Ghost town
- May 5, 2017
- 2 min read
‘Kolmanskop Ghost Town’ tourist opening hours beat us to our arrival but we were lucky enough to get permission for our ‘private entrance’. Inside the premises there was a large parking space for tour buses which I was happy to see empty. The renovated center building that hosted bathrooms, as well as meeting points for tours, was deserted as well, making it the ideal atmosphere for our ghosts hunting ... and photography.
The town’s hospital had the wooden label ‘Krankenhaus’ which apparently sounds suitably frightening to non-German speakers.
Kolmanskop is Namibia's most famous ghost town, and is situated in the Sperrgebiet, (forbidden territory) a few kilometers inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, a railway worker found a sparkling stone amongst the sand he was shoveling away from the railway line, near Kolmanskop. His supervisor August Stauch, was convinced it was a diamond and when this was confirmed, the news spread like wildfire, sparking a huge, frantic diamond rush and causing fortune hunters to converge in droves on Kolmanskop.
The town soon developed, becoming a bustling little centre and providing shelter for workers from the harsh environment of the Namib Desert. Large, elegant houses were built and it soon resembled a German town, complete with an impressive array of amenities including; a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, theater and sports hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray station in the southern hemisphere. Fresh meat could be purchased at the butcher's, there was a bakery, furniture factory, a public playground and even a swimming pool! At the time, there was also a railway line to Lüderitz.
The development of Kolmanskop reached its pinnacle in the 1920's, but the town declined after World War 1, when diamond prices crashed. At this time approximately 300 German adults, 40 children and 800 Owambo contract workers lived in the town. In spite of, or probably because of, the isolation and bleakness of the surrounding desert, Kolmanskop developed into a lively little haven of German culture, offering entertainment and recreation to suit the requirements of the affluent colonialists.
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