Shark Island

The Island of Death – a sad fiasco
The concentration camp on Shark Island near Lüderitz in the former colony of German South West Africa existed between 1905 and 1907 but has since then largely been forgotten. Thousands of Natives died in today’s Namibia due to inhumane conditions. This day, a campsite is located on the grounds. Even in Germany, the concentration camps during the colonial period are littleknown.
Scarcely anybody knew about the local conditions until the movie Measures of Men by Lars Kraume was released in 2023 and has put a spotlight on this part of history. In 2019, the Island was declared as a “National Heritage Site of Namibia”. However, quite recently – on 22 April 2023 – a monument was inaugurated on the Island, commemorating the numerous lost lives of Nama and Herero. Thus, the location has become a national memorial as well as a mark of the sad German rule in today’s Namibia.
A collaboration project between the Landesmuseum Hannover and the Institute for Geosciences from the University of Kiel followed the goal of remembering this “sad fiasco”. In addition to a collection of photos and other archive materials, archaeological survey methods were used to study the grounds. This was the first time that such methods have been established to examine
a concentration camp in Namibia. As a result, a detailed map of the concentration camp was created, which confirms and completes the written sources. This book focuses on the colonial period and – with the addition of extensive visual material – offers a comprehensive view of the German politics in South West Africa at the beginning of the 20th century.