August Stauch

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August Stauch, on the right (around 1907)

August Stauch (born January 15, 1878 in Ettenhausen / Suhl ; † May 6, 1947 in Eisenach ) is considered to be the discoverer of the diamond deposits near the town of Lüderitz in what was then the colony of German South West Africa , now Namibia .

August Stauch had three children, a daughter (Ursula, 1909–1970) and two sons (Hans, 1905–1955; Hellmut, 1910–1970). His younger son Hellmut became a renowned architect in South Africa, started sailing at the Olympic Games and designed the O-dinghy .

The entire Stauch family is buried in the Gammams cemetery in Windhoek .

Diamond find

August Stauch was born as the third of seven children to a family of railway workers in Ettenhausen. He was a railway employee in Thuringia and in 1907 came to the German colony on medical advice - he suffered from asthma . In his free time he had been a hobby of mineralogy . Stauch was stationed at the Grasplatz train station near the town of Lüderitz and, as railway foreman, was entrusted with the task of keeping an approx. 20 km long section of railway free from the constant sand drifts. A local worker, Zacharias Lewala , was given to him to help. Stauch had instructed his assistant, who had mineralogical knowledge due to his previous work in a South African diamond mine, to pay attention to special stones during his work. Lewala found one on April 10, 1908 and dutifully brought it to his superior. He suspected a diamond, but was not sure about it and had his suspicion confirmed by his friend and mining engineer Sönke Nissen , who lived in Lüderitz . The Orange had washed these diamonds into the sea millions of years ago. Wind and waves washed them back into the sand of the Namib. The southwest diamonds are usually not particularly large, but water-clear and therefore popular on the market. Stauch and Nissen initially kept their knowledge to themselves, terminated their employment contracts and secured a 75 km² claim at the Kolmanskop (named after a Nama named Coleman who was stuck here years ago and rescued ) in order to continue looking for diamonds . The success was not lacking. Both of them became wealthy men before the German Reich declared the area a restricted diamond area, and Kolmanskop temporarily became the richest city in Africa, measured by the per capita income of the inhabitants. Stauch founded the Koloniale Bergbaugesellschaft mbH with German donors and made it a millionaire.

Stauch tried to increase his prosperity further and invested in a variety of companies - both in the colony and in Germany, for example with the Vox-Schallplatten- und sprachmaschinen-AG . However, he lost in 1931 in the Great Depression his fortune. In old age he lived again in his birthplace Ettenhausen and died in April 1947 as a poor man as a result of stomach cancer. He had only two farms left in South West Africa. They still exist today and are managed by Stauch's grandchildren (a hunting farm and a weaving mill in Dordabis ).

politics

In the elections for the South West African Legislative Assembly in 1926 , the German Confederation for South West Africa had won 7 out of 12 of the seats to be elected. However, the South African mandate had the right to appoint six more MPs. After the election, the South African administrator Johannes Werth appointed two Germans and four Unionists as additional members. Farmer Paul Guhr and August Stauch were appointed German MPs . So there was a tie in parliament with 9 Germans and 9 Unionists. There was a scandal in the South West African Legislative Assembly in 1928. Stauch was the only German MP to agree to the government bill to financially support the immigration of the " Angola Boers ". He was heavily criticized from the German side for this. The background to this was the fact that the 1900 Angola Boers alone would make the German majority in the former German colony disappear (for comparison: in 1926 there were around 8,200 whites with voting rights in South West Africa).

literature

  • Olga Levinson: Diamonds in the Sand. The changeful life of August Stauch . 2007, ISBN 978-3-936858-02-0 .
  • W. Bredow, H. Lotz, A. Stauch: The German diamonds and their extraction . A * memorial for the Windhoek state exhibition in 1914. Published by the sponsors, Berlin 1914.
  • Bernd Längin: The German Colonies: Scenes and Fates 1888-1918 . 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Shelagh Suzanne Nation: The background, architectural philosophy and work of Hellmut Wilhelm Ernst Stauch. (PDF) University of Pretoria, April 21, 1985, p. 4 , accessed on August 27, 2014 (English).
  2. ↑ upsetting: eGGSA Library. Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  3. ↑ http://www.kolmanskop.de/der-zerfall.php  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.kolmanskop.de  
  4. ^ Martin Eberhardt: Between National Socialism and Apartheid, 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-0225-7 , pp. 180-181
personal data
SURNAME Stauch, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German discoverer of the diamond deposits near Lüderitz, Namibia
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Ettenhausen
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1947
Place of death Eisenach