August Stauch

August Stauch (* January 15, 1878 in Ettenhausen, † May 6, 1947 in Eisenach) is considered the discoverer of the diamond deposits near the settlement of Lüderitz in the then colony of German South West Africa, now Namibia.

August Stauch was the third of seven children of a railway worker's family in Ettenhausen. He was a railway employee in Thuringia, Germany. Stauch arrived in Lüderitz in 1907. He suffered from asthma and received medical advice that the drier desert climate may be suitable for his health. He took up mineralogy as a hobby in his spare time but later worked as a Bahnmeister (chief railway foreman) on the Lüderitzbucht-Aus railway line.

August developed a fascination for diamonds, after listening to the tales about Adolf Lüderitz, who believed there lay diamonds in the desert and obtained a prospecting license from Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft fur Südwest Afrika. He consequently informed his workers, who had been brought in from South Africa because of their experience in railroad workings, to look out for unusually shiny stones. On 10 April 1908 Zacharias Lewala, one of his aides who had previously worked at a diamond mine in Kimberley, picked up a diamond near Grasplatz and dutifully took brought it to him.

Stauch quietly resigned from his job after confirming his suspicion that this may be a diamond, by scratching his glass watch with the stone. He found more pretty stones after a search of the area and took them to his friend, mining engineer Sönke Nissen who lived in Lüderitz, where they were confirmed to be diamonds in June 1908.

These diamonds had flushed through the Orange River into the sea millions of years ago where the wind and waves washed it back in the sand of the Namib. The South West African diamonds are usually not very large, but clear like water and thus very popular on the market.

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