Yachten und Yachttender für Amerika: das USA-Geschäft der Fr. Lürssen Yacht- und Bootswerft in Bremen-Vegesack in der Zwischenkriegszeit

Abstract

Looking back on extremely modest beginnings as a boatyard in Aumund near Bremen, the Fr. Lürssen boatyard founded in 1875 is today a Bremen-Vege-sack-based shipbuilding group specializing in the construction of naval vessels and large motor-yachts. Before World War I, it was one of Germany’s leading builders of motorized boats, offering a wide assortment of boat types including motor-yachts of up to 20 metres in length. After the war, the company went on to develop new business segments. It began seeking contact to the U.S. in 1922/23, and the first yacht went to Boston in 1924. Between 1924 and 1932, it supplied American customers with altogether twenty-eight motor-yachts of widely differing types, measuring between 12 and 30 metres, along with a large number of tenders. As many of these vessels were driven with Maybach engines, Friedrich Wilhelm von Meister (1903-1978) - the New York representative of that well-known engine manufacturer of Friedrichshafen - provided sales support. And finally, between 1923 and 1931 Lürssen supplied the Fr. Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel with 37 tenders for the large-scale yachts built there, likewise for American customers. The boatbuilding company owed this business success in great part to its technical competence as well as to the sales talents of its owner Otto Lürssen (1880-1932), who travelled to the States himself in 1927 and 1928. Yet there were also external factors: the Roaring Twenties boom in the U.S. played an important role, especially in conjunction with a vibrant yachting tradition there that went back to the nineteenth century. The majority of the customers were on the east coast, a veritable water sports Eldorado offering a wide range of yachting waters between Canada and Florida. The good political relations between Berlin and Washington during the Weimar Republic undoubtedly also had a favourable impact on the business dealings. Other yacht-building yards - in Germany and elsewhere in Europe - likewise cultivated business relations with the U.S. in those years. A change in customs regulations in 1928 and the Great Depression sparked by the New York stock market crash of 1929 put an end to Lürssen's America business in the interwar period.