Many romantic stories are told citing various reasons, but in actual fact these men were motivated by one thing alone – greed.
That said, these fortune seekers in Lüderitz and the area later known as the (German for prohibited area) have gone down in history through a wealth of stories of intense hardship and suffering, successes and losses as well as unimagined wealth and unsustainable opulence. The mad rush that occurred after the discovery of a diamond by railway worker Zacharias Lewala in 1908 left its mark on the desert in the form of vast plains had been off limits for such a long time. Maybe it is because the desolated areas in which those old settlements are found make you feel as if you were the first person to uncover these archeological gems.
