Diamantenfieber

Giselher W. Hoffmann:
Diamantenfieber
Rheda-Wiedenbrück: RM Buch-und Medien-Vertrieb, 2006
432 S.
ISBN: 3-866-04450-X

 

 

 

Ruth and Friedrich Harenberg grew up in the Schlütter family in Lüneburg, together with their stepbrother Eric. When the Herero wars start in 1905, all three of them go to Southwest Africa, Friedrich and Eric in order to join the Schutztruppe, Ruth as a nurse to Lüderitzbucht. Eric who loses an arm in the war has a business relationship with the coloured fisher Hendrik whose daughter Lena fascinates him, but due to racial barriers a relationship is impossible. When diamonds are discovered near Kolmannskoppe, Eric and Friedrich purchase a claim as well. Together with his wife Elisabeth old Ludwig Schlütter comes to Lüderitzbucht and joins the business. An impressive house is built, Eric marries Ruth, they have a son, Alexander. Lena becomes a maid in the Schlütter household. Friedrich rapes her and she has a daughter, Tana.

When the First World War starts in 1914, the diamond fever is over. Friedrich becomes a soldier again, Eric becomes a security guard on the abandoned mines. Friedrich manages to get a box full of diamonds which the captain of an aid cruiser is supposed to bring out of the country. Eric steals the diamonds and wants to clear off with wife, son and diamonds via Swakopmund. He convinces Hendrik to make a night cruise, but the high waves make them run aground. Impatiently and with a drawn gun Eric forces Hendrik to bring him to Swakopmund alone. A South African war ship discovers the boat, arrests Eric und sinks the German aid cruiser as well, on which Friedrich's supposed diamond box is stored. Hendrik manages to rescue himself to the beach, discovers the diamonds in his boat, but gets struck dead by a Bushman.

Ruth starts to walk back to Lüderitzbucht through the Namib with her son. When she is forced to leave Alexander behind, he is found by the Bushman and is brought to the farm of the Boer couple Esterhuizen who adopt him as their son. Meanwhile, Lüderitzbucht has been occupied and the Schlütter parents are imprisoned in South Africa. A search team saves Ruth half dead of thirst in the desert. Eric breaks from the prison, finds Hendrik's body, but dies near the Esterhuizen farm of a snake bite.

After the end of the war, Ruth and her parents return to Lüneburg. Friedrich as well goes to Germany where he is imprisoned for stealing diamonds. After his release in 1930, he again travels to Southwest Africa to search for the lost diamonds. Willem Esterhuizen who is working as an investigator for the diamond company is supposed to help him to salvage the sunken aid cruiser with the box. They are successful but the box only contains stones. Friedrich draws his own conclusions. He recognizes the true origin of Willem goes to the Esterhuizen farm and looks for the diamonds in Eric's grave. There he is struck dead by the Bushman.

Willem on his part is now instructed to investigate the case. He visits Lena and falls in love with Tana. In the Lüderitzbucht archive he finds Eric's diaries and is therefore able to unveil the story. Willem and Tana move with Lena to the Esterhuizen farm, and Ruth, who travelled to Namibia, is able to embrace her son Alexander in the person of Willem. The whereabouts of the diamonds remain unknown.

A thriller, an adventure story, a family saga from the time of the diamond fever in German-Southwest Africa – the novel features aspects of all genres of popular literature without really fulfilling them. Based on the model of the colportage novel, the reader is kept in suspense and interested by always new surprising and adventurous and partly unlikely plot turns. A more detailed psychological sketch of the characters and their development, however, do not really take place. Breaks and unbelievable turns as well as clichés ("Harenberg has a pale face. His blue eyes sparkle like two lakes in a rough snow landscape") are noticeably distracting, and in case the novel aims to display the diamond fever’s destructive effects on morality and character development, it does not really succeed. "Diamantenfieber" can be described as an entertaining novel rather than as critical literature. Bearing that in mind, however, it creates suspense, also due to the two plot lines which are connected only in the end and solve the story for the reader.

The actual strength of the novel, however, can be sought elsewhere, namely in the authenticity of the social environment and the topographical and historical setting. The novel guides the reader to a part of repressed German history in Africa and brings the lost world of the German colonial time in Southwest Africa to life. Giselher Hoffmann knows what he writes about. As a Namibian and descendant of an officer of the German Schutztruppe, he is a rare exception. He is a white African author writing in German. His perspective on Namibia is not an outside perspective – or is it?

Hoffmann's "literary work can be located at the intersection between colonial literature and post-colonialism" (Stefan Mühr). Especially "Diamantenfieber" shows how dangerous this tightrope walk can be in his novels. The book’s effort to do justice to the diversity of different population groups in Namibia is noticeable. Besides the German family, the novel tells us about the Boer farmer, the South African diamond magnates, the Scottish troops, the coloured fisher, the Ovambo workers and the lost Herero boy Salomon who appears as a soldier boy, farm helper and diamond smuggler whenever he can ensure his survival. The omnipotent narrator adopts each character’s perspective, but especially with Salomon, the change of perspective does not always succeed as with the Herero boy colonial thinking once again comes to the fore. Although surely not intentionally, thoughts given to Salomon are strongly reminiscent of notorious passages in Gustav Frenssen’s colonial novel "Peter Moors Reise nach Südwest": "Although Salomon didn't know what the word meant, he recognized from the sound with which the one-arm man uttered the word, that technology was wonderful for the white man. He almost deified this word, but at the same time Salomon got the feeling that the white man pitied him because he would never grasp the meaning of the word." Equally problematic is the role of the Busman because he enters the story in decisive moments like a deus ex machina and influences the plot.

But Giselher Hoffmann can also write differently. In novels like "Die Erstgeborenen" (1993) and "Die schweigenden Feuer" (1994), the former professional hunter who is familiar with the Namibian desert landscape tries to congenially put himself into the mind and thought processes of the San and the Herero to elucidate them for European perception. Thus the question can be raised whether the non-critical adoption of the traditional colonial novel's style in “Diamantenfieber” also takes over the colonial perspective. Bearing in mind that perhaps one ought not to be too critical, Hoffmann nevertheless cannot lay claim to be an African author – albeit of European decent – with this book. He wrote a traditional European novel with entertainment value about Africa which does not criticize the European colonial gaze on Africa, but rather reproduces it.