Carl Stangen

He founded Carl Stangens Reisebüro, Germany's first international travel agency, which earned him the designation as the German Thomas Cook.

After he had been classified as unfit for medical reasons, he returned to Silesia and began a professional career in the postal service.

His brother Louis Stangen (1828 in Otmuchów - 1876 in Jedlina-Zdrój) began in 1863 with the company headquarters in Breslau, to organise special and social trips.

During the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, a group called Stangen's Party formed and travelled across the North American continent.

He founded and ran the travel guides and magazines Der Tourist (1884) and Stangens illustrierte Reise- und Verkehrszeitung (1894).

Due to the conveniently located port of departure in Trieste, Stangen often used Österreichischer Lloyd, whose Berlin agency he also acted as, for Orient voyages and chartered the SS Bohemia from them.

[3] At the beginning of 1905, Carl Stangen sold his travel agency to the Hamburg America Line when the Hapag board of directors wanted to become more involved in tourism after the great success of their cruises.

Hapag, which had previously also operated a travel agency Unter den Linden itself, renamed the company "Reisebüro der Hamburg-Amerika Linie".

This merger of the two travel agencies moved Hapag up among the largest tourism providers, and the Berlin office was located on Unter den Linden.

In addition to his work for his father's travel agency, Stangen's son Ernst ran an "Orient-Waren-Lager" for the import and sale of "art and industrial objects from abroad".