Over the last few years, the German empire has thoroughly made use of the technical edge the airship technology had given them, and it is now the most important colonial power on the jungle planet. From the early beginnings it was recognized that the exploitation of Venus might provide an economic upturn for the German chemical industry which was already among the largest in Europe. Besides these economic reasons, there also seem to be other motives for the planet’s development by Ger-many, which until now have been concealed from the public. A major factor which contributed to the promotion of the coloni-zation of Venus certainly has been Bismarck’s hope that it would give the peoples of the German empire a common aim, and in doing so, distract everyone from the country’s internal dissent and serve as a focus for the nascent German nationalism. In the meantime, it became apparent that the potential revenues to be made from Venus are enormous, and if the duties that could be levied on imports from Venus could be matched, then the Ve-nusian influence on the German economy would be more than enough to lift the heavy burden resting on the shoulders of the ordinary German tax payer.
Unfortunately, the German ‘man on the street’ is not particu-larly interested in his country’s exploits on Venus – just as he has little time to get enthusiastic about any of Germany’s colonies, on foreign soil or foreign planets. The government is optimistic though, that the successful establishment of a German colony on Mars will raise the interest of the ‘man on the street’ for further colonial efforts.
The German colony or to give its official name, ‘Schutz-gebiet’ on Venus occupies the western slopes of the Kaiser Wil-helm Mountains and has a population of about 8,000 humans and an estimated 200,000 Lizard-men. The area claimed by the colony amounts to just under 140,000 square miles, but only a small percentage of this area has been settled by humans. Most of the population resides in the five major cities – Venusstadt, Heidelberg, Badenburg, Eiderberg, and Neu-Regensburg, and
Venus
in a dozen or so small trading posts and the villages that have grown up about them. The capital and seat of government of the German Venus-Kolonie is the city of Venusstadt. The governor and his staff reside here, serving as the highest ranking civil ser-vants in charge of the colonial administration.
The protection of the colony is provided by the ‘Schutz-truppen’, a Germany Army infantry regiment with a military strength of 2,350 officers, NCOs, and troops. In addition, the Germans have raised a number of Lizard-men battalions, each commanded by human officers and NCOs. However, the gover-nor does not completely trust these units and insists that none of them be allowed inside the capital.
Venusstadt and the other cities of the ‘Schutzgebiet’ are pro-tected from marauding dinosaurs by natural terrain features, as they all five are situated atop steep slopes and cliffs. Most of the plantations and outlying trading posts must rely on man-made fortifications and weapons for their defense against the monstrous dinosaurs. Those settlements lying at the edge of the protectorate must also defend themselves against the occasional bands of raiding Lizard-men who manage to evade the over-worked Schutztruppen patrols.
The German plantations are the largest and most efficient on Venus. It takes a relatively small number of humans to supervise the local workers. This is not necessarily an accomplishment of the efficient administration by the colonial rulers, despite what they might claim, but rather due to the fact that the protector-ate is populprotector-ated largely by the more agriculturally sophisticprotector-ated Western Ishtar tribes. In any case, a typical German plantation is at least three times larger than a typical British or Italian one, usually measuring up to several hundred miles across. Typically, they cultivate the plants that serve as the raw materials for the ever growing chemical and pharmaceutical industry in Germany.
Several companies from Earth have established facilities in or close to some of the settlements in order to explore and de-velop new raw materials on site. The rapid pace at which these factories and laboratories were and continue to be set up is the envy of the other colonial powers on Venus. The largest research institute is currently headed by the chemist Moritz Honigmann.
Venusstadt
“…[T]his lovely treasure, which German diligence and German efficiency wrested from the Morning Star…”
From a speech held by Otto von Bismarck in front of the Reichstag The ‘capital’ of the German protectorate on Venus, Venusstadt is the largest and oldest settlement on the second planet of the Solar System. It has 3,500 inhabitants and celebrated its ten year anniversary in 1888. The administration of the German Venus Colony is headed by a Reichskommissar, a post which is cur-rently held by Gerhart von Racknitz.
