indwe magazine – April 2005

Assorted Bits of Lüderitz
Text & Images: Roland Hanewald
The first seafarer making an appearance in what is today’s Lüderitz Bay, was Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Diaz, in 1487. Like everywhere along the African coasts, a large limestone cross was erected on the foreland overlooking the entrance of the bay, called Cabo Tormentoso, Cape of Storms, by its seafaring discoverer. Today known as Diaz Point, the promontory features a replica of the original cross, whose weathered remains went into museums in Lisbon and Cape Town.
During the centuries that followed, the windy and desolate place was ignored by all seafaring nations. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that Germany, in the course of its colonial expansion, became interested in the bay that Diaz had stumbled upon. It turned out to be an excellent natural harbour, and this particular quality soon gave rise to covetousness. The next explorer to show up, in 1883, was Adolf Lüderitz, a merchant from Bremen, Germany. He hawked the land around the bay from Nama chief Joseph Fredericks for a hundred pound sterling and 200 rifles, and went to work with a vengeance to develop the rocky place.
But the deal incorporated a covenant of warfare because the vendor was made to believe that the bill of sale involved English miles of 1.6 km, wheras the shrewd buyer declared afterwards that he had meant German miles of almost five times that length. This ‘error’ suited Mr Lüderitz fine. War meant that troops and their supplies had to be routed through the newly created port, for which the pioneer, obsessed with his mission, had high-flying plans. Although most of them did not materialise, the fledgling settlement enjoyed a bit of a boom at the turn of the 19th century after numerous immigrants had poured into the land. The newcomers did not become instant “Afrikaaners”, but rather cultivated traditional values which even back home had fallen into oblivion. While time-honoured architectural norms did not survive very long in other immigrant countries (such as North America) and rather tended to become absorbed by local tastes, the new South-Westerners spared no effort to build ‘homes away from home’, no matter how incongruous they appeared in the middle of nowhere – this being an apt description of the place at that time. And even now. While in Germany herself, much of the fin du siècle building substance went down the drain in the wake of two world wars, most of the olden edifices in Lüderitz have remained intact. “As German as Bremen”, National Geographic Magazine called Lüderitz a couple of years ago, disregarding the fact that the Namib Desert starts right at the little town’s doorstep and incessantly threatens to take over the place by creeping into every nook and cranny. And not only that. The perennially blowing wind and flying sand tend to abrade the paint coats of the fine old houses, which therefore need constant maintenance. Lüderitz is a desert town, now as then.
Yet one has the impression that everything in Lüderitz looks the neater the older it is, starting with the handsome Goerke House of 1909/10, now a museum and truly a sight to see. The Felsenkirche, or “Rock Church”, built on bare rock like everything else, governs the town’s panorama and can hardly be ignored either. The erstwhile railway station of 1914 vintage is no less imposing, although trains have long ceased to use it. But who knows? Spectacular new discoveries of minerals in the hinterlands – mainly zinc ore near Rosh Pinah – may eventually necessitate a new rail link. This would give a tremendous boost to the once minuscule port of Lüderitz, which has already developed beyond a mere fishing centre and diamond-dredger base into a busy container terminal, accommodating ocean-going vessels of up to 150 m length and 8 m draught.
It is not only the town of Lüderitz itself and its pleasant old buildings that will delight the visitor. The environs of the erstwhile Imperial burgh offer quite a bit of excitement, too. Such as Agate Beach just north of the town, where semi-precious stones may be found – and kept(!); Shark Island, connected with the mainland and featuring a lively bird colony and a camping ground; or Diaz Point with its famous cross, wind-blown, exposed to the wild ocean spray and a must for anyone sojourning in the area. The entire coast from the Grosse Bucht, some 15 km south of Lüderitz, up to Diaz Point, is a savage stretch of land, jagge in places and interspersed by fjords, gravelly beaches and huge rock arches, and populated by thousands of birds (mainly in the protected penguin colony on Halifax Island) and other critters, such as seals and sea lions. Whoever travels in those whereabouts must take care not to stray into the adjacent Diamond Sperrgebiet and perhaps deprive the incumbent mining companies of an overlooked bauble. Entry into the “Verbotene Zone” can be acquired quite legally, though, simply by booking a safari at the Lüderitz Tourist Office which will for instance take the visitor to the fabled Bogenfels some 100 km farther south, in perfect ease and comfort. Outings to Kolmanskop, the famous ‘ghost town’ of erstwhile diamond fame, also take place every day.
Lüderitz is indeed something special, duly proven, for one thing, by featuring a name with an umlaut in a country whose official languages do not even contain such an exotism. Much to the delight of German visitors almost everyone in Lüderitz speaks the old lingo. It’s good for the tourism business, the Lüderitzers say, and that’s very true...
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