The city of Cologne congratulates Lufthansa on its anniversary | News
Last Thursday evening, countless guests from the world of politics, the aviation industry, local society and sports gathered in Cologne for a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first Lufthansa. The mayor of Cologne had organized a reception in the historic town hall.
Cologne Mayor Torsten Burmester: “Cologne is proud to have played an important role in Lufthansa’s corporate history since the Second World War. Cologne is growing as an aviation hub, because in addition to being home to the EASA headquarters and the DLR, as well as the prospect of a European space hub, Cologne/Bonn Airport is the freight hub of Western Europe. I hope that the relationship between Cologne and Lufthansa will intensify again after this anniversary year. I therefore congratulate all Lufthansa employees from the bottom of my heart on the company’s 100th anniversary.”
Carsten Spohr, CEO of the Lufthansa Group: “In Cologne, the tradition, new beginnings and the future of Lufthansa come together in a special way. Aviation has been a growth sector for a hundred years and will continue to be so in the future. We want to maintain and further develop aviation in a sustainable way for generations to come. Lufthansa and the entire sector have grown through crises in recent decades and have emerged stronger from each crisis.”
Together with Carsten Spohr, a Lufthansa flight attendant, and a Eurowings flight attendant, Dr. Karl-Ludwig Kley, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and self-proclaimed Cologne resident by choice, also presented the guestbook of the City of Cologne during the ceremony. Kley is very involved in his birthplace on the Rhine and is, among other things, chairman of the board of the association “Freunde des Wallraf-Richartz-Museum und des Museum Ludwig”.
The relationship between Cologne and Lufthansa is long and multifaceted: already on April 6, 1926, when the first Luft Hansa started flying, an aircraft flew from Berlin to Cologne. The Dornier Komet III D-580 flew from Tempelhof via Magdeburg to Butzweilerhof Airport. On board: one passenger. In 1953, the Aktiengesellschaft für Luftverkehrsbedarf was founded in Cologne, renamed Deutsche Lufthansa AG a year later. Since then, Cologne has been Lufthansa’s headquarters. Seven aircraft carried or currently carry the name ‘Cologne’ – currently a Boeing 747-8 with the registration D-ABYU.
