The morning of May 23, 1912, witnessed the christening of a new German icon. For many Germans, it was a wonder of the modern age, a powerful symbol of the nation's achievements in industry, engineering, and technology. For others, it was the embodiment of all the evils wrought by political, social, and cultural transformation.Footnote ¹ Some said it expressed the character of the German people, in a manner similar to Cologne Cathedral and Sanssouci, the palace of Frederick the Great.Footnote ² But there were those who thought it “appeared as a typical manifestation of the new Germany, with its huckstering and obtrusive manners, more a snobbism than a symbol of German competence.”Footnote ³ The Kaiser was fascinated by this expression of the ambition, ingenuity, and might of an Empire in which he believed power rested with himself, the Prussian nobility, and a powerful military complex. And yet Hamburg's mayor, Johann Heinrich Burchard, echoed the feelings of many when he described this new wonder as “above all … the product of a flourishing, self-conscious German middle class.”Footnote ⁴ Although extolled as a symbol of German unity, Social Democrats denounced the modern leviathan as an expression of class inequality and lamented that ten men were killed and one hundred injured while constructing it. With this in mind, how could Germany be proud of what it had achieved?Footnote ⁵

The icon in question was the Imperator, the new flagship of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft, or HAPAG. When it slid down the ways into Hamburg's harbor on that May morning—just over five weeks after the sinking of the Titanic—it was the world's largest ship and was intended to carry passengers and freight across the North Atlantic between Hamburg and New York. The vessel was a dramatic new departure in German shipbuilding. It was almost twice the size of the largest German warship: it displaced 52,117 gross tons, measured almost 919 feet in length, carried 8,500 tons of coal, and could accommodate 4,594 passengers, 908 of them in first-class cabins.Footnote ⁶ Its crew of 1,180 hands was commanded by a commodore and four captains. As with several other luxury liners of the time, the construction, launch, and maiden voyage of the Imperator attracted considerable media attention in Europe and North America. It was lauded in trade publications and the popular press as an astonishing feat of modern technology, maritime architecture, and marine engineering. Tens of thousands of people turned out in Southampton and New York to catch a glimpse of the new German ship and go aboard to inspect its fittings and interiors.

The Imperator and its sister ships, the Vaterland (launched 1913) and the Bismarck (completed after World War I), have long attracted the interest of maritime historians. The Imperator, in particular, has been discussed as a major development in maritime architecture and design; as an important advance in trans-Atlantic passenger travel; as a prototype of the modern liner that appeared after World War I; and as the finest first-class hotel to sail the North Atlantic during the Belle Époque.Footnote ⁷ The opulence and sophistication of its first-class interiors are said to have surpassed those of the more famous British passenger ships launched during the same period: the Cunard Line's Aquitania, Lusitania, and Mauretania; and the White Star Line's Britannic, Olympic, and Titanic.

But historians of modern Germany have paid much less attention to commercial and passenger shipping, including the Imperator, Vaterland, and Bismarck.Footnote ⁸ Instead, scholarly attention has focused on the building of the German navy, especially in the context of growing Anglo-German antagonism, but also from the perspective of domestic politics and popular nationalism.Footnote ⁹ Jan Rüger has recently demonstrated that in addition to its military, political, and strategic importance, the German battle fleet was a powerful cultural symbol; it provided important material for projecting an image of the newly founded Empire abroad, and for strengthening collective identity at home.Footnote ¹⁰ As part of the rapid expansion of public life in the 1890s, German naval rituals became a form of public theater for domestic and foreign consumption. Furthermore, with the mass circulation of information and images in the popular press, and a growing market for entertainment and consumer goods, the German navy was turned into a commodity; a whole range of products—including tobacco, children's games, and clothing—linked naval themes with consumer desires. Consequently, the navy provided important material for the engendering of national sentiment in Imperial Germany.

Can the same be said of commercial and passenger shipping, and how can its study add to our knowledge of the German Empire? The history of civilian shipping reveals much about the nature of the Kaiserreich in its national, international, and transnational dimensions. First, the development of commercial shipping, driven by capitalist innovation, was a major feature of German modernization. Studying its history complements our knowledge of the dynamic processes of industrial, economic, and technological change that played such a significant role in shaping modern Germany. Moreover, like industrial architecture, the construction of Germany's premier passenger liners was an undertaking in which the economic, political, and cultural spheres came into direct contact “extending beyond the exchange of ideas to collaboration on a practical level.”Footnote ¹¹ Consequently, these ships offer concise, but complex case studies of the tangible impact of modernization and modernity on German society.

Second, the launch of a passenger liner, like a battleship, was a carefully planned public spectacle, and reports on the construction, interior decoration, and maiden voyage of a new vessel appeared throughout the German, European, and American press. German liners also appeared in numerous forms of popular literature, advertising, and public-relations material, and their success “was determined to a great extent by early public-relations men.”Footnote ¹² In an era that witnessed the rapid expansion of the popular culture of the media, entertainment, and consumerism, it could even be said that the attention afforded Germany's passenger liners was an early manifestation of the cult of media celebrity that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, on the one hand, the Imperator and other commercial vessels became part of the “optical characteristics” of the German nation, and deserve to be studied for their role in the formation of a sense of German nationhood.Footnote ¹³ On the other hand, they provided Europeans, Britons, and Americans with important reference points for understanding or imagining the new nation; in fact, because extensive press campaigns accompanied the commissioning of large German liners, many were better known in the United States than in Germany.Footnote ¹⁴ As a result, the study of foreign news reportage on German vessels can complement our knowledge of the way in which Germany's image was constructed by the foreign media for popular consumption.

Third, ocean-going shipping is fundamentally an international and transnational phenomenon, and it should be remembered that the Hamburg-New York service operated by HAPAG was only one of many routes plied by the ships of several German shipping companies around the globe.Footnote ¹⁵ More to the point, the Imperator and its sisters were hybrids of international and transnational influence, competition, and cooperation. They were the products of business decisions informed by global dynamics, and were a response to the imperatives of international migration, travel, and trade; their physical structures and technology were partly the products of foreign innovation and experience, and their interiors were designed and executed by international teams of architects and firms. As such, they bear witness to the extent to which Germany participated in the various processes of globalization prior to 1914, and the degree to which the Empire was embedded in the world.

The scope of this essay allows us to pursue only one aspect of the complex history of German commercial shipping. It focuses on the Imperator's interior design and analyzes criticisms of the vessel's aesthetics that were mounted by Karl Scheffler. Scheffler (1869-1951) is well known to scholars as one of the most important German art critics of the first half of the twentieth century. His criticisms of the Imperator took the form of an open letter to HAPAG's general director, Albert Ballin, which was published in the journal Kunst und Künstler in November 1913. This document has received no close attention in recent scholarly analysis of Scheffler's work.Footnote ¹⁶ And yet, as this essay will demonstrate, it is the most trenchant articulation of the views of a group of intellectuals and artists who opposed the current of popular enthusiasm surrounding the Imperator to mount serious criticisms of the vessel as a floating ambassador of the German Empire. Figures such as Bruno Paul, Fritz Schumacher, and Aby Warburg are well known to historians, but their interest in the Imperator is not. In contrast to the interior decoration of the ship as conceived and executed by HAPAG, all “pictured” or imagined the way in which the vessel's first-class public rooms should be constructed and decorated if this floating ambassador to France, Britain, and the United States was to represent their image of Germany to the transatlantic world. Scheffler's letter is the clearest, most complete, and concentrated elaboration of the social, economic, and cultural perspectives that informed why and how these critics “pictured” the Imperator in the way that they did.

