As early as 1487, the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Diaz landed as the first European in what is now Lüderitz and called the bay "Angra Pequena" at that time. In the centuries that followed, neither the Portuguese nor any other European power actually took possession of it. Only the Bremen tobacco dealer Adolf Lüderitz wanted to acquire the land, which was generally regarded as worthless, because he hoped to find mineral resources there.
In April 1884 the German government granted his request to protect his acquisition from British claims. On August 7, 1884, the German flag was hoisted in Lüderitz Bay and the country was officially placed under the protection of the German Empire. When Lüderitz ‘extensive and expensive search for the hoped-for mineral resources was unsuccessful, he got into economic distress and had to sell Lüderitzland in 1885 to the German colonial society for South West Africa. After Lüderitz ‘death in 1886, the colonial society named the Bay Angra Pequena Lüderitz Bay. After the outbreak of World War I, Lüderitz was occupied by South African troops on September 13, 1914 without a fight. The German civilian population was interned in South Africa. At the end of the war, Lüderitz became part of the South West Africa mandate administered by South Africa.