Hansa also means "swan" in Sanskrit, and has a resemblance to the bird that is depicted in the company's logo. The airline was created by a merger between Deutscher Aero Lloyd (an airline formed in 1923 out of the earlier airline DLR or Deutsche Luft-Reederei by AEG, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin and Dornier as a co-operation between the shipping companies Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg America Line) and Junkers Luftverkehr, the in-house airline of Junkers.[1] This action was taken due to an initiative of the German government which hoped to reduce the amount of financial support it provided to the two partly state-owned airlines, which were both plagued by heavy debts at that time.The stylised flying crane symbol had been used by DLR.