To be sure, this group was small and criticism of the vessel's aesthetics in the German media was limited, especially outside Hamburg. Nonetheless, Scheffler's letter is important because, beyond the particular concerns of a handful of intellectuals, it gives expression to ideas about the form and role of art in modern Germany that were held by several progressive critics, artists, and organizations such as the German Werkbund. Concerned with shaping German art and design in conformity with modern developments, reformers usually focused their attention on architecture, the applied arts, consumer goods, and industrial design. Scheffler's letter deserves attention because it applies reform-minded thinking about the arts to an ocean-going steamship. It demonstrates that some influential figures, concerned with putting a modern face on the German Empire, regarded transatlantic passenger liners as important national symbols and as major works of architecture and design that required critical attention.

There are numerous publications that treat the social, political, and cultural dynamics of the German Empire through the medium of its art.Footnote ¹⁷ Architecture, painting, secession movements, artists’ colonies, and national monuments have all received scholarly scrutiny. But there has been no discussion of passenger steamships as works of architecture and design that contribute to our understanding of the complexities of art—both German and foreign, modern and traditional—and its reception in Imperial Germany. This essay provides a concise exploration of an area of study yet to be fully investigated by historians. It also reveals a dimension to Wilhelmine movements for social and cultural reform that has not been explored. There has been considerable interest in the manner in which middle-class Germans organized themselves to shape and govern their society independent of formal political processes. This desire manifested itself in several ways, including lifestyle reform, the Heimat movement, the garden city movement, and the Werkbund, and scholars are beginning to emphasize the democratic potential represented by these movements and to see them as a substantial “force for change” in Imperial Germany.Footnote ¹⁸ But there is no discussion of how commercial shipping featured as part of this phenomenon, nor any indication that ships mattered to reformers. Scheffler's letter is important as it reveals one instance in which this was clearly the case for some, and demonstrates why it was so.

Finally, the essay suggests there is much to be learned by considering the transnational dimension of German history through a particular and previously unconsidered object of inquiry. There has been a considerable amount of recent interest in Anglo-German and American-German cultural exchange, as well as in Anglo-American perceptions of the German Empire.Footnote ¹⁹ But there has been no investigation of how the vessels that facilitated transatlantic communication featured, in their own right, as part of the phenomenon. Scheffler's letter was written out of concern for the way in which the German Empire would be “pictured,” especially in the foreign press, through the medium of the Imperator. It prompts us to explore and consider—however briefly in this essay—the way in which the ship was construed as a “national monument,” in Germany and abroad, and the role it played in representing Imperial Germany to the transatlantic world.

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Founded in 1847, HAPAG was a publicly held company that operated without government subsidies. Most of the firm's revenues were generated by the transportation of freight, and this aspect of the company's business expanded around the globe in the 1890s. But the firm is better known in popular imagination for its passenger shipping. It began offering service to New York in 1848, and by the early 1890s, HAPAG was carrying more passengers on this route than its long-time Bremen rival, the Norddeutscher Lloyd. From 1893, the firm was also commonly known as the Hamburg-Amerika Linie, and by 1914 it was the world's largest shipping concern, boasting a fleet of 194 ships of approximately 1.5 million tons.

Competition between the commercial shipping lines of Britain and Germany focused, from the 1880s, on building the largest and fastest passenger steamers on the North Atlantic. The speed of crossings between the English Channel and New York was keenly followed in the Anglo-American press and played an important role in the public's perception of the major steamship companies. From 1898-1907, German ships held the Blue Riband, the unofficial distinction honoring the speediest east-west crossing. But this obsession with speed entailed high running costs, as well as uncomfortable hull vibration and excessive noise levels from high-speed engines. It also meant that new express steamers were quickly outdated due to the rapid pace of technological innovation.Footnote ²⁰ Always with an eye on its British rivals, HAPAG was aware that the White Star Line was having success attracting passengers with its slower, yet larger and more comfortably outfitted ships, such as the Oceanic, the Celtic, and the Cedric. In light of this, the company rethought its strategy early in the century and decided to make luxury, dependability, and size, not speed, its priorities in the construction of new passenger liners. This decision was exemplified by the Amerika and Kaiserin Auguste Victoria which, when launched in 1905, were the largest liners afloat and among the most luxurious.

It was in the mid-1880s that first-class accommodation aboard transatlantic passenger steamers began to resemble that of luxury hotels. Before then, any concession to hospitality at sea was minimal. As Philip Dawson explains, travelers lived aboard ship “virtually as supernumeraries, with no ship's duties to perform.”Footnote ²¹ But especially from the 1890s, steamship companies needed to accommodate travelers who had increasing experience with luxury hotels. Consequently, they began offering onboard accommodation and service comparable to that of establishments such as the Waldorf Astoria in New York (1897), the Paris Ritz (1898), and the Berlin Adlon (1907). In fact, promotional literature likened the Imperator to a spa, and its first-class passengers to Kurgäste.Footnote ²²

HAPAG made a decision in 1908 to build a trio of passenger vessels larger and more luxurious than anything its competitors had ever commissioned. A trio was necessary to maintain a weekly service between Hamburg and New York. In addition to the Imperator, the company launched the Vaterland on April 3, 1913, and the Bismarck on June 20, 1914. The three ships cost approximately 125 million marks or forty percent of HAPAG's total assets, and their combined passenger capacity was almost equal to that of the company's entire North Atlantic fleet.Footnote ²³ This was a risky and aggressive move intended to challenge the Norddeutscher Lloyd in all classes of passenger carriage and express freight, and the White Star and Cunard Lines in the first-class passenger business.Footnote ²⁴

It must be remembered, however, that these ships were intended to accommodate a cross section of European society, from its wealthiest magnates in first-class cabins to its poorest emigrants in steerage. The latter group generated the largest amount of revenue for HAPAG, and it was common knowledge that the company placed comfort above all else, even for third-class and steerage passengers. Management's rationale was that the comfortably accommodated emigrant would be likely to recommend HAPAG to family and friends yet to make the journey from Europe. The Imperator's steerage passengers were accommodated in cabins of two, four, and eight persons, not in barrack-style quarters. While extremely basic, these arrangements were better than those found aboard most ships prior to this time. Nonetheless, the ship embodied the dramatic class inequalities of the day. One company director noted that “in a confined space, social opposites run up hard against one another as nowhere else in the world. Exaggerated display here, wretchedness there, sometimes without air and daylight.”Footnote ²⁵

The Imperator and its sister ships were the Geisteskinder of Albert Ballin (1857-1918).Footnote ²⁶ Having joined the firm in 1886 and been promoted to a directorship in 1888, he became general director of the company in 1899.Footnote ²⁷ Ballin challenged the modest expectations of HAPAG's management and its reluctance to take risks with cosmopolitan sensibilities and a global vision; a keen understanding of the international nature of shipping; a determination to expand the company and compete seriously with its rivals; a desire to innovate in shipbuilding and experiment with new ideas; and a genius for advertising. Of course, the company's success cannot simply be attributed to Ballin's influence, and historians disagree about the nature of his motivations and goals.

