Namibia: Historical Swakopmund - Ritterburg Mansion

Historical Swakopmund 

Theodor Ritter was a son-in-law of the Hamburg shipping magnate Adolph Woermann, and had been managing affairs at the local offices  of the Woermann Shipping Line from 1908 until 1912. Architect Höft (who also signed responsible for the design of the Haus Altona and the stately Woermann Haus with the Damara Tower) had designed the residence for Mr Ritter. Notably, it had been the first building in the country with electrical wiring and switches for lights and appliances integrated in the walls. (The Woermann group of companies operated the local coal-fired power station in town, it  had also been one of the very first electrical power stations in all of Southern Africa).

View from Woermann Haus Tower over the Ritterburg Mansion, the empty shell of the customs shed, and a deserted Mole in the distance

The mansion for Mr Theodor Ritter and his family (remember: his wife had been a daughter of the patrician Woermann dynasty) had been built onto the upper ridge of an age-old beach terrace, at the intersection of Kaiser Wilhelm - and Bismarck Straße. Further north along the same terrace, there had been the lighthouse as well as the 'Kabelmesse' (the local telegraph station). A little distance away, the Woermann Haus had been completed a few years prior.

YouTube video: Old Swakopmund:

As can be seen on the historical photograph of the 'Ritterburg', the main entrance had originally been on the southern façade of the building. This explains why the current entrance around the back has always felt like the kitchen servants' entrance - and does not make much sense, architecturally.

The southern main entrance had probably been shut off and bricked in somewhere between 1920 and 1970, when the building had served as yet another boarding school / 'Schul-Internat'.

The persistent southwesterly winds are probably to blame for this, but today there would be more elegant solutions to that.

Note how the building had once been surrounded by trees, probably the hardy Manotoka, Rooikrans / 'Port Jackson', Araucarya and Casuarina trees.

The photograph dates back to the years immediately after the 1st World War.

The customs shed in the picture explains  why the diagonal street below is still known as 'Am Zoll Straße'.

Swakopmund had originally been the main harbour town of German South-West Africa. All the harbour activities were moved to Walvis Bay during the war in 1915 already.

Swakopmund thus remains a harbour town that hasn't seen a single ship in well over a hundred years. And, against all odds, the town seems to be doing pretty well.

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Namibia: If for nothing else, then for being German

If for nothing else, then for being German

History always comes up with strange syncronicities. The German population had evacuated Swakopmund during September 1914, in anticipation of an invasion by the South African Union Defense Force. The occupation took place during January - February 1915 with anything up to 40 000 soldiers under the command of General Louis Botha for the Northern Front.

Around February 1915 Kaptein Cornelius van Wyk of the Rehoboth Baster obtained permission to visit the Namib game reserve in the Kuiseb - Swakopmund region, under the pretext that he “wanted to look for bushtea and salt”. Kaptein van Wyk crossed the barren desert on horseback to meet in secret with Gen. Louis Botha in Swakopmund.

He was traveling with Samuel Beukes and Dirk van Wyk. Kaptein Cornelius van Wyk met with Gen. Louis Botha on 1 April 1915, most likely inside the Woermann Haus, Swakopmund where Botha had his temporary HQ. There are no written records of what was discussed at the meeting. However, around the 18th of April, patrols of Baster soldiers were sent out from Rehoboth, also into the Naukluft area “to disarm the German police members at Büllsport and Abbabis”.

Farmer Richard Ewald Ernst Putzier at Farm Zais in the Naukluft was murdered by two Nama members of these patrols on April 21st, 1915, merely for the reason of being German. The widow buried her husband's corpse and escaped with their 9 month old son, Richard Alwin Putzier, (born in July 1914, three weeks before the outbreak of WWI in Europe) and headed through the shrub and mountains, crossing the Remhoogte Pass and Khomas Hochland towards Windhoek, about 250 km away. After several hot days and cold nights on the run, mother and child, both hungry, thirsty and in tatters, were found by a German patrol in the area south of Windhoek.

Mrs. Putzier and her baby boy stayed with the Rusch family at Farm Lichtenstein until after the official ceasefire in South-West Africa. My grandmother Angelika Rust, nee Rusch, turned 4 years old in 1915. Until her old age she had vivid memories of the widow and the baby child from the Naukluft. Ernst Rusch wrote in his memoirs that those were tough times in his life; during the first World War, there were 28 people sitting on his stoep for all their meals, mostly people that had been displaced during the war.

Three years later, the widow remarried a Mr. Johann Keet, a Boer transport rider, and moved back to Farm Zais in the Naukluft. The young Richard Putzier junior grew up at Zais, somehow attended school, and as a young man of 26 years was optimistic to buy farm land on credit a little further north towards Gamsberg, and to make a living from sheep farming.

He moved to Farm Koireb, not far from Solitaire in 1939, befriended and soon married a young petite woman, Ursula, also aged 26. Ursula was a refined woman and had great musical talent. Earlier in her life she had ambitions of becoming a ballerina.

Three days after their wedding day in 1940, the South African police moved in, forcefully took the young bridegroom as Prisoner of War (simply for being German & despite his stepfather being Boer), and sent him to the internment camp 'Klein Danzig' outside Windhoek. A few months later, over 1200 men were transferred to Andalusia internment camp outside Kimberley in South Africa. Other camps were Koffiefontein, Baviaanspoort (Andalusia is nowadays called Jan Kempsdorp). Other noted Namibians that also spent years at the “Stacheldraht-Universität” include the researcher Eberhard von Koenen, the artist Joachim Voigts, John Meinert of the well-known printing business in Windhoek, the author Ferdinand Lempp. Willi Giess had been born to a Frankfurt banker in 1910. His family moved to Windhoek in 1926. He had just bought the farm Dornfontein Süd near Dordabis when he was taken to Andalusia internment camp in 1940. He became a Namibian botanist of note. In the 1960’s Willi Giess re-married, this time the youngest sister of Ernst Rudolf Scherz. Professor Dr. nat. phil. Otto Heinrich Volk, originally from Richen, Heidelberg was busy with botanical research in SWA/Namibia from 1937 onwards. Simply due to being in the country at the outbreak of the war, and for being a German national, Prof Volk also became “Prisoner of War”, and at Andalusia started putting time to good use. He started lecturing botanical sciences, grazing management to fellow internees.

Another two German men that did not want to be drawn into a war, nor get sent to internment camps, were Henno Martin and Hermann Korn. They eventually went into hiding into the Namib, also not far from this location. Ursula Putzier could not handle the hardships of running a sheep farm in the desert on her own for an indefinite period. The farm was lost. Richard Putzier was only released in 1946. He returned and was re-united with his wife Ursula. Later they relocated to the smallholdings outside Swakopmund. They had three children and made a humble, yet proudly independent living from vegetable farming. Richard Putzier got very used to the flavor of coffee made with the brackish water from the Swakop. We grew up with Richard and Ursula Putzier as neighbors. Ursula died already in 1987. Richard Putzier passed away in 2001.

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