Background
Ballin was born on August 15, 1857 in Hamburg, Germany.
Ballin was born on August 15, 1857 in Hamburg, Germany.
After building up the steamship company that his father, a Danish immigrant, had established, Ballin showed an unrivaled grasp of the new opportunities afforded by the transatlantic passenger trade. Thanks to the modifications that he introduced, German ships were able to carry far more steerage passengers, while improving both their speed and the level of service available to those in first and cabin class.
Ballin was not merely a business wizard, but also a skilled negotiator, who concluded the German-U.S. shipping agreement of 1912 and then tried to negotiate an Anglo-German naval agreement with the help of Sir Ernest Cassel.
The West German stamp commemorating the centenary of Albert Ballin's birth.
Wilhelm II turned to him for economic advice and Ballin was often a guest on the kaiser’s yacht. Unlike other “court Jews” admitted to the Imperial circle, however, Ballin never received a patent of nobility, despite his many services to the crown, because of his refusal to convert.
During World War I, Ballin organized the shipping of foodstuffs to Germany, circumventing the Allied naval blockade. Though distrusted by the kaiser’s warmongering generals, he became one of the chief negotiators for an armistice and peace talks in 1918.
The humiliation, which he felt after Wilhelm’s abandonment of the throne and flight to Holland drove Ballin to take his own life. Within the next twelve years, the Hapag company that he had made the symbol of German prestige became judenrein.
On the centenary of his birth (August 15, 1957), a commemorative postage stamp honoring Albert Ballin was issued by the German Federal Republic.
No less a devoted Jew than a staunch German patriot, Ballin worshiped at the Bornplatz Synagogue of the Orthodox Deutsch-Israelitischer Synagogenverband in Hamburg. It was on his initiative that ships of the Hapag Line provided kosher dietary arrangements for the observant Jewish passenger.