Albert Ballin

by Bernhard Huldermann

“Sincerely yours,
“(Signed) Laeisz.”

As this card was found among the papers and documents which Ballin left at the time of his death, it would seem that it was not used for its intended purpose, but that he preferred to keep it as a souvenir of the man whom he always remembered with gratitude and affection, and of whose life he could tell a good number of characteristic anecdotes. The telegram of which the text is given below is also highly typical of Carl Laeisz. I have not been able to discover what was the occasion of sending it, but I am inclined to think that it must be in some manner connected with the conference held in the Berlin Royal Castle, and referred to on an earlier page, at which Ballin first attracted the Kaiser’s attention. The text is as follows:

“Persons who give in without a protest are miserable creatures, and being such, they are deserving of nothing but contempt. Suggest that you obstinately stick to Hamburg point of view, not only from personal conviction, but for other weighty reasons as well. Meeting hardly convened simply to induce you to give in.”

Although there is scarcely anyone to whom the name of a Hamburg patriot can be applied with greater justice than to Ballin, and although there are few people who have done more to promote the well-being and the prosperity of their native city, and who have had a better appreciation of one of the most lovable features of her inhabitants, viz. their dry, unconventional, and kindly humour, it would be wrong to assume that this local patriotism of Ballin made him blind to the shortcomings and deficiencies of his native city. On the contrary, his eminent sense of the realities of life made him see most clearly the points of weakness in the position of Hamburg, e.g. those connected with the system of her finances. The so-called Köhlbrand agreement, which, after a hard struggle, put an end to the long controversy between Hamburg and Prussia by stipulating that the course of the lower Elbe should be regulated without detriment to the interests of the town of Harburg, imposed such a vast amount of expenditure upon Hamburg, and the Prussian local authorities concerned insisted on securing the payment of such large compensations to the owners whose rights were adversely affected by the improvement of the waterway, that it might well be doubted whether Hamburg could shoulder these enormous burdens.

It speaks volumes for Ballin’s unprejudiced mind that he frequently maintained nothing would be of greater benefit to Hamburg than her renunciation of her sovereignty as a city-state in favour of incorporation with Prussia. Prussia, he argued, was her natural hinterland, after all; and if she consented to be thus incorporated, she would be such a precious jewel in the crown of Prussia that she could secure without an effort all the advantages and privileges which Prussia, by pursuing the strictly Prussian line in her politics, now actually prevented her from acquiring. In course of time, however, her present isolation would undermine the foundations of her existence, especially if and when the increasing volume of traffic passing through her port should demand a further expansion of the latter, and, consequently, a further rise in the financial burdens. In that case the unnatural position which resulted from the fact that the “Elbe delta” belonged to two different states, and which had its origin in the political history of the district, would make itself felt with all its drawbacks, and the ultimate sufferer would be the country as a whole of which Hamburg, after all, was the connecting link with the nations beyond the sea.

These are the same arguments and considerations which are used when the modern problem of a “Greater Hamburg” is under discussion, with this difference only, that in Ballin’s time the only solution which was regarded as possible was that Hamburg should cast in her lot with her Prussian neighbour.

Ballin repeatedly vented the full force of his sarcasm against the advocates of an “out-and-out Hamburg policy” to whom his own views sounded like heresy, a policy which found perhaps its most comic expression in the speech of a former Hamburg burgomaster who referred to the King of Prussia as “our illustrious ally.” Ballin did not recognize the existence of a line of demarcation which, as many lesser minds imagined, separated republican Hamburg from the rest of Germany. In reality there is no such separation; Hamburg, indeed, receives year after year a constant influx of human material and of ideas from her German hinterland, without which she could not exist at all, and in spite of which she has never had a superfluity, but—at times, at least—rather a deficiency of specially gifted citizens. This latter circumstance and the frequent absence of that quality of mental alertness which Bismarck, in speaking of the German character in general, used to designate as the missing “dash of champagne in the blood” once made Ballin say: “I quite see that what this town wants is 10,000 Jews. I do not, by any means, shut my eyes to the disagreeable qualities of the Jewish character, but still, another 10,000 of them would be a decided advantage.” This utterance confirms how free from prejudice he was where the Jewish question was concerned. Although not at all orthodox, but rather indifferent in his religious views, he was far too proud to disavow his origin or his religion, or to change the latter. Of someone who had changed his name, he said, in a tone of bitter reproach, that he had insulted his father.

