An elegant beauty!
Translation of this page :
https://deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/wordp ... lern-1892/In the "Ram Bow" style, I think this is one of the most beautiful on the "civilian" level.
SMS Hohenzollern (1892), state yacht and notification of the Imperial Navy, technical information and history on old postcards.
SMS Hohenzollern (1892)
Name : Hohenzollern
Origin of the name : Hohenzollern, German dynasty of Swabian origin. Prussian kings since 1701, German emperors since 1871.
Launching: June 27, 1892 in Stettin (Vulcan shipyard)
twin ships: single ship
Crew: about 295 men
Dimensions: length 116 m, width 14 m, draft 5,9 m
water displacement: 4280 tons
Maximum speed: 21.5 knots
Engine power: 9500 hp (on two propellers)
steam line: 2000 nautical miles
Armament: 3 rapid-fire cannons calibre 10,5 cm, 12 rapid-fire cannons calibre 5 cm
Scrapped in 1923.
SMS Hohenzollern (1892) - History
The old "Hohenzollern", which was still in service when Kaiser Wilhelm II came to power from 1888 to 1893, was a paddle steamer that later received the name "Kaiseradler". The new "Hohenzollern" was for Kaiser Wilhelm II about the same as the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam was for Frederick the Great. It was initially requested by the then Secretary of State, Admiral Hollmann at the Reichstag, as a notification for higher command units, and then eventually turned out to be an imperial yacht. Of course, fierce discussions ensued in the Reichstag about the financing of the state yacht.
The ship was launched on June 27, 1892 in Stettin. Kaiser Wilhelm II personally gave a speech and Empress Victoria celebrated the christening. The new "Hohenzollern" was always in service throughout the year because the ship had to be available at any time for an imperial voyage. If it was to be assumed that such a voyage was not imminent, some of the officers and men were assigned to various training courses, but only so that they could be recalled quickly at any time.
During the Emperor's presence, which lasted an average of two and a half months per year, service on the "Hohenzollern" was not easy. The service of the ships was particularly difficult because the demands on the ships were very high. The ships had to be operated in a particularly impeccable manner; a bad mooring or even a worn-out liston would have been a crime.
When the emperor was on board a ship, it was always led by the most senior officer on duty, a lieutenant-captain, as ship's officer. Boats always had to be ready for the innumerable procession, which naturally had many wishes. Sometimes, in addition to the boats for the emperor, 4 steam pinnaces were not enough to satisfy the requests for boats.
During the presence of the emperor, the crews of the "Hohenzollern" wore large straw hats instead of the usual blue or white caps. Even though the straw hat was something unusual in the Imperial Navy, the crews were quite proud of their remarkable headgear. Straw hats were not worn on land, but only on board and in ships.
The parade boat, when the emperor, as sovereign, made an official visit, was the Standartenboot. It was a dark blue rowing boat with a golden edge. If the emperor did not sail as emperor, but as an admiral, the boat did not carry the imperial standard on the bow, but a large pennant.
The longest voyage that the "Hohenzollern" made, but without the emperor, was the trip to New York in 1902. Since the ship was not designed for such a long journey in terms of coal reserves, all available cargo capacity had to be supplemented with coal.
Despite this, the voyage could not be made on the usual route of the fast steamers, but stops were made at Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, St. Thomas and, on the return journey, Bermuda and the Azores. As a representative of the Emperor, his brother, Prince Henry, had traveled to America to attend the launching of the imperial sailing yacht "Meteor". Admiral von Tirpitz accompanied him and the "Hohenzollern" was to be moored in New York as a lodging ship.
Just as the emperor liked to visit foreign rulers by river on the Hohenzollern and some accompanying ships, return visits were also honored accordingly. The King of England and the Tsar of Russia were always accompanied on their visits by a few particularly representative warships. Large naval parades and other military demonstrations always took place on these occasions. It is worth mentioning here the 1901 naval parade before the Tsar and the Russian Grand Dukes on the Gdansk Rhede.
S.M.S. Hohenzollern was the imperial state yacht and always sailed in the livery of a warship and a dispatch ship. From 1900 to 1914 it was the dispatch ship S.M.S. Sleipner.
The S.M.S. Hohenzollern as a motif on all colonial stamps
All stamps of the German colonies have the imperial yacht Hohenzollern as motif. The low values are monochrome, the high values are two-colored.