Yet it is largely true that the shape that HAPAG took from the 1890s was mostly “his creation and the product of his genius.”Footnote ²⁸ As general director, he presided over a huge expansion of the company's fleet and share capital, increasing the firm's gross income by a factor of seven.Footnote ²⁹ He also drove much of the technical development of the line and was closely involved with the design of its ships.

HAPAG signed a contract for the Imperator's construction with Vulcan Shipbuilders of Stettin in March 1910, and the keel was laid in Hamburg in June of that year. It was the first quadruple screw, steam-turbine-powered vessel to be built in Germany, and the company projected its cost to be 24,894,000 marks.Footnote ³⁰ It would ultimately cost thirty-eight or thirty-nine million marks, and far surpassed anything previously launched by HAPAG. The company's promotional literature constantly emphasized the vessel's colossal dimensions, describing it as “a veritable skyscraper afloat.” In fact, it was often illustrated standing on its stern, towering above the Woolworth Building in New York, the world's tallest skyscraper at the time.Footnote ³¹ As it was launched in the wake of the Titanic disaster, company advertising also stressed the many advances in safety embodied by the ship, including its double hull, advanced navigational instrumentation, and the fact that it was equipped with more than eighty lifeboats.Footnote ³² Despite all this, not everyone considered it a first-rate vessel. Indeed, the British journal, Shipbuilding and Shipping Record reported in October 1914 that Ballin referred to the Imperator as a “first-rate hotel but a third-rate ship.”Footnote ³³ The liner lacked stability, was top-heavy, listed both to port and starboard, and rolled significantly even in calm seas. During its first annual overhaul, in November 1913, attempts to rectify these problems involved shortening its three funnels, replacing heavy fittings on the upper decks with ones in lighter materials, and pouring a large amount of cement along its bottom. But its problems were never completely solved. One company director, Johannes Merck, also recorded that the ship was too large and too expensive to generate positive earnings.Footnote ³⁴ In fact, the Imperator suffered a loss of 103,000 marks during its first season of service.Footnote ³⁵

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The Imperator's first-class public rooms were characterized by a degree of spaciousness previously unseen in maritime construction; they were conceived, first and foremost, with a concern for passenger comfort instead of in accordance with the constraints imposed by the structure of the vessel's hull. The main staircase rose to a height of seventeen meters, while the first-class dining room ran the entire thirty-meter width of the ship, and reached a height of 8.5 meters. The first-class ballroom was perhaps the most impressive innovation in the ship's interior: it was 22.5 meters long, 17 meters wide, 6 meters high, and was constructed without supporting columns. Company literature described it as “an unprecedented sight for every seasoned sea traveler.”Footnote ³⁶

As of September 25, 1912, the company had allotted 2,305,359 marks for the completion of the Imperator's interiors.Footnote ³⁷ The work was contracted to several firms; most were German, but French and English concerns were also employed. The entire project was supervised by HAPAG's house architect, Charles Mewès of the Cologne firm, Mewès and Bischoff. Mewès had worked for César Ritz on his Paris hotel in the late 1890s, with Arthur Davis on the Carlton Hotel and the London Ritz, and with Spanish designer Luis de Landecho on the Madrid Ritz.Footnote ³⁸ In keeping with almost all the large passenger steamers of the day, Mewès hid much of the ship's technical modernity—at least in first-class accommodation—behind a host of historical styles: the main staircase, the first-class dining room, and the winter garden were decorated in the style of Louis XVI; the ballroom in the style of Louis XIV; the Ritz Carlton restaurant in the French Empire style; the smoking room in English Tudor style; and the swimming pool in “Pompeian” style.Footnote ³⁹ The pool was modeled on a slightly smaller version at the Royal Automobile Club in London and has been described as “the most sensational facility of its kind ever to go to sea.”Footnote ⁴⁰ As Philip Dawson explains, the historicist interiors “were never intended to be period revival schemes per se, but emerged rather as a characteristic grand-luxe hotelier style.” The interiors were meant to appeal to a diverse public; they were to create a sense of elegance that would not be “at odds with anyone's individual preferences of style and taste.”Footnote ⁴¹

In part, the ship's interiors reflected Ballin's taste for historical revival styles, also evident in his stately Hamburg home. But sound business acumen was probably the real reason for the design decisions made by HAPAG. The company was concerned to secure the patronage of an international public, especially America's nouveau riche, by providing them with floating versions of Belle Époque hotels. Writing in the Neue Hamburger Zeitung, Hans Ossig explained that “a shipping company must not ignore the taste of its public, and especially Americans, who particularly like paying for the most luxurious cabins with their dollars. It is this reason that explains much that does not appeal [aboard the Imperator] and several contradictions between material and form, beauty and utility.”Footnote ⁴²

There were exceptions to the historicist interiors that dominated maritime architecture at the time. In fact, the interiors of HAPAG's Amerika and Kaiserin Auguste Victoria were partly executed in a Jugendstil aesthetic. Ballin had wanted Henry van de Velde to design the interiors of one his vessels in 1903, but changed his mind, according to Kurt Junghanns, after objections were voiced by the Kaiser.Footnote ⁴³ More importantly, the Norddeutscher Lloyd employed Bruno Paul, Joseph Olbrich, and Richard Riemerschmied, all members of Munich's United Studios for Art in Craftwork, to design the luxury suites aboard the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, which it launched in 1906.Footnote ⁴⁴ The Lloyd's George Washington, launched in 1908, also featured first-class public rooms designed by Bruno Paul and a first-class dining room designed by Rudolph Alexander Schröder, all of which demonstrated the influence of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright.Footnote ⁴⁵ But interiors built according to progressive design aesthetics remained unique to a small number of passenger ships until they were more widely employed in the 1920s.

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Scheffler's interest in the Imperator was motivated by the extensive media attention that the liner received in the transatlantic world and by the fact that the ship was construed, at home and abroad, as a national monument. He began his letter by expressing a desire to go aboard the vessel to see the “marvels” reported by the international group of writers and journalists who sailed on its maiden voyage in June 1913.Footnote ⁴⁶ A brief account of the coverage afforded the Imperator in the Anglo-American and German press will demonstrate the nature of the ship's international reception and is essential to understanding the importance that Scheffler and other German critics attached to the vessel.

The Imperator captured the interest of the popular press in Europe, Britain, and North America. As with several of the large luxury liners commissioned by the Cunard and White Star Lines in Britain, it became an international media star. Promotional literature published by HAPAG described the ship as a vehicle for mutual understanding between nations, and it was enthusiastically welcomed in Southampton on its maiden voyage in June 1913.Footnote ⁴⁷ The dominant tone of British newspaper coverage, including that which treated the vessel's interior decoration, was one of admiration, congratulation, and positive astonishment even in conservative dailies such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Morning Post.Footnote ⁴⁸ Reports marveled at the industrial and technological progress that the German Empire had made since the 1880s and that they saw embodied in the Imperator.Footnote ⁴⁹ But it must also be noted that the English press often expressed anxiety about the potential eclipse of British mercantile supremacy on the Atlantic and was unable to regard the dramatic advances made by German commercial shipbuilding as distinct from the Empire's ambition to world-power status.

