Mzanzi Travel - Local Travel Inspiration (Issue 5)

Exceptional Places
In its heyday in the 1920s, Kolmanskop was home to some 1,100
souls. They built large, elegant houses, offices and public buildings
in typically German style complete with wide windows, grand
verandas, ornate staircases and truncated roofs. All that was
missing was the snow…but there was a large ice factory.
Soon the town also had a lively pub, casino, ballroom, hospital,
power station, school, a skittle alley, theatre, gymnasium, doctor’s
rooms and an x-ray station, a public swimming pool, and the first
tram in Africa working the railway line to nearby Lüderitz. On
the Ladenstrasse, or shopping street, elegantly dressed women
visited the grocery store, the butcher, the baker, and the soda
and lemonade shop, while just around the corner the architect,
engineer and bookkeeper toiled away in their cool offices, taking
phone calls from distant places.
Over weekends sporting events took place and in the evenings
the townsfolk were entertained with ballroom dancing and by
opera companies shipped all the way from Germany. Today these
buildings are empty shells filled with sand, and the only sounds
you will hear is the wind shifting the sands and rattling loose roof
sheeting or wooden planks.
After World War I, declining diamond deposits and the discovery
of new and bigger diamond finds to the south around the Orange
River, caused the “diamond kings” and their families to start leaving.
These days Kolmanskop serves mainly as a tourist attraction and
an inspirational location for filmmakers, photographers and artists.
The late, renowned South African artist Keith Alexander captured
many of the ghostlike settings of this little town in his paintings.
MZANZI TRAVEL| www.mzanzitravel.co.za|ISSUE 5 | 85