World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseThe Schlichting-Werft shipyard was originally established in the Travemünde district in the northern part of the city of Lübeck, Germany in 1898, on the left bank of the Trave River. Initially it focused on largely rescue boats for ocean-going merchant ships and naval warships, but due to the general push for industrial expansion in the era of Wilhelm II of Germany, the company began building larger vessels, though still of the wooden variety. To accommodate the expansion, it was relocated to the Priwall peninsula on the right bank of the Trave River in 1905. In the 1920s, the company built sailing ships for the private market. During WW2, it built minesweepers for the German Navy. After the war, Schlichting-Werft reopened for operations and prepared itself for the construction of steel ships. Its first steel ship order, cargo ship Antonia, resulted in disaster as the firm that placed the order ultimately could not pay for the ship, and this brought bankruptcy upon Schlichting-Werft. In 1953, Alnwick Harmstorf, who had run a successful salvaging company, bought Schlichting-Werft to expand into the shipbuilding business, and he retained members of the the Schlichting family to manage the shipyard. With financial support from Harmstorf, Schlichting bounced back, building steel ships of increasing size. Starting with the oil crisis of 1973-1974, however, orders for new tankers and freighters began to diminish for Schlichting-Werft and Harmstorf's conglomerate. Schlichting-Werft finally ceased operations in 1986, as did the entire Harmstorf group (although Alnwick Harmstorf would start another business, the Alnwick Harmstorf Schiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, in Altona in 1990; he passed away in 1996). At the time of this writing in 2023, the Rose Farmyard retirement community occupies the site where the Schlichting-Werft shipyard was located. Among the last ships built by the shipyard was the science research vessel RV Meteor, which is still in operations under the ownership of the German government.