Being originally one of the most successful whaling nations, German whaling vessels started from Hamburg and other, smaller cities on the Elbe river, hunting for whales around Greenland and Spitsbergen. While 1770 is recorded to have been the most successful year of German whaling, German whaling went into steep decline with the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars and never really recovered. After the Napoleonic Wars, Germany tried but could never re-establish a successful whaling industry. German whaling boats in the mid to late 1800s would generally not be staffed with experienced sailors but rather with members of more wealthy farming communities, going for short trips to Scandinavia during the end of spring / beginning of summer, when their labor was not required on the fields. This kind of whaling was ineffective. Many journeys would not lead to any whales caught, instead seal- and polar bear skins were brought back to shore. Communities often paid more for equipping the vessels in the first place than making money with the goods brought back to shore. Today, local historians believe that German whaling in the late 1800s was more a rite of passage for the sons of wealthy farmers from northern German islands than an action undertaken for true commercial reason. German whaling was abandoned in 1872.

Prior to the first world war, attempts to re-establish large scale German whaling were undertaken with ships either going from Germany to Iceland or from the newly established German colonies to African waters. This attempts never were commercially successful and quickly given up. Only in the 1930s Germany could - with mainly Norwegian personnel - re-establish a large and successful whaling industry with more than 15 000 caught whales between 1930 and 1939. With the beginning of the second world war, German whaling was abandoned completely.

In the early 1950s, Germany maintained one whaling vessel for testing purpose as it considered re-establishing a German whaling fleet, but abandoned these plans in 1956. The last remaining German whalers worked for Dutch vessels in the 1950s and 1960s.

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