Ballin’s relations with the working classes and his attitude towards the Labour question were not such as the Socialist papers were fond of alleging, especially at the time when the Labour controversy was at its height, and when strikes were constantly occurring or threatening. The first big strike affecting Ballin’s special sphere of activity was that of the Hamburg dock labourers in 1896. It was caused by wages disputes which the Packetfahrt tried in vain to settle by raising the wages paid to the men. The interests of the employers in the ensuing struggle were not, however, specially represented by the associations of the shipping firms, but were looked after by the big “Association of Employers of Labour,” and therefore the attitude taken up by the employers as a whole was not determined by practical considerations from the point of view of the shipping companies. The Packetfahrt, however, seems to have emphasized the necessity of being guided by such practical considerations, as may be inferred from the fact that the Packetfahrt was the only one among the large firms of employers which advocated from the outset that certain concessions should be granted in respect of the demands put forward by the workmen. Although, as has been remarked, the company succeeded in seeing its recommendation adopted, the strike started on November 18th, 1896. At first it was restricted to the dockers, but the number of the strikers was soon swelled by the adhesion of the quay-labourers and of several other categories of port-labourers and seamen. When this had occurred, and when the Packetfahrt suggested that steps should be taken on the part of the employers with the object of reaching a friendly settlement, these suggestions did not secure a majority in the counsels of the employers, and it was in regard to this that Ballin’s notes, under date of December 9th, contain the following entry: “We are continuing our efforts to induce the Employers’ Association and the Shipowners’ Association to give the strikers a chance of an honourable retreat. What we propose in detail is that the men should be asked to resume work of their own accord in consideration of which the employers would promise to submit their grievances to a bona fide examination. All our efforts have failed because of the attitude taken up by the Employers’ Association. We can only hope that the Senate will consent to mediate in the conflict.” This body, however, was afraid of being accused of prejudice in favour of the employers, and declined to act as mediator. “It is very much against my wish,” Ballin’s notes continue, “that our own interests are represented by the Employers’ Association,” and on December 23rd, he wrote: “Meanwhile, the Senate, in reply to the resolution passed by the men, has asked them to resume work unconditionally against the promise to look into their grievances, and as far as they appeared to be justified, to redress them after a joint conference had been held between the employers and the strikers. This offer of a compromise was rejected by the workmen.” The employers were able to get the most urgent work done by substitute labour, and the strike came to an end in the early days of February.

Among the subsequent Labour troubles those of 1907 are of special significance. In that year, after a strike of the dockers and the seamen, all those employers who had occasion to employ any workmen in the port of Hamburg founded an organization somewhat on the lines of a Labour Bureau, called the Hafenbetriebsverein. The termination of the strike just referred to was brought about by Ballin’s personal influence, and it was he who conducted the prolonged negotiations with the heads of the Labour organization. Later on, in 1911, when the Hafenbetriebsverein began to conclude agreements with this organization by which the wages for the various categories of dock labourers were fixed—a policy which did not exactly meet with the full approval of large sections of employers, it was again due to Ballin’s influence that these agreements were generally accepted. It is just possible that a certain event, insignificant in itself, may have strengthened Ballin’s natural tendency towards a settlement along the lines of a compromise. As has been said before, the year 1907, which, from the business point of view, had been excellent (at least, during the first six months), and during which the above-mentioned strike occurred, was succeeded by a year which brought exceedingly unsatisfactory earnings to the company. Ballin did what he had done on a previous occasion, in 1901: he sent a memorandum to all the employees of the firm asking them to cut down expenses to the lowest possible extent, to contribute their share towards a more economical working of every department, and to submit to him any suggestions of their own as to how the necessary retrenchment could be effected. I was instructed to examine the general expenses account with a view to finding out in what way a reduction would be possible, and I drew Ballin’s attention to the fact that the considerable sums which had to be spent in 1907 in consequence of the strike would, of course, not appear again in the balance-sheet for 1908, so that this would lead to an automatic reduction of the working expenses. Ballin was surprised to see how large this particular item was, and the whole occurrence proved once more that a lean agreement would have been preferable to a fat lawsuit.

As Ballin was pre-eminently a man whose mind was bent on practical work and on the production of practical results, it is but natural that he was greatly interested in the practical aspects of social politics, and that he applied its principles to the activities in which he was engaged as far as he thought he was justified in doing so. Not in peace times only, but also during the war did he hold these views, and when he was connected with the work of provisioning the civil population, and, later, with that of preparing the economic post-war reconstruction, he was frequently brought into contact with men who occupied prominent positions in the world of Labour.