This anxiety was reinforced by the fact that the boundary between the civilian and military spheres was often blurred when it came to commercial shipping, especially at launch ceremonies, but also in physical fact.Footnote ⁵⁰ Passenger ships in both countries were designed for quick conversion to auxiliary cruisers in time of war, and there were several other reasons that English commentators might regard the HAPAG fleet, in particular, as an instrument of the German state: the company was represented by the Imperial government around the globe; Ballin, who was Jewish, had an unusually close relationship with the Kaiser, was a member of the Navy League, and publicly expressed his support for Admiral Tirpitz and the construction of the German battle fleet; and HAPAG ships were frequently chartered as troop carriers.Footnote ⁵¹ Furthermore, the giant eagle mounted on the prow of the Imperator bore an Imperial crown and grasped a globe in its talons bearing HAPAG's motto, “My Field is the World.”Footnote ⁵² This, along with the ship's name, gave the impression that the ambitions and objectives of HAPAG were synonymous with the supposed ambitions of Germany. Thus the Daily News Leader wrote that, in building the Imperator and Vaterland, “Ballin has declared war on the world … and if our claim to rule the waves is threatened, this threat comes not from the German dreadnoughts but from Herr Ballin.”Footnote ⁵³ Thus, whether as a marvel or a threat, the Imperator was perceived in the English press as a monument to German achievements and ambitions.

Large crowds greeted the ship upon its first arrival in New York harbor on June 19, 1913. One newspaper article stated that “it seemed as if every man, woman, and child in Hoboken [where the HAPAG docks were located] had turned out to welcome the Imperator.”Footnote ⁵⁴ A report in the Berliner Tageblatt claimed that the excitement generated by the liner was much greater than anything witnessed in Germany; “it was a frenzy, as one seldom experiences, even in America.”Footnote ⁵⁵The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post extolled the luxury of the leviathan's interiors, praised its stability and ease of maneuver, and remarked favorably upon the measures taken by HAPAG to ensure the safety of the Imperator's passengers and crew.Footnote ⁵⁶ To a greater extent than in Britain, the Imperator and Vaterland were discussed as the products of a modern nation and its enterprising middle classes, and Ballin was celebrated for his role in leading Germany to its “foremost place in the commercial and industrial world.” “Our country,” The New York Times suggested, “might well emulate his patriotic example.”Footnote ⁵⁷

German responses were many and varied. But as Bernhard Rieger has noted, the conservative and liberal press “enthusiastically welcomed” the Imperator, and the vessel was widely respected as a national symbol.Footnote ⁵⁸ Much coverage amounted to little more than an enumeration of technical details and the expression of astonishment at the size and luxury of the vessel. But there were commentators who struck an explicit and strident note of political and cultural nationalism. The Imperator was described as an awesome symbol of Germany's industrial might, technological achievements, and world-power status. The ship was also touted as both a symbol and an actualization of German unity. A poem penned by Bernhard Reuter claimed the Imperator was proof that Germans had forgotten their quarrels and political divisions.Footnote ⁵⁹ Hans Ossig described the way in which all Germans felt at home aboard the ship during its maiden voyage: Berliners felt themselves to be on the Kurfürstendamm; residents of Munich didn't have long to look for a “good mug of beer”; and Hamburgers felt themselves to be among friends in Harvestehude.Footnote ⁶⁰

The interior decoration of the Imperator was also discussed in great detail in the German press, and the vast majority of this reportage was favorable. In June 1913, for example, the Hamburger Fremdenblatt reported on the “comfortable” and “exceptionally harmonious” nature of the ship's interiors.Footnote ⁶¹ To be sure, the author suggested, the attempt to accommodate the taste of the traveling public of various nations could be disconcerting on first inspection. The viewer might be more impressed by a sense of contradiction than by a feeling for the overall unity of the design. Nonetheless, the “overall result of a thorough inspection” would be a “true and admiring” appreciation of the ship. The author applauded HAPAG for its insistence that the design of the first-class cabins and salons should not make concessions to the “typical character of a ship.” Instead, the cabins had the feel, and were decorated in the manner of, a fashionable private house.

Yet as Rieger has noted, entrusting a French architect with the interior decoration of a German national symbol “risked inviting charges of aesthetic high treason from nationally minded quarters of the press, and shipping lines consequently remained relatively silent about Mewès's involvement.”Footnote ⁶² Despite these precautions, there were a few German critics who complained about the foreign feel of the ship's interiors and the fact that they had been built, in part, by foreign firms employing foreign labor. The Hamburger Nachrichten, for example, mounted its criticism within the context of a greater problem that it identified as the regrettable German weakness for foreign art. Germans, the author believed, should protest against the derision of their “Germanness.” What would the Kaiser say if he discovered that the ship was partly the product of French and English labor?Footnote ⁶³ An anonymous article in Der Kunstwart—a journal with nationalist overtones—also complained about the French aesthetic of the interiors. This may have been written by the journal's editor Ferdinand Avenarius. It claimed that “Louis XVI appears to be the real emperor” aboard the Imperator. The ship, it continued, should have promoted German industry and served as an exhibition to the world of modern German art and design. Why had HAPAG employed French and English firms? Were German talents not sufficient?Footnote ⁶⁴ The art historian and journalist Otto Grautoff, commenting on the Vaterland, took direct aim at Ballin when he said that a man “in such a responsible position should possess enough national sentiment that he would consider it an honor to have his ships—which circle the globe—built by the best and most German of architects.” He insisted that the manner in which Ballin had shown up the shortcomings of German art was “a betrayal of Germanness.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Clearly, there were those who believed that HAPAG had compromised German prestige and identity by employing foreign firms to outfit this symbol of Germany in a hodge-podge of foreign historical styles.

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Some influential voices offered more than criticism and harbored visions of transforming the Imperator or, at least, influencing the design of future HAPAG liners. Scheffler was one of these. While not a simple transcription of the opinions of others, his letter gave condensed expression to ideas scattered over and implied within the writings of Aby Warburg, Fritz Schumacher, and Bruno Paul. A brief discussion of the opinions of these figures will establish the discourse to which Scheffler added his voice and to which he gave such pointed expression.

One of the most interesting episodes in the Imperator's history is Aby Warburg's work for HAPAG as an advisor on the pictorial decoration of the liner's first-class public rooms. Warburg was the well-known, Hamburg-based cultural historian whose famous private library would become the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in 1926 and the Warburg Institute in the University of London in 1944. I have described his work with HAPAG elsewhere, but a brief reprise of Warburg's ill-fated efforts is appropriate here.Footnote ⁶⁶ The family bank, M. M. Warburg & Co., participated in several large loan operations for HAPAG, and its director, Max Warburg, enjoyed a close business and personal relationship with Ballin. Hired by the company in 1912, Aby Warburg made it clear to HAPAG that, if there was to be a reform of German art, “then obviously the doors must be opened to competent modern artists” aboard the Imperator.Footnote ⁶⁷ He was aware of the international attention afforded the vessel and knew that, just as the label “Made in Germany” came to stand for the quality and reliability of a range of manufactured goods, the best German passenger ships were admired by the Anglo-American traveling public for their technical sophistication, speed, luxurious interiors, and the quality of their food and service. Consequently, they were an ideal venue for exhibiting contemporary German art and design to the world.

