The finest surviving example of the Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) architecture that defines Lüderitz's character, built in 1909–10 for Hans Goerke, a senior employee of the Deutsche Diamanten-Gesellschaft. The villa sits on a rocky outcrop above the town with views over the harbour and the Felsenkirche. It has been carefully restored and is open as a museum, its rooms furnished as they would have been in the diamond-rush years: heavy German furniture, tiled fireplaces, a piano, and curtains against the ever-present wind.
The Goerke Haus represents the extraordinary material comfort of the diamond-rush elite, who imported everything — including the building materials — from Germany across thousands of kilometres of ocean and desert. The contrast between this comfortable bourgeois interior and the surrounding landscape is one of the defining experiences of a Lüderitz visit.