FRANZ ADOLF LÜDERITZ
(16 July 1834 – 30 October 1886)
Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz was a German merchant and founder of the
first German colony in Southwest Africa. He was born in Bremen, Germany,
where he engaged in the tobacco business with his father. Adolf
Lüderitz succeeded to the management of the business. Lüderitz had
traveled to the United States from 1854 to 1859.
Lüderitz sought and obtained prior assurance of German protection
when in 1882 he declared his intention to build a factory for purposes
of trade on a desert coast he had never seen. His grand design was to
acquire possession of land in the interior from tribal chiefs and
"introduce German goods under German labels".
For such a project he needed "the protection of the German flag".
Besides he did not want to pay duties to the British authorities on
imports through Walfischbucht (Walvis Bay).
He initially sent out a young man named Heinrich Vogelsang as his
agent. Vogelsang persuaded Joseph Fredericks, a tribal chief who claimed
suzerainty over that part of the coast, to part with Angra Pequena --
the anchorage along with all land within a radius of 8 km -- for £100 in
gold coin and 200 rifles. Lüderitz did not pay the £100 in gold, but in
trade goods.
Less than three months after the first deal, Vogelsang bought the
entire coast from Angra Pequena to the Orange River, to a width of 20
"geographical miles". Known for a time as Lüderitzland, the acquisition
contained vast treasure in the form of diamonds, although nobody knew it
at the time.
The agreed price was £500 in gold and 60 rifles, but as before no gold changed hands. Lüderitz again paid in trade goods.
Lüderitz later bought the coast north of Angra Pequena, as far as the
Kunene River, from other chiefs for the princely sum of £170 in all.
To all intents and purposes Lüderitz had bought an entire country,
the future South West Africa, in little more than two years from 1 May
1883 to 19 June 1885. He owned about a third of it outright and held
mineral rights to a large part of the remainder.
Unfortunately for him he had run out of money. Unable to exploit his
acquisitions and concessions, he sold them to the Deutsche
Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwest Africa (DKGSWA) (German Colonial
Society for Southwest Africa, known as DKGSWA), a chartered company
founded in Berlin to develop the colony.
Lüderitz had failed as a trader and his geological expeditions --
each more costly than the one before -- failed to discover the gold and
copper he sought.
With a subsidy from the DKG he went on a final expedition in search
of mineral wealth. On his homeward journey in a small boat with a flimsy
sail, he and his helmsman were lost at sea, somewhere between the
Orange River mouth and Angra Pequena, in 1886.
Diamonds were discovered 22 years after his death in the desert he had once owned.
The DKGSWA bought all of Lüderitz' land and mining rights, following
Bismarck's policy that private rather than public money should be used
to develop the colonies.
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