With his advice, HAPAG hired Paul Kayser, Hermann Bruck, Friedrich Lissmann, and Hugo Schnars-Alquist to paint seascapes, landscapes, and still-life pictures for the first-class dining room.Footnote ⁶⁸ All were Hamburg artists who, to varying degrees, worked in a late-Impressionist style. But Warburg's hopes were not to be realized aboard the Imperator. Mewès feared inconsistency between the ship's interior design and its pictures; he protested that the paintings recommended by Warburg upset the architectonic form of his rooms.Footnote ⁶⁹ In July 1913, Ballin wrote to Warburg stating that paintings had to conform to the ship's interior decoration and not vice versa. In any case, most of the ship's passengers, he explained, would be unschooled in matters of art. Consequently, it was necessary either to hang paintings that were merely decorative and provoked no criticism, or to purchase works by Rembrandt.Footnote ⁷⁰ As noted above, the market was a significant force in the artistic and design decisions made by HAPAG, and Ballin desired a ship that appealed to all of the firm's first-class patrons. When Warburg refused to compromise, his services were terminated.

HAPAG then commissioned Fritz Schwinge to paint two large landscapes for the first-class dining room and at least nine landscapes and rural scenes for the second-class public rooms. These appear sentimental in reproductions.Footnote ⁷¹ Apart from the work of contemporary artists deemed appropriate by HAPAG—Ascan Lutteroth, Hans Olde, and Hugo Schnars-Alquist—the Imperator's main lounge boasted two antique Gobelin tapestries representing Europe and Asia. Records of the Vaterland's pictorial decoration are more complete. These indicate that in addition to works by Thomas Baumgartner, Waldemar Kolmsperger, and Hugo Schnars-Alquist, the main staircase featured two landscapes by Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1690-1767), and the grand salon was hung with four large canvases depicting the myth of Pandora by Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711).Footnote ⁷²

The city architect of Hamburg, Fritz Schumacher, shared Warburg's convictions. Responding to criticism of the state of German design, Schumacher wrote an article for the Hamburgischer Correspondent that praised the ability of German artists to achieve superior results “without deliberate borrowing from other periods and foreign peoples.” He also stated his belief that HAPAG's construction of new passenger liners provided Hamburg with the opportunity to “send swimming symbols of German artistic skill as pioneers to foreign lands.”Footnote ⁷³ In early 1913, he wrote to Warburg recommending several artists and architects who he thought were suitable to design the Imperator's interiors, including Peter Behrens and Hermann Muthesius.Footnote ⁷⁴ Both were members of the German Werkbund, as was Warburg.

The Werkbund was an alliance of industrialists, civil servants, academics, artists, designers, and architects founded in October 1907 with Schumacher as its first president.Footnote ⁷⁵ It was an important manifestation of the phenomenon of cultural and social reform in the Kaiserreich and offered “an alternative form of political engagement,” a means for middle-class Germans “of shaping and governing their society independent of the formal political process.”Footnote ⁷⁶ The marginal impact of such groups on political decision-making—especially those with essentially cultural and artistic ambitions—has often led to negative assessments by historians. And yet they form an important chapter in the history of European modernism, have shaped scholarly understanding of the German bourgeoisie, and informed reassessments of the Kaiserreich itself. The episode recounted here illustrates one way in which the history of commercial shipping intersected with this phenomenon.

The express purpose of the Werkbund was to produce a unified German culture in tune with the realities of modern life; a society based on industry and commerce could not rely on forms of expression developed by the aristocracy. In artistic terms, this meant rejecting the “backward-looking handicraft romanticism” of many cultural critics, and recognizing the realities of industrialization and mechanization; it meant bridging the gap between art and industry to restore artistry to architecture, interior design, the applied arts, and commercial products through the use of modern technology and design concepts.Footnote ⁷⁷ As Matthew Jefferies explains, the best exhibitions of Werkbund ideas were the buildings constructed by its members throughout Germany. The most famous of these is the turbine factory in Berlin that Behrens completed for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG) in 1909.Footnote ⁷⁸ In the previous year, he had also designed an AEG pavilion for the German Shipbuilding Exhibition in Berlin.Footnote ⁷⁹ Members of the Werkbund designed streetcars, motorboats, locomotives, and train carriages, and the association's yearbook for 1914 was devoted to transportation.Footnote ⁸⁰

The Werkbund also sought to strengthen Germany's position in the international marketplace by promoting and selling quality consumer goods to the world. International expositions were one means of garnering recognition for German achievements in the applied arts, and this was certainly the case at the exposition held in St. Louis in 1904. The buildings and exhibition pavilions of the German delegation were designed by Erich Kleinhempel, Alfred Grenander, Paul Troost, Hermann Billing, and Bruno Möhring, all of whom later became Werkbund members. As a result, the German Empire was found to be at the forefront of new ideas, and reviewers praised its contribution as “a victory of the new aesthetic-ethical sensibility of the middle class.”Footnote ⁸¹

Warburg and Schumacher felt the Imperator should fulfill the same role as German delegations to international expositions. But it was aboard Germany's passenger liners, according to Bruno Paul, that Werkbund ideas were most wanting. A progressive architect and designer, Paul explained that the contrast between the high state of Germany's technological development and the inadequacy of its achievements in the decorative arts was nowhere as obvious as it was aboard Germany's passenger ships. He described their historicist interiors as “grotesque peculiarities” and said their designers should learn a lesson from maritime engineers; that is, a lesson in the use of simple, unornamented forms. Transatlantic passenger liners, Paul believed, should exhibit the best of German art and design in a harmonious blending of the work of artists and engineers.Footnote ⁸²

Karl Scheffler agreed with these sentiments. He was the editor of Kunst und Künstler, Germany's leading art periodical from 1906. Scheffler championed Impressionism as the epitome of modern painting and was an important supporter of the Werkbund.Footnote ⁸³ He claimed that his letter to Ballin gave expression to what many believed. As noted above, Scheffler wanted go aboard the Imperator and see the interiors that had attracted so much positive comment in the German and Anglo-American press. But HAPAG refused him permission to do so and, as a result, his knowledge of the ship's interiors was limited to what could be discerned in illustrations that accompanied publicity material forwarded by the company.

The long letter began by describing Ballin as a national icon. It claimed he was known throughout Germany as “the model of a modern man” and a “representative of our globally minded business spirit.” It was true that while Ballin's aesthetic tastes tended toward the traditional, his business vision was progressive and constituted a break from conservative management at HAPAG. He recognized and understood the implications of economic globalization occurring in the two decades before World War I. Scheffler described Ballin's achievements as symbolic of German endeavors and claimed that a ship such as the Imperator was built not only by HAPAG, “but more properly by the entire nation.” Consequently, Scheffler believed, the right was granted Germans to expect that the highest achievements of “German skill” would be represented aboard the ship. But while this was the case in terms of marine engineering and technology, an opportunity to showcase the best in modern German art and design had been lost.

Scheffler was astounded that “a man of such modern sensibility” was not disturbed by the “unbearable contradiction” between the ship's magnificent technical achievements and the petty artistic accomplishments of its interior design. Did Ballin not recognize that the vessel's “so-called art” appeared tacked onto the ship instead of seeming to have grown organically from it? Indeed, it appeared as if the interiors were designed to make passengers feel they were accommodated in a palace instead of on board an ocean liner. The Imperator was a technological wonder of the modern age, but everything about the historicizing and palatial first-class public rooms was out of sync with the ship's essence. As such, its interior design was “founded on a lie.” Appealing to Ballin's moral and patriotic sentiments, the author asked “do you actually think it sensible and artistically moral—you the man of commercial Realpolitik—that the ship's architect should artificially insert a royal French palace into an iron construction?”Footnote ⁸⁴ The Greek aesthetic “was never more prostituted” as it was by HAPAG's “pseudo-artists” in the Pompeian-style bathing hall; the first-class smoking room, with its Tudor-style half-timbering and stone fireplace, was ridiculous; the ballroom, with its bow windows and painted ceiling, was indicative of the “unreality” that characterized the interior decoration.

