Remains of German Farm, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzani

Scant remains of a German Farm in the Ngorongoro Crater.

This was one of two farms, 8 miles apart, in the Crater founded by the Siedentopf brothers - Adolph and Friedrich Wilhelm.

Adolph was born in Hanover, trained as a pharmacist, and arrived in Dar es Salaam at the end of the 1880s to work in the German Pharmacy.

He moved up country and traded ivory and cattle, and learned the Masai language.

According to a book "Wir ritten fur Desutsch-Ostafrika (We ride for German East0Africa) by Otto Inhulsen who visited Adolph Siedentopf in Ngorongoro in 1915 on his way to raid British East Africa (Kenya), Siedentopf had received a grant of 6,000 hectares of land from the German colonial administration in 1905. He was in constant conflict with the authorities over the Masai in the area who conflicted with his farming.

Inhulsen said that Siedentopf had 6 former ascaris from the Belgian Congo as bodyguards and lived with 20 Masai families on his farm, who lost their livestock from rinderpest. He is described as very impressive and tough person, who was also very humorous. He entertained the German officers with funny campfire stories. Inhulsen met Siednetfopf again in Summer 1916 in the POW camp in Nairobi, where Siedentopf had become the camp sports champion.