Deruluft

Deruluft
(Deutsch-Russische Luftverkehrsgesellschaft)
Germany and USSR

	Deruluft (Deutsch-Russische Luftverkehrsgesellschaft) Germany and USSR

Deruluft was founded in November 1921 as a joint Soviet-German enterprise, with 50% ownership by the Soviet Government and 50% by Aero-Union of Germany. Aero-Union was a holding company, backed by HAPAG (Hamburg-America Line) and Luftschiffbau Zeppelin among others. When relations between Germany and the Soviet Union were normalized in the spring of 1922, Deruluft quickly opened a route between Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad) and Moscow. German ownership passed to Deutscher Aero Lloyd in 1923, following the merger of the airline affiliates of the HAPAG and Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) shipping companies, and changed again to Deutsche Luft Hansa, when the German national airline was created in 1926 by the merger of Deutscher Aero Lloyd and Junkers Luftverkehr.

A new route from Berlin over Königsberg via the Baltic countries to Leningrad was opened in 1928. Deruluft's route network remained fairly intact until the airline discontinued operations in March 1937. By then, relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had deteriorated to a point where a joint venture was politically impossible. Deutsche Lufthansa took over the route through the Baltic countries, but a service to Moscow was reopened only after the unexpected German-Soviet nonaggression pact of August 1939 had temporarily brought the two countries closer to each other.