Modern ruins

In the year 1908 the black worker of the German Reichsbahn, Zacharias Lewala, found a twinkling stone when repairing the tracks and took it to his boss August Stauch. This chance find pulled the trigger for an unprecedented diamond rush in one of the most inhospitable regions of Africa. It attracted hundreds of adventurers, entrepreneurs and workers and with Coleman’s Hill a modern, small German town developed out of nothing with a post office, a hospital, police station, swimming pool, casino, theater and a bowling alley. The Germans engraved the culture in this area. The bowling club „Gut Holz“ (good wood), gymnastics festivals and folklore dance dominated the leisure time. Women wore fancy silk tights and the men wore chokers. And the little German Reichsbahn officer August Stauch became the diamond king of the empire. Because of him Coleman’s Hill became a town of the superlative virtually over-night: It was presumed as the richest town of Africa calculated by the per capita income. 20% of the worldwide diamonds were produced and possessed there and financed one of the most modern hospitals of the region with the first X-ray apparatus on the continent. But the rapid boom was followed by a creeping decline. With the shrinking diamond sources the glamour of the bizarre German town in the middle of the desert faded. In the year 1954 the hospital noted the discharge of the last patient, two years later the last families left Coleman’s Hill and the formerly wealthy town turned into a ghost town. In the meantime the desert has taken back big parts of the town. But most of the colorful houses are still furnished, the bowling alley where once German officers enjoyed their prosperity has a spooky charm with its abandonment, while the former swimming pool is already completely filled up with sand. But since a few years new life is awaking in the ghost town. For decades the diamond–restricted area wasn’t open to public. In the year 2008 the region around Kolmanskuppe has been declared a nature reserve and is now accessible for visitors. The almost untouched succulent-desert Karoo is considered the species-richest desert of the world with more than 1.700 leaf- and trunk-succulents. One example for the inventiveness of nature are the “living stones” (Lithops), which have water-storing leafs that hardly stick out of the ground and are camouflaged as stones – a perfect protection against sand storms and being eaten by animals. Besides the succulents and the extraordinary stones the Karoo houses about 80 vertebrate-species. Typical wild animals are antelopes, springboks, ostriches, jackals and brown hyenas. Not far from Kolmanskuppe wild horses can be watched, which have been released their just in 1915. The fauna in the Karoo desert has not been completely explored yet because of its isolation. Still 20 animal species have been discovered in this region in the last years. The national park with its bizarre attraction Kolmanskuppe nowadays attracts tourists, zoologists and adventurers, photographers from all over the world coming to explore the spooky place with its untouched nature. So the decline of a modern ruin creates new perspectives for the people, who partly experienced the rise and fall of the diamond town by themselves.