“In seriousness,” Scheffler asked Ballin, “do you consider this art of deception beautiful or simply dignified; or were you guided by the tastes of the international clientele and against your convictions? One reason would be as objectionable as the other.” As I have suggested, the ship's interiors were both a reflection of Ballin's tastes and the product of a sound business decision. But Scheffler found it hard to imagine that the general director could combine the political and cultural particularism of Hamburg with the ambitions of large industrialists and merchants who aped the aristocracy by purchasing noble houses or built new homes in the style of palaces. It was as if they sought to deny their modern, middle-class lifestyles and regarded their achievements and leadership as of no worth. “I cannot imagine that the upstart's game with historical art forms, played by many members of the upper-middle classes, affords you any satisfaction.” People such as Ballin who had “revolutionized life so profoundly” must of necessity desire an art that corresponded to their life's work. Ballin's particular achievements as a shipping magnate, and those of his class more generally, Scheffler was saying, were not represented by the aesthetic of the ship's interiors. Even if HAPAG were simply pandering to the tastes of the traveling public, the company should remember that it had a duty to maintain a standard of good taste. The author exhorted Ballin not to forget that the Imperator was “a floating world exhibition of German workmanship for an international public.”

Unfortunately, the ship's public rooms were indicative of the fact that little attention was being paid attempts to formulate new artistic forms that corresponded to the experiences of modern life. Had Ballin not heard of those progressive artists and designers who were inspired by the beauty of iron cranes, ship turbines, propellers, and engineering designs—in short, all the forms that so impressed the viewer aboard the Imperator where they were not hidden by “fake art?” The critics felt the design of the ship's interiors should have been entrusted to Henry van de Velde, Heinrich Tessenow, Peter Behrens, August Endell, Hans Poelzig, and others of their ilk. HAPAG should have learned from the Norddeutscher Lloyd's experiments with Bruno Paul and Joseph Maria Olbirch, as well as from the AEG's employment of Peter Behrens. It should have organized a standing advisory commission on the arts long ago. This could have worked with the best modern artists and taken advantage of the advice of Alfred Lichtwark and Justus Brinckmann.Footnote ⁸⁵ What progressive trends in art and design needed above all was large-scale commissions through which they could come to maturity. “The role once played by princes as patrons of the arts has passed, quite naturally, to men such as you or Krupp and to the great merchants and industrialists.” But unfortunately, Ballin and HAPAG “remain well behind the demands of the times.”

In keeping with the intended audience of Kunst und Künstler and the Werkbund—urban, upper-middle-class Germans—Scheffler's letter was concerned only with first- and second-class accommodation aboard the Imperator. In a brief passage, the author criticized the fact that while so much space was afforded first-class passengers, comparatively little was provided for those in steerage. But the letter made no mention of the fact that the design of the cabins and public spaces in third-class and steerage accommodation conformed much more to the engineering and machine aesthetic of the ship, if only because much less effort was expended on decorating those quarters.

By characterizing Ballin as a national icon and “representative of our globally minded business spirit,” and by describing the Imperator as a national monument, Scheffler was at one with much of the German and Anglo-American press coverage. The author was genuinely impressed by the ship as a product of modern engineering and shared the view of Peter Behrens that “the most impressive achievements of our time are the products of modern technology.”Footnote ⁸⁶ But the letter to Ballin was concerned with the design of the vessel's interiors, and here Scheffler gave frank and focused expression to the critical opinion of a small group of intellectuals at odds with the bulk of German and foreign reporting on the vessel. More importantly, he channeled larger currents of thought on the form and function of German art and design in the modern world.

The letter recalled themes and issues that occupied Scheffler especially during the early stages of his career when he was more concerned with design than fine art. In a society increasingly shaped by visual stimuli, his remarks were prompted by the conviction that the creation of art and design commensurate with an age of rapid industrialization was a “moral task with the aim of reconnecting the realms of the practical and the beautiful which had been separated in the modern era.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Central to this undertaking was the figure of the engineer who concerned himself entirely with the creation of functional forms, but whose technical creations evinced an aesthetic character that was the starting point on the way to artistry in keeping with the times.Footnote ⁸⁸ In his first published essay, Scheffler expressed the view that “the hard power of mechanical forms, the locomotive and the steamship, produce new forms of beauty that arise, without being predetermined, only from necessity and expediency.”Footnote ⁸⁹ He also showed great interest in the construction of the Hochbahn in Berlin, seeing it as an excellent example of how “the requirements of modern technology established a new language of form out of mundane functional considerations.”Footnote ⁹⁰

Of course, Scheffler's preference for and promotion of functional and constructional design criteria were not unusual. The German government, at the local and national level, was involved in attempts to improve design training, and government-sponsored educational institutions were formed to deal with the problems of the machine age. Machine aesthetics were celebrated not only in the writings and speeches of Werkbund members, but also in publications such as the popular conservative magazine, the Illustrirte Zeitung, published in Berlin. As Mark Jarzombek has indicated, photographs of machines, factories, steel plating, and ships under construction were commonly featured in its pages by 1904; in 1907, the magazine even published an article entitled “The Steam Turbine and its Cultural Significance,” which discussed the history and beauty of the turbine engine.Footnote ⁹¹ Scheffler's contempt for the dishonesty and irrelevance of historicism in architecture and design was also widely shared, and he reiterated frequently expressed concerns about the discrepancy of appearance and reality with respect to architecture.Footnote ⁹² Furthermore, his fundamental desire for “a new cultural synthesis in tune with the realities of contemporary life” and for the creation of a distinctly national style in an age of machine production was one of the professed aims of the Werkbund.Footnote ⁹³ What is so interesting about Scheffler's letter, however, is that unlike any other commentator on the subject, he explicitly viewed the Imperator through the lens of these issues and indicated the vessel's importance for progressive critics and cultural reformers.

In 1903, the Prussian civil servant, architect, and founding member of the Werkbund, Hermann Muthesius, boldly asserted that “the wind that blows across our culture today is middle class.” “We want to live in middle-class rooms,” he claimed, “whose essence and goal is simplicity and straightforwardness.”Footnote ⁹⁴ In keeping with these sentiments, Scheffler's letter made the particular accusation that the Imperator's historicist interiors failed to reflect the social and economic realities that both shaped and characterized Ballin's achievements as a self-made, middle-class entrepreneur and the forward-thinking general director of a quintessentially modern, middle-class enterprise. Whether architectural historians are justified in labeling German historicism as reactionary and a propaganda tool for the politics of the Imperial government is questionable. Maiken Umbach has argued that “historicism was anything but conservative” and that it gave “visual expression to a sense of the past that was characterized by insecurity, friction, and ruptures.”Footnote ⁹⁵ She claims that “late historicists,” by transforming and recasting historical forms, contributed as much as modernist critics “to the demotion of the alleged unity of academic historicism.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Nonetheless, what critics such as Scheffler saw in historicism was the desire to live in the past, not the present, and a denial of Germany's commitment to the future.Footnote ⁹⁷

