August Stauch was born in a rather run-down farmhouse on 15 January 1878. In 1900, his work on the railways took him to Franzburg in northern Germany, where he fell in love with Ida Schwerin. The couple lived in a little house in Neumark, where August was employed on the construction of the railway line. They had two sons. A friend of the railway company offered him a contract to work in the German colony of Namibia. The contract would be for two years. With a heavy heart, but with the prospect of earning a lot of money and helping his family to become more affluent, he took the job and left his family. He went by ship from Hamburg to Lรผderitz, a small town in the middle of the desert in Namibia. August Stauch looked out on the barren landscape that stretched out before him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was happy to be able to build a new life for himself, but on the other, he felt lost and abandoned in this bleakly desolate country. August was given the task of keeping a stretch of track 20 kilometres long free of sand drifts, every day. So he lived alone in this hostile environment, in the middle of the desert, and swept sand every day. He was sent a Namibian man to help him. His name was Zacharias Lewala. Now the pair lived together in the little house by the track. One day, Zacharias brought a beautiful stone home with him. It turned out that they were sitting on a diamond mine. They both became rich. But in 1929, the Great Depression came along and August Stauch lost everything he had. An old and impoverished man, he travelled back to Ettenhausen, where he died alone in 1947. We want to tell this remarkable story in a documentary film. Our journey will take us from Ettenhausen via Hamburg to Lรผderitz in Namibia.