The S.M.S. Hohenzollern seen by a contemporary
In his book "Deutschlands Seemacht sonst und jetzt" (Leipzig 1896), the German naval officer and naval writer Georg Wislicenus writes the following about the S.M.S. Hohenzollern:
S.M.S. Hohenzollern 1893
"In our age of giant leaps in technology, Kaiseradler was quickly overtaken by more efficient constructions. She is no longer fast enough to serve as a referee ship in naval maneuvers and does not offer, in her restricted spaces and with her poor seaworthiness, what an emperor, who considers the vigorous development of our war fleet as one of his life's tasks, can legitimately demand. That is why, at the beginning of our decade, a new, faster and more powerful imperial ship was built to carry the head of our war fleet when he leads naval maneuvers with his team of sailors."
In wartime, this ship is intended to serve as an aviso for large staffs, meaning that it must then accommodate the commanding admiral with his staff; in peacetime, it has already served its imperial master on several occasions during naval maneuvers, to visit foreign princes, and for relaxing trips to the mountainous bays of the North. The Hohenzollern yacht is a masterpiece of German shipbuilding. The ship was launched on June 27, 1892 in Stettin; it weighs 4190 tons, is 116 m long, 14 m wide and dives to a depth of 5.6 m.
Her twin-screw engines develop up to 9460 horsepower and give a speed of almost 22 knots, making the Hohenzollern one of the fastest warships. The light rig features three masts on stilts, the foremost of which carries a signal rack. The flag heads of the masts are shaped like the imperial crown. The wartime armament includes three 35-caliber 10.5-cm fast-loading guns and twelve 40-caliber 5-cm fast-loading guns; all guns carry armored shields for protection and are placed on the upper deck. In peacetime, only eight of the 5 cm guns are on board. A double bottom with many cells as well as numerous watertight bulkheads ensure the ship's buoyancy in case of hull damage.
The interior of the boat is functional, comfortable and tasteful. Overcrowded pomp has been avoided; these are bright, comfortable rooms, the solid decoration of which gives an impression of true German comfort and delights the eye in a quite different and more distinguished way than, for example, the exuberant ornaments of the cabins of modern high-speed ships, which are undoubtedly calculated only for American taste. The imperial family has a number of rooms, usually located in the widest space, called the promenade deck, with the aft deckhouse serving as a smoking room. The imperial suite and the ship's officers and crew are also well taken care of. The crew numbers 307 men."
In 1914, the last Mediterranean voyage led to Italy, Greece and the Austrian city of Trieste. After the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife in Sarajevo by Serbian assassins, Kaiser Wilhelm II, despite strong misgivings and on the advice of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, made his planned trip north to Balholmen in Norway as planned, in the hope of not aggravating the political tensions. After the outbreak of World War I, the S.M.S. Hohenzollern was decommissioned on August 31, 1914, removed from the list of warships on December 27, 1920, sold in 1923 and demolished in Wilhelmshaven.
S.M.S. Hohenzollern (1914) - Number 3
After the S.M.S. Hohenzollern (1876), the future "Kaiseradler" and the S.M.S. Hohenzollern (1892), the construction of a third imperial yacht, the S.M.S. Hohenzollern (1914), was launched in 1913 at the Vulcan shipyard in Szczecin. The launch of the 137-meter-long ship took place on September 29, 1914.
Sources:
"Deutschlands Seemacht" by Georg Wislicenus - Friedrich Wilhelm Grunow publishing house, Leipzig 1896
"Nauticus - Yearbook for the maritime interests of Germany" 1899-1901
"Überall" illustrated magazine for the army and navy, years
"Deutschland zur See" weekly illustrated magazine of the association "Marinedank", Berlin, years
"So war die alte Kriegsmarine" by Eberhard von Mantey - Berlin 1935
"The German warships", Groener 1966
"Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe", Hildebrand/Röhr/Steinmetz
There is a 1/700 model at Combrig Models:
https://m.facebook.com/combrig.models/p ... cale=ms_MYhttps://www.modellmarine.de/index.php/b ... lern-1-700Scale 1/100:
https://schiffsmodelle4sale.ch/hohenzollern-1893-e/On June 27, 1892, Emperor Wilhelm II personally gave the christening speech in Stettin and Empress Victoria christened the new state yacht "Hohenzollern".
This ship is a masterpiece of 19th century German shipbuilding.
It was used by the Emperor as a referee ship during fleet maneuvers, in peacetime for visits of foreign princes and for pleasure trips to northern and southern Europe.
A double bottom with numerous cells and several bulkheads ensured the buoyancy of the ship, even in case of damage.
The interior equipment was of a distinguished type. Practical, comfortable and of impeccable taste.
The ship had a very bad behavior at sea.
The "Hohenzollern" made its longest voyage to New York.
On July 30, 1917, it was decommissioned and removed from the list of warships on December 27, 1920.
In 1923, she was demolished in Wilhelmshaven.
