Namibia Windhoek Equestrian Statue

The Reiterdenkmal is an equestrian sculpture sculptured by Adolf Kürle (1865-1912) honouring the soldiers and civilians who died on the German side of the Herero and Namaqua Wars of 1904-1907.  The monument was not only erected to remember the dead but was also intended to serve as a symbol of victory and a claim to the rightful possession of Southwest African land.  This caused controversy in Namibia, which shed its colonial past after Independence.   The continued display of German superiority, as well as its one-sided reporting on the deaths in the first decade of the twentieth century – Herero and Damara people, lost fifty times as many lives as the Germans during the Herero and Namaqua War – attracted critical comments.  

The sculpture was removed from its original location in 2009, re-erected in 2010 in front of the Alte Feste (a fortress in downtown Windhoek) and removed from its plinth again in 2013 to be stored in the yard of the fortress.