The Forgotten Past of Ngorongoro’s German History

The doorsteps of the past in the wildlife paradise of the present remind us that, had the German colonial government prevailed in 1914, the history of Ngorongoro might have taken an entirely different course.

Spanning roughly 250 square kilometers of fertile grassland and boasting an astonishing abundance of wildlife within its forested walls, the Ngorongoro Caldera ranks among Tanzania’s world-renowned wilderness areas. Like the adjacent Serengeti National Park or the Selous Game Reserve, Ngorongoro is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the crater annually, drawn by the promise of a spectacular game drive in a unique geological setting.

Yet visitors are rarely reminded of a once fiercely contested chapter in colonial debates about wildlife conservation prior to World War I: the remnants of the German farm in Ngorongoro. The ruins hardly constitute a visual highlight. All that remains is rubble from the foundation walls and the still-recognizable doorsteps of the farmhouse. Though these stones may seem insignificant, they are vestiges of the largely forgotten German colonial empire in East Africa—a stumbling block of human history in “Africa’s Garden of Eden.”

Just over a century ago, the ruins near Munge Stream in the northwest of the crater belonged to an impressive farm by contemporary colonial standards. It consisted of a stone-built farmhouse, a shed, and a stable, owned by Adolf Siedentopf, a German from the Prussian Province of Hannover. By 1913, Siedentopf employed four white overseers, fifty-eight Maasai, and several dozen Iraqw to tend to approximately 1,000 cattle, 2,500 sheep, 40 donkeys, and 12 horses. He shared the crater with abundant wildlife—contemporary estimates suggest as many as 20,000 wildebeest, 1,500 zebras, several thousand kongoni and other smaller antelopes, plus the occasional rhinoceros—and, until 1907, with several hundred Maasai pastoralists.

In 1904, Siedentopf petitioned the colonial government in Dar es Salaam to grant him pastureland in the crater for large-scale cattle ranching. Thanks to its altitude, Ngorongoro offered a mild climate, was free of tsetse flies, and was remote enough from the nearest governmental outpost to provide leeway for an enterprising settler. He was allotted 6,000 hectares of pasture with the obligation to stock it with 2,000 head of cattle. Depending on the success of his enterprise, Siedentopf was promised an additional 3,000 hectares for every 1,000 head of cattle, up to a total of 30,000 hectares. In early 1906, Adolf was joined by his brother Friedrich Wilhelm, who established a separate farm at the southeastern end of the crater near Lerai Forest.

The Siedentopf brothers were tasked with afforesting parts of the crater floor, improving its pasture, and converting sizeable portions into arable land. Within a few years, Adolf erected a stone farmhouse. Together, they introduced Australian eucalyptus and alfalfa, dug irrigation canals, created tracks for ox wagons, built kraals for livestock, and imported breeding cattle from Kenya and South Africa. However, their enterprise would not have prospered without hunting. Abundant elephants and wildebeest enabled them to engage in a flourishing regional trade in ivory and wildebeest tails. Ngorongoro’s wealth of wildlife effectively subsidized their fledgling farms, as much of their livestock was acquired through the proceeds of hunting.

In early 1914, Governor Heinrich Schnee announced plans to reopen the crater to private enterprise and agricultural development. Applicants for farmland began queuing, and a safari business launched by Friedrich Wilhelm Siedentopf had already started attracting globetrotting German hunters to the crater. By the summer of 1914, the distribution of farmland was well underway. The final decision about the crater’s future utilization remained pending, but had it not been for the outbreak of World War I, Ngorongoro might have been entirely divided into agricultural estates. The war halted land sales, and the advance of British troops in early 1916 ultimately forced the brothers to abandon the crater.

The rubble of the German farm in Ngorongoro serves as a reminder that today’s natural zoo was perceived very differently by Europeans a century ago. Until the late first decade of the 20th century, Europeans described Ngorongoro primarily in terms of its agricultural potential—a paradise for farmers. The imagery and rhetoric of a wildlife paradise only gained prominence after the removal of the Maasai. Above all, the traces left by the Siedentopfs—and later by figures like the Grzimeks—testify to the deep connections between German society and Ngorongoro’s nature and wildlife throughout the 20th century. Like the extensive sisal plantations at the base of the Pare Mountains, the remnant doorsteps in this wildlife paradise stand as a visible and lasting mark of German colonial rule on Tanzania’s environment.