Adolf Lüderitz

Who was Adolf Lüderitz?

Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz was a German merchant and founder of the first German colony in Southwest Africa.

He was born in Bremen, where he engaged in the tobacco business with his father, who died in 1878. Adolf Lüderitz succeeded to the management of the business. He had traveled to the United States from 1854 to 1859.

In 1881, he established a factory at Lagos, and in 1883, he acquired land in southwest Africa which he placed under the protection of the German Empire in 1884. He drowned in the Orange River in 1886.