Leseprobe

64 The Kronprinzessin Cecilie – named after Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the last crown princess of the German Empire – was one of the fastest, most modern and certainly most beautiful passenger ships of the early twentieth century. Driven by a piston steam engine of 46,000 horsepower, the 215-metre liner could reach speeds of up to 23.6 knots. Like her three sister ships, the Kronprinzessin Cecilie sailed for Norddeutscher Lloyd on the North Atlantic route between Bremerhaven and New York. She was commandeered by the United States shortly after the beginning of the First World War and was repurposed in 1917 as the troop transport ship Mount Vernon . Once the war ended, the former luxury steamer was decommissioned and left out to rust before finally being scrapped in 1940. Johann Georg Poppe, Norddeutscher Lloyd’s artistic director, was tasked with designing the majority of the interiors on the Kronprinzessin Cecilie . In addition, and groundbreaking at the time, modernist interior designers such as Josef Maria Olbrich, Bruno Paul and Richard Riemerschmid were com­ missioned to plan some of the rooms. Riemerschmid designed the Imperial Suite, which consisted of a breakfast room, a sleeping chamber and a generous salon, all lavishly furnished. Deutsche Werkstätten was again responsible for producing the interiors for this ensemble. Those who desired to travel in such a luxurious suite had to pay between 6,000 and 8,000 marks per crossing – or roughly the price of a small house in Germany at that time. KRONPRINZESSIN CECILIE (1907) Norddeutscher Lloyd | AGVulcan (Szczecin) | 215.3m Imperial Suite View from the breakfast room into the salon