, in 1913 the Hapag attempted to force a realignment of the shipping agreement so that the North Atlantic trade, which the NDL had dominated, would be changed in favor of the Hapag. The war brought a stop to the intense rivalry, which might have re­sulted in the NDL meeting the Hapag challenge or in one of the firms going under due to overcapacity.

The company did not always order its ships from Bremen shipyards, though most of its famous ones came from there. At first, English steamers were ordered because they had the best technology. By 1858 the NDL had established a schedule of regular bi­monthly departures of its four ships moving between New York and Bremerhaven, but accidents, slow repairs, and then the Ameri­can Civil War and the Danish-German war nearly led to bankruptcy. Yet the NDL sur­vived and expanded, especially after the 1870s. By 1914 the company had 135 oceangoing ships with nearly a million reg­istered tons (Drechsel 1994, 138). By the turn of the twentieth century, the firm com­missioned huge luxury liners that competed with the British Cunard and American White Star lines, as well as the Hapag, for being the fastest across the Atlantic. The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (Emperor William the Great) came on line in 1897 as the largest speed steamer in the world.

By 1880s the NDL had become such a large and influential firm that the city of Bremen had to do its bidding—namely to extend the wharves and harbor at Bremer­haven due to the size of its liners and steamers. The city dredged and straight­ened the Weser River to Bremen and en­larged wharves at great cost and high debt to the state.

Between the 1890s and 1940s, public attention focused on races across the At­lantic to see which firm and which ship could win the Blue Ribbon for the quickest crossing. The NDL would win many times with its huge ships. But the largest profits continued to come from subsidized mail runs and shipping emigrants and troops— for example, to China during the Boxer Rebellion. Despite the slowdowns and shift from German to European emigrants going to America during the 1890s, with another shift to non-American destinations during the 1920s, and a short revival of North American destinations in the late 1940s, the NDL’s emigrant business re­mained a mainstay for nearly its whole ex­istence. Simultaneously, the pleasure travels of the rich became an important economic element for these floating elegant hotels, until airplanes undercut passenger num­bers in the 1960s.

At the opposite end of the social scale were the stokers, firemen, and crew. The company experienced many strikes about wages and working conditions on NDL ships before World War I. The high rate of suicide among the stokers on the coal steamers caused a major scandal in the 1890s. Because the firm received subsidies for its postal runs and because the patriotic duties of all Germans were called upon during the Boxer Uprising, the publicity had important effects.

With the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles in 1918 and 1919, Germany had to hand over nearly all of its merchant fleet to the Allies (in compensation for U-Boat losses). The NDL claimed to have only 57,000 tons in shipping capacity in 1919 compared to 982,951 tons in 1914. It did have 125 million marks in capital and re­ceived compensation from the government for its marine losses (Lambert 1929, 147). Hence, by the end of the 1920s, it could rebuild its fleet to its prewar size. To demonstrate its return to maritime great­ness, the NDL commissioned two of the largest, most-powerful liners ever built: the Europa and the Bremen. Both would win the Blue Ribbon race for being the fastest ship across the Atlantic in 1929 and the early 1930s.

Building the Bremen reinforced the boom of the late 1920s in the Bremen shipyards, but also underlay the bust for the local economy when it was finished. Though the NDL did well with the Bre­men in luxury passenger traffic, the ship­yard workers ended up unemployed be­cause no other ships were ordered due to the Great Depression.

World War II, just as World War I, de­stroyed Bremen shipping and cut the ties between North America and Germany. After the war the NDL’s resurrection proved possible due to good business relations with the United States, which controlled Bremen as an enclave during the occupation. Emi­grant passenger traffic combined with cargo transport, as well as the business traveler segment, aided the NDL’s reestablishment as a major shipping line. However, the firm could not compete against low-cost and un­regulated lines, and in 1970 accepted the merger offer of the Hapag. The physical tie to North America continued via the Hapag-Lloyd, but containers and cars shipped from Bremerhaven and Hamburg in the late twentieth century did not have the same impact on both sides of the At­

lantic as the people and goods shipped by the NDL in the nineteenth century.

Dieter K. Buse

See also American Occupation Zone; Bremerhaven; Hamburg; Hapag; Treaty of Versailles

References and Further Reading

Bessel, Georg. 1857—1957, Norddeutscher Lloyd. Bremen: Schunemann, 1957.

Drechsel, Edwin. Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen, 1857-1970: History, Fleet, Ship Mails. New York: Cordillera, 1994.

Engelsing, Rolf. Bremen als Auswanderhafen. Bremen: Schunemann, 1961.

Kludas, Arnold. Die Geschichte der deutschen Passagierschiffahrt. 5 vols. Hamburg: Kabel, 1986-1990.

------. Record Breakers of the North Atlantic: Blue Ribbon and Liners 1838-1952. London: Chatham, 2000.

Lambert, John T “What Business Germany Thinks: Carl J. Stimming.” Nation’s Business 17 (October 1929): 145-147.

Thiel, Reinhold. Die Geschichte der Norddeutschen Lloyd. Bremen: Hauschild, 1999ff.