Nehaveigur

While doing some searches on Namibia for a previous post, I came across the website of Klaus Dierks, a civil engineer and politician during the first years of Namibia’s independence. His life appears to have been adventurous in the best possible sense. He was born in Nazi Germany, grew up in communist Berlin, then moved to Namibia to help build its infrastructure. He became involved in the anti-apartheid and pro-independence SWAPO party. Once Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990, he became a member of parliament and occupied several infrastructure-related ministerial posts. He also found enough time to organize expeditions to the Himalayas and Karakoram, which must’ve been an unusual logistical challenge for someone based in Namibia, and to write several books. All of this is based on Dierks’ charming website. He died a quarter of a century ago, yet his site is still there, a document in style and substance to what made the early internet great.