In the final years of the German colonial empire, an ambitious project was undertaken to collect material on "native law", rules of inheritance and property, criminal law, political structure and administration. On the basis of a standardized questionnaire, German missionaries, anthropologists and colonial officials were asked to answer more than 100 detailed questions. The original answers have not been published, but can be found in some archives and libraries in the form of undated brochures under the collective title: Beantwortung des Fragebogens... The answers have been revised for the two-volume collected edition covering all the former German colonies. From Namibia there exist 27 reports in all. The chapters on the customs, laws and political organization of the "peoples" of Namibia (vol. 2. p. 209-435) are restricted to the Herero, the Nama, the Damara and the San ("Bushmen"), and have been edited by Heinrich Vedder and two German lawyers: B. von Zastrow and M. Schmidt. For reasons not explained, the original material concerned with the Ovambo (collected by the missionaries M. Rautanen and A. Wulfhorst) is not included. Despite its obvious limitations, the book contains a wealth of observations not available anywhere else in this condensed form. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).