Jan F.E. Celliers

Jan F.E. Celliers (1865-1940) was an Afrikaans author and playwright.

Also referred to as Jan F. Celliers, and on occasion as Jan F.E. Cilliers by some sources.

Biography

Born Jan Francois Elias Celliers near Wellington in the Western Cape on 12 January 1865, but a few years later his family moved to Cape Town, where he attended an English school.

In 1874 the family moved to Pretoria, where his father had founded De Volksstem in 1873. Here he first continued his schooling at an English school, before attending a Dutch school, Meneer Dely se skool op Kerkplein. This institution was closed down in 1877 when England annexed Pretoria.

Celliers now spent one year working at his father's newspaper, before he went back to the Cape to attend school in Stellenbosch and Wellington.

He initially worked as a surveyor for a year, before joining the Department of Education and in 1984 being appointed State Librarian for the Cape Colony.

The second Boer War broke out, Jan Celliers fought on the Boer side near Colesberg, staying on to the bitter end. He then managed to slip through the enemy lines dressed in clothes of his wife and moved to Europe with his family, where he studied Literature.

He returned to South Africa in 1907, to work for the Department of Home affairs, doing translations. It is in this period that he began writing poetry, stories, essays, drama and literary reviews, works often dealing with the devastation of the war. He is specifically considered one of three most outstanding Afrikaans-language poets to emerge just after the Second Boer War. The other two were Totius and C. Louis Leipoldt. His best poems appear in the 1908 collection Die Vlakte en ander gedigte ("The Plain and Other Poems").

In 1919 the University of Stellenbosch offered him the post of extraordinary professor in 1919, a post he held till his retirement in 1929.

He then moved to Cape Town for a time and eventually died in Johannesburg on 1 June 1940 .

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

On his return from Europe, he became a member of the management of the newly founded Afrikaans-Hollandse Toneelvereniging (AHTV) and also a founder member of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns.

Though a brilliant and highly successful and influential poet and author, he was not exceptionally successful as playwright. However, like most of the authors of his time, he wrote to create and supply the new Afrikaans literature with a canon of serious works in all genres.

His plays include Liefde en Plig (“Love and Duty”- 1909), Martje (1911), Heldinne van die Oorlog (“Heroines of the War” – a commissioned work for the inauguration of the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein in 1913, pub. 1924) and Reg bo Reg (“Right above [before] Right”- 1922).

In 1893 he also recited a dramatic piece called Jan Onverschillig ("Careless John") at a meeting of the Rederykerskamer Onze Taal, in Pretoria.

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