The Gunzert House is a house of history and heritage. It is a cultural meeting and arrival point of historical remembrance and sustainable tourism. It is a place by the people for the people, to recreate their own historical journey from the past, to the present and the future. People are invited to fill the house with their visions and life, to discuss, exchange and realize ideas. The house offers space for creative work and diverse events.It is a resource of history, culture and tourism (link) for the overall society, encouraging closer cultural exchange between tourists and local communityies in promotion of peace and security.
The use of the house is multifaceted. It is a museum for history of the surrounding community to learn about precolonial, colonial and postcolonial Africa. It is an information centre for tourists and researchers about both cultural and built heritages of the Lake Zone. It is a public gallery of artwork collections, for theatre and cultural performances as well as research centre for researchers and academicians. This also marks the uniqueness of the project, there is no other place in the Zone with such facilities, brining social, academic and economic benefits
History
Theodor Gunzert
“’Have you ever heard about a Mr Gunzert?’
‘Yes, in my childhood elderly people referred to him as ‘the fierce one’.’”
- Miha Adadas Idas* – Resident of Mwanza
Theodor Gunzert’s name is still a household word among the inhabitants of Mwanza, which he administered for a ten-year period.
He was born in 1874 in Seckenheim in south-west Germany and received his A-Levels in the city of Mannheim. Between 1892 and 1896 he studied law in Heidelberg and Berlin and worked afterwards for the local German judiciary in the German region of Baden, before he took a job offer at the German Foreign Ministry and became District Judge of the colony’s capital Dar es Salaam in 1902. He worked in the East-Africancoastal cities Tanga and Pangani as judge and government official. He became a District Commissioner (Bezirksamtmann) in Mwanzafrom 1907 until 1916.
*=name changed due to privacy reasons
History of the house
During German colonial times several buildings were constructed under Gunzert’s administration. Partly, they are still visible today, like the “Gunzert House”, falsely known as Robert Koch’s House, on Makoroboi, a hill in the city centre of Mwanza. As it is written down in his memoirs, it was built in 1912 and Gunzert described it there as a “fine house with four rooms, kitchen, large verandah etc. […] with a wonderful view over the lake.” Gunzert lived in this house for some years towards the end of formal German colonialism in Tanzania. After its use by the British colonisers and by Tanzanian officials after independence, it has been empty for several years.
The Gunzert House was identified as a tourist attraction in 2011. Maasai people had occupied it as their residence, but they also assisted in protecting it. In 2013 a part of the Gunzert House roof began to break up apart from a wall which was already collapsed. The work on the house began by creating different independent tourism stakeholders. They set the direction for tourism development and raising awareness about the importance of the House, conducting several meetings where it was decided to restore the Gunzert House and to find ways of getting funds for this. A Restoration Committee was formed by the directive of the Mwanza Regional Commissioner’s office,actors from SAUT, Mwanza City Council, Tanzania Tourist Board and the Ministry of Natural Resources. In 2019, the project received funding from the Federal Republic of Germany and the city of Würzburg, the partner city of Mwanza, to restore it from decay and assume its original look. For the restoration both the regional government, private sector and the informal sectors in tourism were involved. This process had almost taken eight years of hard work with lots of ups and downs.
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General inquiries +255 765 384 895
Accounts inquiries +255 765 384 895
P.o.Box 1333 Nyamagana Mwanza Tanzania
Email: info@gunzerthousefoundation.com
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