The beginning of the settlement goes back to the von Heidel-berg expedition of 1878, which having rescued the survivors of the failed British expeditions of the 1870s needed to get them back to Earth. In order to do so, they had to leave freight weight on Venus, which amounted to a dozen men. The entire crew of the Heimdall volunteered and so they were chosen by lot. The
‘Dozen on Venus’ set up camp atop a large cliff that was sur-rounded on three sides by 200 feet deep chasms. The camp was further isolated by means of controlled demolitions that left a narrow rock belt as the only access to the rest of the mountain.
Essentially what once had been a cliff top was transformed into an island plateau.
The men expected that a ship would come after a few months to take them home. Instead came several ships filled with settlers that set out to establish the colony. Since then, settler filled ships land at Venusstadt on a regular basis.
Today, Venusstadt is a city in constant change. The city is ever growing, and her inhabitants too, are on the move. Many come to find their fortune, whether by establishing their own plantations or by setting out into the wilds of Venus in search of the planet’s hidden treasures. Few of them succeed in fulfilling their dreams. Those that survive Venus’ dangers usually return to Venusstadt after a fruitless search or having lost their money and are stranded there, trying to make a living as a dogsbody or a day laborer in order to safe up money for their return flight to Earth.
Visitors to the city will find an odd mixture of semi-finished and half collapsed buildings and structures. Almost as fast as building designs come off the drawing board, construction be-gins and there are numerous buildings in the city that are still under construction. Once finished though, these buildings tend to rot away within a few months – the climate causes wood to age very fast, a process which can only be delayed by constant-ly coating it with preservative lacquers. As a consequence, the structural components of every building have to be replaced reg-ularly, and no building in Venusstadt has doors or front walls older than five years.
This also has an effect on the construction methods on Ve-nus. Buildings are mostly made of stone, and only where this is not possible due to a shortage of time or money, houses are built with low foundation walls and support pillars made of stone, supplemented by wooden partition wall as well as large windows strung with fly screens. These windows are only shut during heavy rain fall, and combined with openings in the roof provide for a constant air circulation within the building.
The streets of Venusstadt are dead straight and meet at a right angle. They are unpaved, for they were cut right into the rock.
Deep gutters run along the edge of streets, draining the near con-stant rain water into the chasms that surround the plateau upon which the settlement stands. The streets have typical German names – aside from the Bismarckplatz there is also a Goethes-traße and a Heidelbergweg, but the main thoroughfare through Venusstadt is Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee.
Although situated on another planet, Venusstadt is at its very core a German country town. By day, a citizen might have to negotiate with Lizard-men for the right price in shards of glass in exchange for twenty dinosaur hides, but by night he will stop by his favorite pub to rehearse with his choir. The settlement has a volunteer fire brigade with a marching band, various athlet-ics clubs, a veterans association, and even a local branch of the SDAP (Social Democratic Workers’ Party) which holds secret meetings. Aside from cultivating social bonds, such activities also serve to maintain the attachment to the old homeland.
This attachment is also expressed in the holidays that the col-onists brought with them from their native country. At Christ-mas, every citizen decorates a giant fern, in February they cele-brate Carnival, in early summer there is Schützenfest – a tradi-tional festival involving a shooting contest, and on the Kaiser’s birthday – January 27th, all of the inhabitants line the length of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Allee, cheering the military parade.
Each place and site listed in the city map with a number will be presented below with a short description:
Venus
Venus
1 - Bismarckplatz
At the heart of the city stands a small statue of the Chan-cellor, showing him in a worthy, statesmanlike posture.
Surrounding the place are the buildings of the colonial administration, the largest of which is the Government House with its famous Ice Palace. On the opposite side stands the modest City Hall and the Luther Church.
On the western side of the square stands Venusstadt Law Courts, where the highest legal authority within the col-ony resides, while opposite the Law Courts, stands the Headquarters of the Gendarmerie, the colony’s para-military police service.