Postwar Lufthansa bought its own famous name for DM 30,000
The airline that flies today as Lufthansa is not the one founded in 1926. That company was dissolved after the war. A new West German firm called Luftag bought the old name and logo in 1954 for just DM 30,000, roughly 41,000 euros in today's money, and revived a national brand.
The original Deutsche Luft Hansa was formed in Berlin in 1926 by merging Deutscher Aero Lloyd with Junkers Luftverkehr. In the war it fell under the Luftwaffe, and forced labour was used in its repair work at Tempelhof. After Germany's surrender its planes were seized and its assets liquidated in 1951. Decades later, in 1999, the modern airline joined a German initiative acknowledging such wartime wrongs, though it was criticised for sitting on a commissioned history study for over ten years.
Luftag was founded in Cologne in January 1953, staffed largely by veterans of the old airline, before West Germany even controlled its own skies. It ordered Convairs and Super Constellations anyway. Domestic flights began in April 1955, and flights to London, Paris and Madrid followed within weeks. The four occupying powers barred it from divided Berlin, so it made Frankfurt its main hub in 1958; plans to move back to the capital never materialised, even after reunification. When East Germany tried to launch its own Lufthansa, West German lawsuits forced it to choose another name, Interflug.
Lufthansa became a favourite early customer for Boeing. It ordered 707s in 1958, pioneered a polar route from Frankfurt to Tokyo via Anchorage in 1964, and was the first customer for the 737, making it Boeing's first foreign launch customer for an airliner. Later it launched the 747-8 passenger version and flew 14 A380s.
It also helped build modern airline plumbing. In 1987 it co-founded Amadeus, the booking system travel agents use, and in 1997 it was a founding member of Star Alliance, the first multi-airline alliance. The group now includes Swiss, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and ITA Airways.
Source: Lufthansa
