Description

Obelisk-shaped beacon from stone and concrete with 2 inscriptions. 1m² width at the base, 2.2m high. Beacon built from natural stone because the wooden board withered away, a stone platform around the obelisk was to shield it from weathering in 1989.

Brief History

In 1883, Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz, the first German trader in Namibia, erected a wooden tablet to mark the territory of the Germans. The stone beacon replaced the table, that was send to the colonial museum in Berlin (closed 1915) in 1903. Beacon doesn’t mark where flag was hoisted in 1884 as believed but the first surveyor’s beacon to identify Luderitz’s acquisitions. The old Nautilus graveyard that surrounded the beacon and gave it its name was relocated to Shark Island in 1977. Thus, the name did not make sense any more and in 1980 its proclamation was replaced and now titled the "Lüderitz Memorial".