Dr. August Gerber

Dr. August Gerber, born on 3 February 1873 in Freiburg, was a forestry official. Between 1901 and 1904, Gerber was in the service of the Imperial Governorate in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia) as a forestry commissioner. In 1902, Gerber undertook an expedition to the land of the Ovambo. In a letter to the governor of German Southwest Africa, Theodor Leutwein, Gerber wrote that he considered the land of the Ovambo highly suitable for the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, figs and dates in a plantation economy. During the Herero uprising in 1904, Gerber travelled to Herero territory and was considered missing for a time. After his return to Germany in 1904 or 1905, Gerber gave lectures on Southwest Africa, for example, at the German Colonial Society and the Old German Association in Freiburg. In 1905, Gerber sold numerous ethnographic objects from Southwest Africa to the city's Museum of Natural History and Ethnology. August Gerber died in January 1933.