This perspective is clearly evident in Scheffler's letter, as is the strong nationalistic impulse that characterized much of German modernism; in particular, he echoed the national agenda of the Werkbund and its appropriation of visual culture for political ends. Scheffler hoped that through a process of education in aesthetics, the middle classes “could be built into a powerful, political unit with an agenda that at least could appear to look beyond the self-serving politics of the reactionaries and the socialists.”Footnote ⁹⁸ The author was one of many commentators who believed the economic and political future of Germany was dependent upon the ability of the upper-middle class to secure a coherent visual identity for itself. Given the importance of the vessel and the publicity and public interest surrounding it, Scheffler saw the Imperator as a means of contributing to the establishment of this identity. But the opportunity had been missed, and his criticism echoed that of many others who took aim at historicism in art and design. In 1904, Muthesius clearly stated in Der Kunstwart the concern that motivated Scheffler's criticism. Here he wrote that the choice of a historicist aesthetic entailed forcing oneself “to rise into a pseudo-aristocracy.” “We seem to be ashamed,” he continued, “of the very thing that should make us proud, our Bürgertum.” “We want to be aristocrats,” the author lamented, “at the very moment when the Bürgertum has become the basis of our economic, social, and political life” and “is able to determine the culture of our time.”Footnote ⁹⁹

Scheffler may not have expressed himself as pointedly as Muthesius, but his criticism of Ballin was clearly informed by fear that a process of feudalization—or the uncritical adoption of the values, social practices, and political attitudes of the nobility—was concomitant with the economic success of Germany's upper-middle classes. More particularly, he expressed disbelief that a native son of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg—built on trade, shipping, and industry; governed by businessmen and lawyers; and proud of its republican traditions—could have any desire to ape the nobility either in his own home or aboard the ships built by his company. Here Scheffler demonstrated his misunderstanding of Ballin's character and convictions. As Lamar Cecil has suggested, Ballin was more a Weltbürger than a Hamburger or even a German; he was not a member of the city's Handelskammer and viewed local patriotism as stultifying.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Also, despite his relationship with the Kaiser, his social conservatism, and his antidemocratic sentiments, Ballin could not tolerate narrow-minded conservatism and believed the nobility provided unsuitable leadership for Germany. In his opinion, the government's role was to maintain domestic harmony, avoid foreign conflicts, and produce the best possible conditions for the success of German business. Furthermore, the feudalization theory itself has been proven incorrect as a means of describing the social and political character of the German middle classes. Most members of the bourgeoisie did not take their cue from the aristocratic elite; they supported the state on their own terms and not in subordination to another class. This was especially the case with Jewish businessmen.Footnote ¹⁰¹

More particularly, the middle-class taste for historical styles in art and design provides no indication that that the bourgeoisie was becoming feudalized. As Matthew Jefferies explained, “companies in the chief growth sectors of German industry—the electrical industry, quality manufacturing industries, food and drink producers, the chemical industry—abandoned the styles of the past.” Yet historicism in architecture and design—even in the case of factory facades—remained common throughout Europe and America, and it is very difficult to know the extent to which such architecture was used as a deliberate instrument of company policy.Footnote ¹⁰² As I have suggested, the decision to install historicist interiors aboard the Imperator was most likely taken as the result of sound business deliberation that understood the appeal of a grand hotel style and old-world sophistication for the many wealthy American travelers who sailed to and from the United States aboard the vessel.

Part and parcel of establishing a coherent visual identity for the middle classes was the need to export and market this identity worldwide, thus creating a visible presence for Germany in global trade. Ensuring the success of German industry through the production of good design and promoting the nation's economic interests in the international marketplace were fundamental to the Werkbund's purpose. Fritz Schumacher's keynote address at the association's founding in 1907 argued that quality products would strengthen Germany's competitive position in world markets.Footnote ¹⁰³ A distinctive national style could successfully challenge the established cultural identities of France and England and might in the future, as Muthesius hoped, dictate good taste to the world.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Scheffler was keenly aware of the Imperator's potential as a floating exhibition of German workmanship, and although it does not appear as an explicit issue in his letter, economic concerns could not have been far from his mind when he discussed the vessel's interiors. Simply put, the ship held considerable marketing potential for German art and design, and Scheffler believed it should function like the products that carried Germany's growing reputation for quality and reliability in manufactured goods around the globe. After all, the best German passenger ships were already admired by the Anglo-American traveling public. Why would HAPAG not go a step further and, following the lead of AEG and the Norddeutscher Lloyd, hire progressive artists in a move that would benefit both the company and forward-looking trends in art and design struggling to come to maturity?Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The Norddeutscher Lloyd's decision to employ progressive German designers to construct interiors aboard the Kronprinzessin Cecilie and the George Washington was greeted with approval in the United States. The International Studio, a journal published in New York, admired the fact that these ships had been “fitted up with modern ideas” and saw the Lloyd's decision to do this as opening a new and important field for German art and design. Now, in addition to appearing at international exhibitions, Germany's “very best creations, bearing the impress of a strong individuality, are borne far and wide across the sea.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ This positive response to innovation at the Norddeutscher Lloyd recalls the similar reaction that greeted the German contribution to the Saint Louis International Exhibition of 1904. In Germany, it was proudly reported that two-thirds of the Empire's contribution to the exhibition had been sold.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Of course, the story of Wilhelmine reform movements and modern German culture in general is one of both “bright prospects” and “shadows.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Some of the responses to the Imperator remind us that Germany's attempts to generate a sense of national identity and national unity—whether in paint, print, stone, or steel—incorporated a great deal of anti-French sentiment. Scheffler objected to the insertion of “a royal French palace” into the Imperator's hull and was in keeping with criticisms that took particular aim at the use of French styles.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ As we have seen, Der Kunstwart also decried the use of French labor.Footnote ¹¹⁰ But to what extent were Scheffler's criticisms born of anti-French sentiment? Early in his career, he was critical of both French and German Impressionism. Andreas Zeising maintains this was partly motivated by patriotism and attendant reservations about French achievements in the arts.Footnote ¹¹¹ But Scheffler was increasingly reconciled to Impressionism between 1902 and 1905. At the same time, he came to dislike neo-Romanticism in the work of German painters such as Arnold Böcklin, Max Klinger, Franz von Stuck, and Hans Thoma.Footnote ¹¹² He also criticized publicists such as Ferdinand Avenarius who, in the pages of Der Kunstwart, called for an autonomous German modernity in art that would give expression to supposed national properties such as Innerlichkeit.

In contrast, Scheffler believed that a national German painting style could only arise on the foundations of French achievements.Footnote ¹¹³ This is not to say that his opinions, and those of liberal-bourgeois art criticism more generally, were devoid of national sentiment. In Der Deutsche und seine Kunst (1907), Scheffler castigated the “idiots and the unworthy”—or German Expressionists—whom he believed threatened his cultural, moral, and political ideals, and the very spirit of nation.Footnote ¹¹⁴ We should also remember that the Werkbund was formed as a response to the perceived threat that modernity posed to Germany's national culture, and for many, this threat came not simply from industrialization, but from foreign influences. During World War I, Scheffler published several articles in which he described a vision of Europe dominated politically, intellectually, and culturally by Germany. Of course, such patriotic fervor was not unusual in the extenuating circumstances of war, and it must be emphasized that Scheffler maintained his understanding of French Impressionism as a significant impetus to the development of German art and culture, even if he claimed Germans appreciated and understood French art better than the French themselves.Footnote ¹¹⁵

