Ships, Folk Art, and Whimsey in Bottles

The sail training ship HORST WESSEL was built in 1936 at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Horst Wessel, who gave the ship its name, was a troop leader ("Sturmführer") of the SA, the paramilitary fighting organisation of the NSDAP. He became famous as the author of the "Horst Wessel Song", which was later named after him. From 1933 to 1945, this song also formed the second part of the German national anthem, following the Deutschlandlied. The ship was used by the German navy until 1945. The last commander remained on the ship after the end of the war and transferred it to the United States as reparations in 1946. When building this ship I decided to use the original version, as I base all my models on the original version of the prototype. The hull of the model is made of pear wood and is divided into two parts so that it fits through the neck, which measures only 2.3 centimetres. All the superstructures were added to the deck in the bottle, the masts are made of bamboo knitting needles. The entire rig came disassembled into individual parts in the bottle filled with window putty as sea. The ship is painted with standard acrylic paints, the sails are made of thin synthetic material. The ship has a scale of 1:320 and fills the bottle completely.