Jan F.E. Celliers

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

Often referred to simply as Jan Celliers, but not to be confused with his father, Jan F. Celliers. His surname is on occasion wrongly spelled as Jan F.E. Cilliers by some sources.

Biography

Born Jan Francois Elias Celliers near Wellington in the Western Cape on 12 January 1865, the son of the journalist and politician, Jan F. Celliers (1839-1895)[1]. A few years later his family moved to Cape Town, where his father became a staff member of Het Volksblad and Celliers attended an English school.

In 1874 the family moved to Pretoria, where his father had founded De Volkstem 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 at the Gimnasium in Stellenbosch (1879 tot 1881) and the Jongenskool in Wellington (1881–1882), before returning to Pretoria in 1883, to attend the school run by meester Wessel Louis, completing his matriculation in 1887.

In 1887 he left for the netherlands to study at the Polytechnische Skool in Delft and alter the University of leiden, where he studied under professors Van de Sande Bakhuizen en Schols.

He initially worked as a surveyor for a year, before joining the Department of Education and in 1984 being appointed State Librarian for the Transvaal Republic (1894-1899).

On 6 Desember 1894 he married Susanna Jacoba Dürr, and the couple would have four children, a daughter and three sons. They settled in a house in Sunnyside, Pretoria.

When the second Boer War broke out, 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 at Delft.

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, then to Harrismith in the Orange Free State. He 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), Te Laat ("Too late", 1911), 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, of Die doel heilig die middele (“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.

[JH/TH]