17 Facts About Wilhelm Bleek

Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek was a German linguist.

Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek was born in Berlin on 8 March 1827.

Wilhelm Bleek graduated from the University of Bonn in 1851 with a doctorate in linguistics, after a period in Berlin where he went to study Hebrew and where he first became interested in African languages.

Wilhelm Bleek was appointed official linguist to Dr William Balfour Baikie's Niger Tshadda Expedition in 1854.

Ill-health forced his return to England where he met George Grey and John William Colenso, the Anglican Bishop of Natal, who invited Wilhelm Bleek to join him in Natal in 1855 to help compile a Zulu grammar.

Wilhelm Bleek was widely respected as a philologist, particularly in the Cape.

Wilhelm Bleek requested examples of African literature from missionaries and travellers, such as the Revd W Kronlein who provided Wilhelm Bleek with Namaqua texts in 1861.

In 1859 Wilhelm Bleek briefly returned to Europe in an effort to improve his poor health but returned to the Cape and his research soon after.

In 1861 Wilhelm Bleek met his future wife, Jemima Lloyd, at the boarding house where he lived in Cape Town, while she was waiting for a passage to England, and they developed a relationship through correspondence.

Wilhelm Bleek returned to Cape Town from England the following year.

When Grey was appointed Governor of New Zealand, he presented his collection to the National Library of South Africa on condition that Wilhelm Bleek be its curator, a position he occupied from 1862 until his death in 1875.

Unfortunately, much of Wilhelm Bleek's working life in the Cape, like that of his sister-in-law after him, was characterised by extreme financial hardship which made his research even more difficult to continue with.

Wilhelm Bleek conducted interviews with a few of these prisoners, which he used in later publications.

Wilhelm Bleek was particularly keen to learn more about this "Bushman" language and compare it to examples of "Bushman" vocabulary and language earlier noted by Hinrich Lichtenstein and obtained from missionaries at the turn of the 19th century.

Wilhelm Bleek brought three men to Cape Town from the Kenhardt district to stand trial for attacks on farmers.

In 1866 two San prisoners from the Achterveldt near Calvinia were transferred from the Breakwater prison to the Cape Town prison, making it easier for Wilhelm Bleek to meet them.

Wilhelm Bleek died in Mowbray on 17 August 1875, aged 48, and was buried in Wynberg Anglican cemetery in Cape Town along with his two infant children, who had died before him.