You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (January 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,936 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Woermann-Linie]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Woermann-Linie}} to the talk page.
It was founded on 15 June 1885 by Adolph Woermann and developed as one of the leading shipping companies between Europe and Africa. From 1899 the company was headquartered in Afrikahaus, in Hamburg.
For decades it transported contract laborers to various places on the African continent, for instance, workers from Liberia and Nigeria to Spanish Guinea.
In 1942, it and the Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linie were taken over by John T. Essberger. The Deutsche Afrika-Linien lost both fleets in post-war reparations.