Albert Ballin
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Albert Ballin (15 August 1857 – 9 November 1918) was a director of Hamburg-America Line, and is the person who is credited with the invention of cruise ships.
He was born into a modest Jewish family of Hamburg. His father was part owner of an emigration agency that arranged passages to the United States, and when he died in 1874, young Albert took over the business. He developed it into an independent shipping line, saving costs by carrying cargo on the return trip from the US. This brought him to the attention of Hamburg-America, who hired him in 1886, and made him general director in 1899.
Although extremely successful in developing the business, as a Jew he was not accepted by Hamburg society. Nevertheless, he became friends with Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Before World War I many different ship companies started including cruise ships among their fleet, to add luxury and comfort to sea travel: Due to bad weather conditions in the winter months the transatlantic ocean liners could not operate at full capacity, and Ballin thought of a scheme to increase the occupancy by offering idle ships to travel agencies in Europe and America in the winter. The first modern cruise, which defined the journey not just as transport but as the actual reward, commenced on 22 January 1891, when the SS Auguste Victoria (named after the German empress) set sail to cruise the Mediterranean for six weeks. The competitors sniggered at Ballin, who organised and supervised the voyage personally, at first, but the project was a huge success: In order to accommodate the growing demand another three of the SS Auguste Victoria’s sister ships operated as cruise liners and in 1899 the Hamburg-America Line ordered a new ship at the Blohm und Voss shipyard. It was the very first cruise ship, which was exclusively tailored for the needs of well-to-do passengers. However, many of those ships suffered considerable damage during that war, and in 1918, Ballin, thinking that his creation would eventually be an economical flop, committed suicide.
Perhaps less well known was Ballin's role as a mediator between the United Kingdom and Germany in the last tense years prior to the outbreak of World War I. Terrified that he would lose his ships in the event of naval hostilities, Ballin attempted to broker a deal whereby the United Kingdom and Germany would continue to race one another in passenger liners but desist their attempts to best one another's naval fleets. Consequently the outbreak of war deeply disillusioned him and Ballin spent the last years of his life watching his creations destroyed and dismantled throughout the world.
At war's end, Albert Ballin had lost almost all of his ships, including the trio Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck, all of which were given as war prizes to Great Britain and the United States. As if foreseeing the loss of his fleet, Ballin took an overdose of sleeping pills two days before the armistice.
The SS Albert Ballin was named in his honor, as is the Ballindamm, a street in central Hamburg.
[edit] References
- Lamar Cecil, Albert Ballin; business and politics in imperial Germany, 1888-1918 (Princeton University Press, 1967)
- Bernhard Huldermann, Albert Ballin (Berlin: Gerhard Stalling, 1922)
