In the historiography on the German war aims, following the German wartime literature on Belgium (see ch. 6), it is routinely emphasised that the city- states of Hamburg and Bremen had a particular interest in how the future of Antwerp, the rival ‘world port’, would be shaped. However, the extent, complexity and development of this interest have hardly ever been investigated. Karl-Heinz Janßen, in his important work on the particularist war aims of the German federal states, neglects largely the plans of the small states, probably because they pulled little weight in the inter-state rivalries. He mentions the project for a ‘Greater Hamburg’ – incorporating neighbouring Prussian cities –, but he refers in passing only to the special concern that Bremen and Hamburg had about the future of Antwerp.168 Jürgen Bolland and Dietrich Kersten provide more detail, both focusing on Hamburg. While Bolland analyses the reaction of the three Hanseatic cities to a proposed petition to the Kaiser against a ‘soft’ peace at the turn of 1917/18, Kersten includes a chapter on the Antwerp Question in his study of the war aims of the Hamburg business community (Kaufmannschaft).169 Interestingly, both stress that Hamburg was remarkably moderate and cautious about its war aims towards Belgium – a finding that will be qualified below. The following chapter, then, will attempt to portray a more complete picture of the attitudes in Hamburg and Bremen towards Antwerp during the war.
A Hanseatic administration in occupied Antwerp
From the beginning of the occupation of Belgium, the extraordinary interest of Hamburg and Bremen in the future of Antwerp was firmly institutionalised. Throughout the war, the civil administration of the Government-General for the city and province of Antwerp was known to be the domain of Hanseatic officials.170 More particularly, it was dominated by Hamburg. At its top, as
168 Janßen, Macht und Verblendung, esp. pp. 55, 69.
169 Bolland, 'Kriegszieldebatten der Hanseatischen Senate,' pp. 216-230. Kersten, Kriegsziele der
Hamburger Kaufmannschaft, pp. 132-8.
170 See for example: Köhler, Staatsverwaltung, p. 17. Percy Ernst Schramm, Neun Generationen.
Dreihundert Jahre deutsche "Kulturgeschichte" im Lichte der Schicksale einer Hamburger Bürgerfamilie (1648-1948), vol. 2: Göttingen 1964, pp. 491-2.
‘President of the Civil Administration for the province of Antwerp’, was always a member of the sovereign government of Hamburg: senators Justus Strandes (1914-1915), Friedrich Sthamer (1915-1916) and Max Schramm (1916-1918). Many further personalities from the political and economic elite of Hamburg worked in the various departmental sections and often headed them. Erich Diestel, the son of another senator, was for example in charge of ‘trade and industry’ from June 1915 to the end of the occupation. Some of the other institutions of the occupation regime in Antwerp, too, were led by experts from Hamburg: most noteworthy are Rear Admiral Louran for the port headquarters (Hafenkommandantur) and government surveyor Löwer for the river and port surveyor’s office (Strom- und Hafenbauamt).171 Bremen, on the other hand, filled only one senior post permanently in the administration – sometimes described as the representative of the president: first by the Baron von Plettenberg-Mehrum, a director of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, and, from November 1916, by Willy Wätjen, a former president of Bremen’s Chamber of Commerce. Only a few further officials from Bremen were employed in Antwerp.172 Lübeck, the third and smallest Hanseatic city-state, was not represented at all.173
How did this Hanseatic rule of occupied Antwerp come about, and why was Hamburg so preponderant? The initiative had come from neither Hamburg nor Bremen, but from Clemens von Delbrück, vice-chancellor and imperial secretary of state of the interior. The fall of Antwerp had coincided with a meeting of Delbrück and Maximilian von Sandt in Brussels, which had been scheduled to finalise the organisation of Sandt’s civilian wing of the Government-General. Sandt now expected that the Government-General would be extended over all of
171 Louran was Reich commissioner in the Hamburg maritime office (Seeamt); strictly speaking,
he was not a Hamburg citizen. See in particular: Staatsarchiv (StA) Hamburg: 622-1 (Nachlaß
Schramm), J 84: personnel list ‘Zivilverwaltung für die Provinz Antwerpen’ [1919]; 132-II (Senatskommission für die Reichs- und Auswärtigen Angelegenheiten), 3952, fol. 39: ‘Geschäftsverteilungsplan Zivilverwaltung Antwerpen’ [April 1915]. Further: StA Hamburg: 622-1 (NL Schramm): J 92; J 96; 111-2 (Senat-Kriegsakten), A IV, a. BA Berlin, R 1501, 119452: fols. 69 ff: ‘Verwaltungsbericht des Verwaltungschefs’ (= report Sandt), 30 Oct. 1914, appendix; fols 149 ff: report Sandt, 13 Jan. 1915, appendix.
