Foundation of the Luft Hansa

A new airline is created in Berlin

Germany’s first airline between Berlin and Weimar had been in operation since 1919 by the Deutsche Luft-Reederei, with a stylized crane as its logo. After various organizational changes, the company finally merged with a competitor to form the Deutsche Luft Hansa AG on 6 April 1926. The name was chosen to evoke memories of the Hanseatic League, a late medieval alliance of North German merchants and trading cities that maintained an extensive overseas trade network. Although the new organization was a purely civilian outfit, it soon came to the attention of the Third Reich, which used it to train and equip the nascent German air force. The close involvement of the airline with the arms industry meant that the Deutsche Luft Hansa AG made extensive use of forced and slave labour during the Second World War.

This complicity with the Third Reich led the Allies to dissolve the Deutsche Luft Hansa AG after 1945. In 1953, the West German government established a new aviation company, soon renamed Deutsche Lufthansa AG, but its first flight had to wait until the Federal Republic regained control of its air traffic in 1955.