When NIEUW AMSTERDAM was launched 1937, she was one of the Ships Of State. Built as ship of peace and for tomorrow. These ships had been build by tax payers money, and had been somehow, as NORMANDIE , QUEEN MARY and QUEEN ELIZABETH , and others, may given the economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), after his model of deficit spending and the artificially created demand in times of recession, pride, as he could not have imagined any better ... by Earl Cruise Nieuw Amsterdam, detail of a travelposter from 1938, pure Art Deco - own collection T he world was, when NIEUW AMSTERDAM was on the drawing board, still in the grip of the Great Depression , which started with the imploding of the stock bubble in New York on October 29th 1929, known as the Black Tuesday . This stock crash was the result of the irrational illusion, that money can create revenue on its own ... Nieuw Amsterdam, copy of a postcard, based on a painting - Source: ssmaritime.com To this day, 80 y
HAMBURG-AMERIKANISCHEPACKETFAHRT ACTIEN GESELLSCHAFT - HAPAG or HAMBURG AMERICA LINE is reflecting, as Germany, the LLOYD of Bremen, two times of rsing and two times of devasting downfall and a third rise. BORUSSIA , 1856, First Day Cover 1956 of Deutsche Bundespost - own collection Once Germany´s biggest shipping line HAPAG / HAMBURG-AMERIKANISCHE PACKETFAHRT ACTIEN GESELLSCHAFT-LLOYD, merged with it former old Hanseatic rival NORDDEUTSCHER LLOYD in 1970, to now HAPAG-LLOYD, had its peaks and downs, but rose each time on its own to new hights, without any state subsidies. As German mail subsidiaries did never cover the costs for purchasing or mainting the vessels ordered for the specific German mail lines. by Earl of Cruise In this article I used most German Wikipedia links, as they proved to be mostly of better research quality, and surprisinf to me, some English lines and liners have only German written articles, for the others, English Wiki links are to find