172 Notably Hermann Rodewald (mainly responsible for ‘Ernährungswesen’, 1916-18). See: See:
Staatsarchiv (StA) Hamburg: 622-1 (NL Schramm), J 84: personnel list [1919]. Staatsarchiv (StA) Bremen, 3-M.2.h.2., 55, fols. 14, 31. Heinrich Binder, Mit dem Hauptquartier nach Westen. Aufzeichnungen eines Kriegsberichterstatters, Stuttgart/Berlin 1915, p. 101.
173 In the Stadtarchiv Lübeck I found references to Lübeck men being employed in the central
offices of the Civilian Administration in Brussels, but not in Antwerp. Stadtarchiv (SA) Lübeck,
Belgium and decided to build up his organisation in the Belgian provinces. Delbrück suggested that a Hanseatic personality should take over in Antwerp. On returning to Berlin, on 16 October 1914, he offered the job to Friedrich Sthamer, the representative of Hamburg in the German upper house of parliament (Bundesrat). However, the Senate of Hamburg declared Sthamer indispensable, suggesting instead Justus Strandes, who was duly accepted. A few days later, the Senate of Bremen complained that Bremen should be represented in occupied Antwerp as well. Probably as a result, Sandt appointed Baron Plettenberg – a friend of his – to Strandes’ staff.174
These Hanseatic appointments were reportedly viewed with great suspicion in the South German states. An industrialist from Mannheim, for example, impressed on the imperial Government the fear that a Hamburg-led administration of Antwerp might disadvantage South German interests by striving to divert the German traffic of the rival port to Hamburg.175 Although Sandt and the imperial Ministry of the Interior took note of the substantial economic interests expressed in the industrialist’s letter, they held on to the Hanseatic character of the Antwerp administration. Every time the president or his ‘representative’ was recalled to Germany, they insisted on a replacement from Hamburg or Bremen respectively.176
Three reasons prompted Delbrück to his Hanseatic choice.177 First, he wanted to bolster the civilian wing – which was supervised by his ministry – of the otherwise military Government-General. A Hamburg Senator, who was constitutionally comparable to for example the King of Bavaria178, would be an authoritative force. Second, it was necessary that the person controlling the administration of Antwerp would be familiar with the specific conditions of a region dominated by a ‘world port’ – especially since the German Government, in October 1914, still hoped that a certain degree of the international maritime
174 See: StA Hamburg, 132-II, 3952, fols. 3, 5. StA Hamburg, 111-2, A IV, a, fol. 1. BA Berlin, R
1501, 119339, fols. 24, 32, 64. BA Berlin, R 1501, 119452, fol. 55: report Sandt, 30 Oct. 1914, p. 1. Clemens von Delbrück, Die wirtschaftliche Mobilmachung in Deutschland 1914, Munich 1924, pp. 150-63.
175 BA Berlin, R 1501, 119343, fols. 9-12: J. Weber, 22 Oct. 1914, and its circulation in the RdI
and Civilian Administration of the Government-General.
176 StA Hamburg, 132-II, 3959, fol. 1. StA Bremen, 3-M.2.h.2., 55, fol. 14.
177 StA Hamburg, 111-2, A IV, a, fol. 2: extract from minutes of the Senate, 19 Oct. 1914,
concerning Sthamer’s negotiations with Delbrück on 17 Oct. 1914.
traffic in Antwerp could be revived. Third, Delbrück wanted a maritime expert posted in Antwerp in view of the future peace negotiations: in order to gain insight into the economic conditions of the place of Antwerp, so that the most advantageous deal could be struck for Germany after the war.
These were the reasons that Delbrück, supported by the Chancellor179, expounded to Sthamer. In addition to them, Delbrück was probably motivated by a further, unspoken, consideration in connection with the third reason. At the time, annexationist demands, in particular with respect to Antwerp, had already been voiced, and Delbrück, who was sceptical of such projects, must have favoured a candidate for Antwerp who was removed from the annexationist pressure groups in the Rhineland and Southern Germany. Just as the industrialist from Mannheim suspected, he seems to have deliberately avoided a South German; not, however, in order to benefit Hamburg at the expense of Antwerp and Southern Germany, but to gain a balanced view about the Antwerp Question.180
Concerning the preponderance of Hamburg over Bremen in the civil administration of Antwerp, it, too, seems to have been due to a mixture of tactical deliberation and practical reasons. Delbrück approached Sthamer, whom he knew personally, because Hamburg was the most powerful of the Free Hanseatic cities and because, much more than Bremen, it embodied the maritime interests of Germany. Perhaps Delbrück took also into consideration that Hamburg was less of a direct rival to Antwerp, so that its representatives might be less compromised. In the end, Hamburg seemed to have more personnel available than Bremen: in 1917, the Bremen Chamber of Commerce was unable to send further men to Antwerp despite the request of the civil administration.181 Lübeck, finally, was neither approached, nor did its Senate develop any particular interest for Antwerp, probably because its economic orientation was almost exclusively concentrated on the Baltic region.182
So, Delbrück consciously involved Hamburg and, if only secondarily, Bremen in the occupation of Antwerp: not only for the purposes of wartime
179 BA Berlin, R 1501, 119341, fol. 64: telegram Riezler, Großes Hauptquartier (GHQ), to
Reichskanzlei (RK), 17 Oct. 1914.
