Two dead at a trophy hunting estate in South Africa: shipping heiress Caroline von Rantzau found shot dead

At the private hunting and wildlife reserve of Leeuwfontein, north of Pretoria in South Africa, two people died from gunshots within 24 hours at the beginning of June.

Among the dead: the German shipping heiress Caroline von Rantzau (26), who died from a gunshot in her room on 1 June. Witnesses claim to have heard two shots.

At first there was talk of an unspecified “accident”. But the on-site investigations by “Bild” and the inquiries of the South African police paint a different picture. Already a day before the death of the 26-year-old, the financial manager Arno Koën (44) had been found dead on the family's hunting estate. Koën managed the family's finances and was responsible for guest bookings.

Weapon presumably came from the father's gun cabinet

According to the police, both victims died from gunshots: Koën from a 9-mm cartridge, von Rantzau presumably from a shot fired from a hunting rifle of calibre .357. According to one witness, the weapon is said to have come from the gun cabinet of her father, Eberhart von Rantzau. The deceased is said to have had a close relationship with the financial manager and to have described him to confidants as a kind of “foster father”. The body of the passionate hobby hunter is now being autopsied. The autopsy is to clarify what the 26-year-old died of and whether anyone is being investigated.

The business model of trophy hunting

The Leeuwfontein estate is no ordinary wildlife reserve. There, on roughly 4,500 hectares, the von Rantzau family runs a luxury lodge and offers commercial trophy hunting safaris. The website promises paying customers an all-round service, from firearm handling to daily trophy preparation, even on hunts of dangerous animals. It is precisely the business model that has degraded wild animals in South Africa to commodities for decades: well-heeled hobby hunters from Europe and the USA book the killing of antelopes, buffalo or predators such as lions and leopards as a holiday experience.

Caroline von Rantzau's father Eberhart von Rantzau, together with other family members, runs Deutsche Afrika-Linien GmbH, whose container line business was sold to Hapag-Lloyd in 2022. The family still holds stakes in container depots in South Africa.

Deadly series surrounding the trophy hunting industry

The case is part of a series of fatal incidents surrounding commercial hunting farms in southern Africa. In April, the US millionaire and big-game hunter Ernie Dosio (75) was trampled to death by a herd of elephants in Gabon. In July 2025, the co-owner of the private Gondwana wildlife reserve in South Africa died on his own estate, killed by an elephant. In 2017, the South African professional hunter Theunis Botha was crushed in Zimbabwe by a wounded cow elephant. And in 2024, a dismissed employee shot dead the manager of a luxury safari lodge in Limpopo.

Added to this is the omnipresent gun violence: South Africa has one of the highest killing rates in the world, with around 30 people dying there from firearms every day. Where firearms are omnipresent and the killing of wild animals is sold as a luxury holiday experience, tragic incidents are inevitable.

Remarkably, the von Rantzau family is closely intertwined with South Africa. Father Eberhart von Rantzau serves in Hamburg as honorary consul of the Republic of South Africa. The deceased Arno Koën, in turn, was, according to the lodge's Facebook page, not only the family's financial manager but also director of Leeuwfontein Safaris, which markets its trophy hunting offers in German directly to customers from the German-speaking region.

More on the dark sides of hobby hunting can be found in our dossiers Crime & Hunting, Psychology & Hunting and Hobby Hunting.