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Issue No. 306
September / October 2025
GERMANIA III
A 1936, 8-Meter Olympic medalist is still racing on the Baltic Sea
EKKE ERBEN
As the popularity of 8-Meter yacht racing surged in Europe in the late 1990s, Kolbe regularly campaigned GERMANIA III. With the yacht designer Juliane Hempel, Kolbe took steps to improve the yacht’s performance starting in 1998, and that year she won the vintage-class world championships in Geneva, Switzerland. More improvements followed; here GERMANIA III is seen in a close duel at the 2017 German Classics.
The Baltic Sea off the yachting capital of Kiel, Germany, was a natural venue for the sail-racing competitions of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted by the country. On August 13 that year, the Kiel newspaper headline trumpeted, “Germany wins Bronze Medal in 8mR competition with GERMANIA III.” A yacht designed to win such races, as GERMANIA III was, could ordinarily be expected to have a short life and be superseded by design innovations and emerging classes. And yet, more than 60 years later, in 1998, the same yacht made headlines again: “French actor Alain Delon presents 8mR World Cup trophy to GERMANIA III crew.” And today, after a restoration that has made the yacht arguably even better than ever, she is still racing in the Baltic Sea.
Bernhard Kolbe, GERMANIA III’s current owner, purchased her in 1989. He owned a company specializing in steel-and-concrete structures, but woodworking and sailing were his passions. He and his brother-in-law were actively searching for a wooden boat when they found GERMANIA III at Lake Constance, on Germany’s border with Austria and Switzerland. The boat, having been altered for cruising, was in a tired state.
They brought GERMANIA III first to Duisburg, their hometown in western Germany, and Kolbe contacted Gerd Wegener of Wegener Shipyard in Hamburg, who is the grandson of Jonny Wegener, one of GERMANIA III’s previous owners. Wegener’s first impression of GERMANIA III was that with her old engine, her heavy tanks aft, and her cruising interior, she had turned into a “tired mule.” She was hardly the racing competitor first envisioned in 1935 by her designer, Henry Rasmussen of the Abeking & Rasmussen yard in Lemwerder, near Bremen, for racing sailor Alfried von Bohlen und Halbach (see sidebar). Kolbe had the boat transported to Hamburg, where Wegener took on the project. The pair would become friends and racing partners, with Wegener as skipper.
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