180 Delbrück, Die wirtschaftliche Mobilmachung in Deutschland 1914, p. 171. 181 Archiv der Bremer Handelskammer (HK) Bremen, Hp II 15, vol. 6, loose sheets:
correspondence Senate with Chamber of Commerce, April 1917.
administration but also explicitly in order to include them in the organisation of Germany’s future relationship with Antwerp. This raises the following questions: what was the stance of Bremen and Hamburg towards the future of Antwerp? Was there a common Hanseatic interest, or were there differences between Hamburg and Bremen on the one hand, and between their respective Senates and their local private interest groups on the other hand?
Re-assessing the port competition of Antwerp
The Antwerp Question was taken very seriously both in Bremen and in Hamburg. The prospect that the war might bring about changes in the relationship between Germany and Antwerp, and that Germany might be able to influence the development of the port of Antwerp, was greeted with mixed feelings in both cities. The first reaction was to use the occupation of Antwerp as an opportunity to ‘get even’ regarding certain aspects of the fierce competition that the German seaports had encountered from Antwerp before the war. This time, the initiative came from Bremen.
On 7 October 1914, two days before the fortress of Antwerp surrendered, Philipp Heineken, the Director-General of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, contacted the imperial Ministry of the Interior about the following delicate matter. Before the war, the port of Antwerp had often managed to attract German goods even from regions that had geographically better connections to the German ports. Heineken explained that it had been impossible so far to identify a satisfactory cause for this occurrence: the existence of secret agreements and illegal discounts, which had been suspected primarily, had always been denied by all offices and companies involved. The imminent conquest and occupation of Antwerp, however, provided the opportunity to send a team of shipping experts to that city in order to uncover the root causes. If the team were sent out quickly, Heineken hoped that all the relevant documentation might still be seized. He requested that the Government assemble such a team as quickly as possible, and he immediately recommended three men from Bremen, who were linked to the Senate (Dronke), the Chamber of Commerce (Apelt), and his own Norddeutscher Lloyd (Bultmann). He had already received the assent from the Chamber of Commerce, and he was sure that the Senate, too, would cooperate.183
Five days later, the Bremen Senate sent a letter to the Government to officially request the addition of a ‘commission of experts’ (Sachverständigen- kommission) to the administration of Antwerp. Reiterating the points raised by Heineken, it emphasised that:
It should be in the national interest to take advantage of the success of the German arms also to this effect, that the obstruction of the German competition [Wettbewerb], resulting from this obscurity and uncertainty, be removed if possible.184
The proposition was warmly received in the Interior Ministry, yet it appears that it delayed the appointment of the commission because it wanted to involve Hamburg as well. The Hamburg Senate readily consented to the project, and the commission started work in Antwerp in the second week of November 1914, consisting of the following members at its core: Bultmann (Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen), Dubbers (Bremen Chamber of Commerce), Ehlers (Association of Hamburg Shipping Companies) and Campbell (Levante-Linie, Hamburg).185
This ‘commission of experts’ investigated most thoroughly the costs, tariffs and other policies of transport connected to the port of Antwerp – apparently finding all the desired documentation.186 Within a month, they had finished their work and presented a preliminary report to Senator Strandes of the Civil Administration. It soon circulated among the offices in Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen. In March 1915, the commission submitted a slightly extended version as their final report to the Reich Chancellor. Their findings were disappointing to the project’s initiators in Bremen: the commission did not find any indications of illegal or secret practices in Antwerp with respect to the shipment of goods from Germany. There had been cases where special discounts had been granted, but all of them turned out to be legal, public and relatively isolated events. In fact, the commission concluded that the ‘deviation’ (Abwanderung) of German traffic to Antwerp had been less than it had appeared at first sight. Nevertheless, the commission also identified five factors that explained the ‘superiority’ of the port of Antwerp over its German rivals. Apart from a better waterway connection to the Rhine, there were politico-economic
184 BA Berlin, R 1501, 119341, fol. 106: Bremen Senate to RdI, 12 Oct. 1914. Same in: StA
Bremen, 3-M.2.h.2. No. 9, box 39, fol. 1.