The point to be made, however, is that, similar to Aby Warburg's dislike of “Frenchifying elegance,” Scheffler's criticism of the Imperator's interiors was not born of an antipathy to French culture or a belief that the taste for foreign art was weakening German Kultur.Footnote ¹¹⁶ As Joan Campbell has explained, the call for a national German style in the Werkbund “had little in common with the extreme chauvinism or aggressive nationalism of the Pan-Germans.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ In the particular case of the Imperator, Scheffler may have felt that cosmopolitanism was undercutting a particular expression of national identity. But he was no cultural pessimist decrying the effects of modernity on German culture; instead, Scheffler emphasized the international dimensions of modern art's development and acknowledged the pioneering role France played in this respect. He is exemplary of what one scholar has described as “moderate and cosmopolitan patriotism (which was happy to recognize the virtues and contributions of other nationalities).”Footnote ¹¹⁸

It is important to note that Scheffler's effort to claim the Imperator as a symbol of specifically middle-class cultural and social aspirations and achievements was shared, although in a limited way, by commentators outside a small group of intellectuals. This was especially the case in Hamburg. In the eyes of German and foreign observers, there were several factors that mitigated against these attempts: the very name of the ship; the fact that the Kaiser christened the vessel; the eagle mounted on the ship's prow bearing an Imperial crown; and the iconography of monarchy that adorned the vessel's interior, especially Hans Olde's full-length portrait of the Kaiser in his admiral's uniform that dominated the main staircase in first-class accommodation. Nonetheless, we have seen that Hamburg's mayor described the vessel as “the product of a flourishing, self-conscious German middle class” at the time of its launch.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Furthermore, the Hamburgischer Correspondent construed the commissioning of the vessel as marking a new stage in the relationship between the Kaiser and the city of Hamburg. In an interesting take on the subject, the paper also provided its particular interpretation of the ship's name, arguing that it symbolized the middle-class contribution to the modern German nation and the liberal and democratic values embodied by this class.Footnote ¹²⁰ The title Imperator, it explained, was not simply connected with dictatorial power and military deeds. “The Roman statesman who, for the first time, permanently combined civic and military power in his own hands referred to the people and senate as Imperator. It is this meaning of the word that has come down to our age.” In the opinion of this liberal Hamburg broadsheet, the Imperator embodied an understanding of German history that conceived of Kaiser and burghers as allies working together to achieve Germany's national destiny. This was in keeping with the iconographical programs of many monumental artworks commissioned by local authorities and private associations in German cities after 1871.Footnote ¹²¹

It would be incorrect, however, to suggest that the Imperator played a major role in the discourse of contested understandings of German national identity before 1914 and “the struggle to appropriate custodianship of the symbols of nationhood.”Footnote ¹²² While demonstrating that the vessel was widely interpreted as a national symbol, this essay has emphasized the limited number of commentators who were critical of the Imperator and who expressly viewed the ship as a means of asserting their particular vision of the German Empire. The real importance of Scheffler's letter resides in the concise intervention it affords into broader currents of thinking about the form and role of art in modern Germany and in the fact that it demonstrates how and why progressive ideas were applied to an oceangoing steamship. While others turned their attention to architecture, the applied arts, and consumer goods, a small group of important figures saw the Imperator as a vehicle for expressing, through aesthetic form, the tangible impact of modernization and modernity on German society and culture.

*  *  *

In the face of criticism mounted by Scheffler and others, Albert Ballin finally had a change of heart. In fact, as early as September 1913, Max Warburg reported to his brother Aby that he had convinced the general director to outfit a passenger liner as a showcase of contemporary German art and design. He also noted that HAPAG had been in contact with Fritz Schumacher in this respect.Footnote ¹²³ Documents preserved in the company archive indicate that Hermann Muthesius was asked to design one of the Imperial suites aboard the Bismarck, and Kunst und Künstler also reported this fact.Footnote ¹²⁴ But Max Warburg admitted progress would be slow and even suggested that Ballin was stalling. Construction of the ship that the general director thought suitable for interiors in keeping with modern design aesthetics—the Barbarossa of the East Asian Service—was too far advanced to be altered in any significant way.Footnote ¹²⁵ In any event, Ballin's change of heart came too late; World War I would put a stop to the construction of luxury passenger liners. More ominously, it would devastate HAPAG and German commercial shipping. Just two days before the Armistice was signed, Ballin would himself lie dead.Footnote ¹²⁶

Scheffler, Warburg, Schumacher, and Paul may have been frustrated by their inability to influence decision making at HAPAG. But if we return to an examination of the response that the Imperator evoked in the Anglo-American press, we find that the vessel played an ambassadorial role broadly in keeping with the hopes of these middle-class intellectuals. To be sure, the Anglo-American media did not address the Imperator in terms of the specific aesthetic concerns that occupied Scheffler.Footnote ¹²⁷ But we have seen that British and American journalists embraced the ship as a symbol of the German Empire, and what needs to be emphasized is that they did so in the manner that Scheffler feared its historicist interiors would not permit: as the product of a modern, progressive society and economy shaped by an industrious, forward-thinking middle class.

Of course, we must be careful not to simplify the complex amalgam of multiple and often ambivalent perceptions of Germany that appeared in British and American newspapers.Footnote ¹²⁸ Yet in addition to expressing admiration for the vessel itself, we have seen that much British newspaper coverage marveled at Germany's industrial and technological achievements. The Times, for example, acknowledged that the Imperator marked “an important stage in German shipbuilding skill and enterprise.” It noted that, as recently as 1886, the Vulcan shipyard considered it an achievement to complete three steamers, each of merely 4,500 tons.Footnote ¹²⁹

The tone of British reporting, however, was somewhat reserved compared to the reception that the Imperator received in the United States. Across the Atlantic, newspaper coverage displayed an enthusiastic interest in German innovation. In contrast to British views, American perceptions were less colored by anxiety about Germany's growing status as a maritime and world power. Newspaper coverage in the U.S. was also less informed by the sense that Germany's merchant marine was a threatening extension of a giant military complex commanded by the Kaiser. Of course, the Imperator and the Vaterland bore the symbolism of monarchical power; prominent among the ships’ iconography were portraits and sculptural busts of the Kaiser. Many American travelers to Europe “gained a well-deserved reputation for chasing after every trace of royal or feudal pomp they could find.” As Rudy Koshar explained, American “enthusiasm for such symbols bordered on ‘aristo-mania.’”Footnote ¹³⁰ Travel literature from the period, such as Robert Schauffler's Romantic Germany of 1909, sought to assure its readers that “Germany still remains the land of the Nibelungenlied and of Grimm's Fairy Tales, of gnomes and giants, storks and turreted ring-walls, of Gothic houses in rows, and the glamour of medieval courtyards.”Footnote ¹³¹

But the American press did not embrace the monarchical symbolism of the Imperator, and the ship did not project an image of Germany as the land of the Brothers Grimm. Instead, American newspaper coverage celebrated the Imperator and Vaterland as peaceful products of a modern nation and an enterprising middle class. Commenting on the Vaterland “as a symbol of peace and industrial prosperity,” The New York Times said that “she fairly represents the genius of the German people, their enterprise and thrift, their determination to do in the best way possible whatever is worth doing.”Footnote ¹³² Historians are well aware that “in the early 1900s Germany was widely viewed as one of the world's most culturally progressive, dynamic, and innovative nations.”Footnote ¹³³ In spite of Karl Scheffler's reservations and what he and others saw as the vessel's failings, there is no doubt that the Imperator played a role in disseminating this image to the transatlantic world.