Another model, probably 1/100 as well.
https://www.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/gall ... 775ca7ce95
The emperor's ship
in the count's room
17.08.2020 by Roland Beck
https://www.burg-hohenzollern.com/nachr ... llern.htmlThe S.M.S. Hohenzollern - His Majesty's ship - has arrived at its home port. Since Thursday, the model ship, which is true to the original, can be admired in the Count's Hall of Hohenzollern Castle. It was built and donated by Klaus Soltwedel from Hechingen-Sickingen.
Klaus Soltwedel is a model maker at heart and soul. His eyes shine when he tells about the creation of one of his treasures. Especially when he recounts the history and stories surrounding the original in question. Over the past 60 years, this mechanical engineer has built numerous model ships, most of them in 1:100 scale: cargo ships, tugs, fishing boats, wheeled boats and military ships. His passion for the sea came to him in the cradle, so to speak. His father was a mechanic on submarines during the Second World War.
Klaus Soltwedel cannot hide his meticulous love of detail, originality and faithfulness to scale are important to him. And he makes almost all the parts himself, even the smallest ones. Only in a few exceptional cases does he use prefabricated parts, which he buys from the specialist trade or from specialists.
In 1975, while still living in Ettlingen, the native of Westphalia became a member of the prestigious Rastatt Model Railway Club. The club had just missed out on first place at the World Model Ship Championships in China, because the S.M.S. Hohenzollern was missing from its collection of imperial naval ships.
The association immediately approached Soltwedel to fill this gap. Soltwedel began searching for construction plans, photos, and other documents that would have allowed him to make a model plan.
He had many kind and friendly correspondences with museums and archives throughout Europe and received interesting descriptions. "At one point, I knew exactly how big the imperial cabin dressing room was and how many potatoes had been sheltered on the Hohenzollern, but the documents needed to draw up a construction plan were lacking," the 73-year-old recalls. So he put the S.M.S. Hohenzollern project on hold.
In 1990, when Soltwedel had been in Hechingen-Sickingen for eleven years, the Freiburg Military Archives contacted him. They had general plans of the S.M.S. Hohenzollern which they could make available to him. The project took its course. Soltwedel could finally produce the long-awaited model plan.
The scale was 1:100, the same scale used by most of the fellow modelers in this league. The Hohenzollern model had to be 1.22 meters long. Without further ado, he turned the party room of his house into a well-equipped workshop and began sawing, gluing, resinating, sanding, painting and polishing. "The multi-layered birch and beech plywood hull was still relatively simple to make," says the handyman. But the superstructures had it all. He made small and very small parts out of 0.3-millimeter-thick brass plate. He had some of the ship's filigree decorations engraved into the sheet metal at a specialist in Pirmasens. He sawed the 282 portholes out of 4 millimeter thick brass tubes. The 3.5 centimeter Prussian eagle on the stern was carved from lime wood. For the original colors - the hull is red and white, the stacks yellow - he was inspired by an old shipyard model that is in the Achilleion Palace in Corfu.
Once the hull was completed, Soltwedel tested its seaworthiness. He quickly realized that the model would not really float. This was not due to his modeling skills, but to the nature of the original. "When the S.M.S. Hohenzollern was launched on June 27, 1892, there was a lot of criticism from the military about the construction," Soltwedel explains with a laugh. Admiral Eduard von Knorr, one of the most senior generals in the Imperial Navy, later called the new flagship a "sunken omnibus. The steamboat was so narrow and so high that it could reach an inclination of 33 degrees in good seas, which must have raised the stomach juices in the eyes of the most hardened sea wolf. Although she was designated as an aviso - a small warship intended for message transmission - in the Imperial Navy, she actually never took part in any armed conflict and was mainly used by the Emperor for travel and state receptions before being demolished in 1923.
Regardless, Soltwedel completed his S.M.S. Hohenzollern in 2019. He can no longer say how many hours he spent on this model, but certainly more than 1000. And as with most of his previous models, he wondered who he could donate it to. "I can't set up all my boats in my house, in my living room," he said. His request to the Hohenzollern Palace administration found an open door. Anja Hoppe, the castle administrator, was immediately enthusiastic and grateful: "The imperial ship is a beautiful model that does not look like a warrior at all. It has the character of a huge luxury yacht from a bygone era. It will have a special place - in the count's room". That's where it can be admired since last Thursday. "It especially makes the hearts of our male visitors, young and old, beat faster," the castle administrator can attest to from her own observation.
And what is Klaus Soltwedel doing now? Bored? Not at all. He already has a new project in mind. "An elderly model maker from the north of Germany asked me to finish his already started model of the S.M.S. Scharnhorst", says the handyman with a smile and his eyes shining.
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