185 BA Berlin, R 1501: 1192241, fol. 111; 119342, fol. 139.
186 See HK Bremen, Hp II 15, vol. 6, loose sheets: John to Bremen Chamber of Commerce, 1
factors that made Antwerp very cheap: state subsidies, non-profit railway tariffs, few port levies and competitive rates for sea freights by the many rivalling lines. In addition to that, trading conditions in Belgium were generally cheap, with low customs and low labour costs.187
The work of the commission contributed substantially to the development of the German Antwerp Question. The analysis of Antwerp’s success might not have been original – certainly not in terms of the Belgian literature on the subject – but it was authoritative. All subsequent discussions about the future of Antwerp concentrated on the key-factors identified by the commission. In addition, the Bremen/Hamburg commission compiled a confidential book on the transport economy of the port of Antwerp. Backed up by a wealth of documentation, it included the macroeconomic aspects, such as the port’s profitability, the institutional structure, as well as details about costs and equipment. It was printed and distributed by the Senates of Bremen and Hamburg from April 1915 onwards, and it became an essential reference work for everyone who was interested in how the port of Antwerp was managed just before the war – and how this could or should be altered after the war.188
Bremen and the future of Antwerp
Meanwhile, Bremen did not content itself with sending the investigative commission to Antwerp.189 The Senate, the Chamber of Commerce, as well as the shipping companies were greatly concerned about the future of Antwerp, and in October 1914, they felt left in the dark about the imperial Government’s intentions. On the 27th, the Senate had their first detailed discussion on this topic. They decided that it was of paramount importance to carefully sound out influential members of the imperial Government about this question and to make sure to get all the relevant updates.
Interestingly, the Senate thought it most likely that Antwerp would be annexed in some form after the war, possibly as a Prussian province. Senator
187 StA Hamburg, 132-II, 3952, in fol. 32: preliminary report of the commission of experts, 10
Dec. 1914. A copy is also in: BA Berlin, R 1501, 119343, fols. 112-116. StA Hamburg, 111-2, A IV, b, fols. 5ff: Commission report for the Chancellor, Hamburg/Bremen, 6 March 1915.
188 Ehlers, et al., Verkehrswirtschaft. For its printing and distribution see in particular: StA
Bremen, 3-M.2.h.2., 9, box 35, fols. 29-34. See also ch. 6.
189 Bremen and Hamburg actually sent two commissions to Antwerp at the end of 1914. The
second commission consisted of specialist engineers to inspect the state of the 30-odd German ships in the port. This aspect is dealt with in ch. 8.
Biermann gave a paper on the effect that this would have on the Bremen- Antwerp competition, and concluded that an annexation of Antwerp was ‘an undesirable growth’ (‘ein wenig erwünschter Zuwachs’) from Bremen’s perspective. But rather than wanting to campaign against an annexation, Biermann advised that Bremen should take ‘preventive measures’, which would enable its port, trade and shipping to meet the challenge.190 During at least the following year, the Senate’s discussion of the Antwerp Question was taken up by the formulation and, subsequently, the promotion of these measures.
A week before, the Bremen bureau for trade and shipping, which was shared by the Senate and the Chamber of Commerce, had appointed another special commission to investigate the future relationship of Antwerp to Germany. This ‘Antwerp Commission’ met for the first time on 2 November 1914. Eighteen men, representing the Senate, the Chamber of Commerce, and the shipping companies, attended. In a report about a recent consultation with Delbrück in Berlin, Senator Biermann confirmed the impression that annexations of Belgian territory were a likely outcome of the war. Concerning Antwerp, Delbrück had given the assurance that, if it ‘became German’, Bremen could expect extra support for its status as a port city. Indeed, Delbrück had asked for a memorandum from Bremen, so that the imperial administration could determine the scope and the specificities of the support needed. After Biermann’s report, there was a general discussion, in which the members of the commission raised their particular concerns. For example, it was cautioned that measures involving tariffs could end up benefiting Hamburg more than Bremen. Significantly, everybody agreed that the best support for Bremen was an improvement and extension of the waterway connections to the German inland. This had the added advantage that it could be presented as being in the Reich’s own interest. It reinforced Germany’s internal traffic infrastructure, which, as Lohmann, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, suggested, was necessary for the future economic bloc of Mitteleuropa.191
Dronke, the legal adviser to the Senate, synthesised the points discussed into