From a poor background to a top manager:as general director, Albert Ballin from Hamburg makes Hapag the largest shipping company in the world. But his life ends tragically.
by Dirk Hempel
Around the middle of the 19th century, Stubbenhuk Street at the Port of Hamburg was a poor area where dock workers and sailors lived, pubs and small traders dominated the scene. Anyone who lives between the canals and the Elbe has nothing to do with the world of wholesalers who set the tone in the Hanseatic city. And yet one of the most successful careers in the Empire begins here.
Albert Ballin - child of Jewish immigrants from Denmark
Albert Ballin was born in house no. 17 on August 15, 1857, the 13th child of a Jewish family that immigrated from Denmark. He grew up in modest circumstances, speaks Low German, attends a Jewish elementary school and is said to like playing the cello.
Emigrants are his business early on
Albert Ballin is credited with inventing cruises.He does not receive any professional training, but takes private lessons in English and mathematics. At the same time, he works in his father's small agency, which arranges sea passage for emigrants overseas. When the father dies, he continues to run the business. It comes at the right time:In the last third of the century, more and more people are leaving the continent. They flee unemployment, famine and wars to the New World.
Within a few years, Ballin was successful, mainly because he was offering cheap bulk transport to New York in cooperation with a shipping line, in the specially built steerage of cargo ships. Soon he was handling a third of all emigrants overseas in Hamburg, even competing with the powerful Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, Hapag. In 1886 she had no choice but to offer Ballin a lucrative position in her service.
Ballin joins Hapag
Ballin accommodates the emigrants in purpose-built halls. Today, the reconstructed buildings house a museum.At Hapag, the 29-year-old begins an unprecedented rise. With business acumen and ambition, charm and urbane manners, he worked his way up to the top of the most important Hamburg company. He relies on speed and above all on service, even for the less well-off passengers. In contrast to the other shipping companies, Hapag already offers comprehensive support on the way to the ship. This includes medical care and places to sleep in specially built emigrant halls at the port. Today the Ballinstadt Emigration Museum is located there.
The young director develops innovative business fields
Since the passenger ships across the Atlantic are underutilized during the stormy winter months, Ballin invents the cruise. In January 1891, the first pleasure trip for well-heeled citizens led from Cuxhaven to the warm Mediterranean Sea. Later, the tourist ships go to the North Cape and the Caribbean, and Hapag travel agencies also organize other offers:train travel, for example, and flights with the new Zeppelin airships.
Hapag becomes the largest shipping company in the world
The Hapag steamer "Imperator" sets sail for the first time in 1913 and was the largest ship in the world at the time.Ballin becomes general director in 1899 and as such expands the booming freight business after the turn of the century, making Hapag the largest shipping company in the world. Under his leadership, the share capital increases within a few years from 15 million to 180 million marks. Almost 200 seagoing vessels now sail more than 70 global routes. They call at around 400 ports on all continents. And Ballin keeps having new steamers built, which are among the largest and fastest of their time, such as the "Imperator" and the "Deutschland".
From dock boy to emperor's friend
The poor Jewish boy from the port edge has long since become one of the most important managers in the German Reich, which is striving for world recognition, and has become the "friend and shipowner of the Kaiser", who visits him every summer in his villa on the Alster. Ballin, who operates globally, often leads international shipping conferences, where he benefits from the knowledge of English he acquired early on. He is now even being traded as a possible chancellor. The famous journalist Theodor Wolff later judged:"There were still several self-made men in Wilhelmine Germany, but none climbed so high from such unfavorable circumstances."
The successful entrepreneur is also active as a patron, promotes science and the just beginning environmental protection, supports for example a large ethnographic South Sea expedition, the Jordsand bird protection association and the Lüneburg Heath Nature Park.
The downside of success
Colleagues persuade the restless Ballin not to visit his office in the Hapag office, at least on Sundays.But he also has enemies. The nationalists and anti-Semites regard him as a "Jewish big capitalist", the socialists as a class enemy. He works tirelessly, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Illnesses and spa stays are the result, as is the frequent use of medication and cognac. His wife Marianne, a Hamburg merchant's daughter, has to read him to sleep for hours.
The decline begins with the war
The First World War hit him hard. For years he has been trying to achieve German-British understanding, especially in the explosive naval rearmament. Hapag's ships are now lying idle in port, being interned abroad or being claimed by the Navy. Global trade has collapsed. Ballin's attempts to mediate peace negotiations fail in 1917 with unrestricted submarine warfare. He also fails to persuade the emperor to undertake political reforms.
In the face of the destruction of his life's work, Ballin finally gave up. When the revolution began in Hamburg and mutinous sailors occupied his office, he poisoned himself with sleeping pills and mercury chloride. He died on November 9, 1918 in a Hamburg clinic, at the same time at midday when Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the republic in Berlin.