Ernst Ludwig Cramer

Ernst Ludwig Cramer (born January 26, 1895 in Hamburg , † January 4, 1957 in Johannesburg ) was a German writer , owner and farmer on Rogers Farm in what is now Namibia .

Life

Cramer was born as the eldest son of Ludwig and Adelheid (Ada) Cramer in Hamburg. In 1906 his parents emigrated to what was then the German colony of German South West Africa and ran a farm there. They initially left their children with relatives. While his sisters followed their parents in 1908, Ernst Ludwig Cramer did not follow him until December 1912 and worked on his parents' farm in Otjisororindi until the war-related mobilization in German South West Africa (August 7, 1914).

Cramer volunteered for the South West African Protection Force, which surrendered to the South African Union troops in July 1915. He ended up as a prisoner of war and returned to his parents' farm after his release, where his father was killed in an explosion in 1917. His mother was expelled to Germany in 1919, Ernst Ludwig and his sisters Elisabeth and Hildegard were allowed to stay. Hildegard, who was married to the writer Paul Ritter , took over the management of the farm . Elisabeth Cramer married in the same year and moved to the Omitiomere farm in 1920.

In 1921 Ernst Ludwig Cramer bought the Rogers Farm, which was also near his parents' farm, and rebuilt it. He married Eda Forster, with whom he had five children: Doris (* 1929), Günter (* 1930), Helmut (* February 27, 1932, † October 5, 1939), Edda (* 1935) and Dietrich (* 1936, † 1947). In 1938 Cramer fell ill with Malta fever and went to Windhoek for treatment . In May 1939 he traveled to Germany for a cure on the Pretoria, the Windhoek's sister ship . When he was unable to return to Africa as planned because of the outbreak of World War II , he found a job at the Dürkopp works in Bielefeld , where his uncle, Otto Cramer, was employed as a lawyer . Ernst Ludwig Cramer worked there as a milling cutter. In Bielefeld he also received news of the death of his son Helmut, who had died at the age of seven as a result of appendicitis.

Cramer took the death of his son as an opportunity to write the book Die Kinderfarm , in which he wanted to tell the children in Germany about Africa. The book was published by Rütten & Loening , whose forced sale to an “Aryan” publisher was ordered in 1936 by the Reich Chamber of Literature on the basis of the Nuremberg Laws . During the war, the publisher mainly produced classical literature, but also "edification literature" to which The Children's Farm must certainly be counted. The editions published during the war contain the dedication "To the memory of the German youth in South West Africa who gave their lives for the victory of Greater Germany" as well as a list of fallen soldiers. An expanded and revised version of the book was published by Velhagen & Klasing in 1951 .

Cramer registered for military service in 1940 and served in Bünde and Bad Oeynhausen , among others . This made it possible for him to give lectures about his African homeland close to his home.

After the war, Cramer stayed in Germany. In 1947 his son Dietrich died after a bus accident, but Cramer was not able to return to South West Africa until 1950. He died in a hospital in Johannesburg in 1957 after a long illness. Eda Cramer continued to live on Farm Rogers and died on December 22, 1996 in Windhoek.

bibliography

• We will be back. A German book on Africa (1939)
• The Children's Farm (1940, 1951, 1983)
• Children's Farm Letters (1942)

After the end of the Second World War, Cramer's books were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .

swell

• Author biography at Namibiana Buchdepot , accessed on October 2, 2014
• Ernst Ludwig Cramer: The children's farm ; Velhagen & Klasing, 1951

Web links

• Official website of Cramer’s , operator and owner of Farm Rogers

Individual evidence

1. ^ Foreword by Ernst Ludwig Cramer in Die Kinderfarm, Rütten & Loening Verlag, 1940
2. ^ Database font and image 1900 to 1960 , accessed on October 2, 2014