Hans Bohrdt, (11 February 1857 – 19 December 1945)
Wilhelm Gustloff in the Port of Hamburg, c. 1939
Oil on canvas
80 x 120 cm
Private collection
MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German cruise ship transformed into a military transport ship. She was sunk on 30 January 1945 by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea, while evacuating German civilians, officials, and military personnel from Gdynia (Gotenhafen) as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate, 9,400 people died, which makes it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.
Constructed as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1937, she had been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine (German navy) in 1939. She served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. She was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in Gdynia (Gotenhafen) before being put into service to transport evacuees in 1945. More on MV Wilhelm Gustloff
The Port of Hamburg, is a sea port on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany, 110 kilometres from its mouth on the North Sea.
It's Germany's largest port and is named the country's "Gateway to the World". Hamburg is the second-busiest port in Europe (after Rotterdam) and 15th-largest worldwide.
The harbour is location is naturally advantaged by a branching Elbe, creating an ideal place for a port complex with warehousing and transshipment facilities. More on The Port of Hamburg
Hans Bohrdt (11 February 1857 – 19 December 1945) was a German artist. He was a self-taught painter who would later go on to give private lessons to Kaiser Wilhelm II. German Kaiser Wilhelm II took a liking to Bohrdt and would fund all of his projects, which were often nationalistic in nature. In 1915 Bohrdt created his most famous illustration which is called "The Last Man". The image shows a German navy officer holding up a German flag as his ship sinks because he would rather go down with the ship than surrender. "The Last Man" would become one of the most widely recognized propaganda images used during the war to inspire courage. Bohrdt was accepted into the Imperial Yacht Club in Kiel. In 1906 the Kaiser granted Bohrdt a spacious villa in Berlin. After World War I, Bohrdt made a living drawing maritime postcards, book illustrations, magazines, and supplied images for newspaper articles. More on Hans Bohrdt
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