PRELLER, GUSTAV SCHOEMAN

Gustav Schoeman Preller, journalist, historian and proponent of Afrikaans (October 4, 1875-October 6, 1943), was also one of the founders of the Afrikaans Language Society.

PHOTO CAPTION: Preller Gustav Schoeman. SOURCE: EA Library.

He was the son of Robert Clunie Logie Preller and Stephina, née Schoeman. After attending school in Standerton, Preller worked as a clerk in Pretoria. In 1898 he married Johanna Christina Pretorius. They had three sons.

During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), Preller served in the Transvaal State Artillery, and was also war correspondent of De Volksstem and De Zoutpansberg Wachter. Four months before the end of the war, he was captured and sent to a prison camp in India.

Preller, a part-time journalist during the war, accepted a full-time position as editor of the newspaper, Land en Volk, upon his return to South Africa. For the next 34 years he was assistant editor and editor of several Afrikaans newspapers, and eventually chief editor of Die Vaderland (1925-36). He was, however, too old-fashioned technically, and too little of an organiser, to be a really successful editor; it was in his writing, as a journalist and historian, that he most distinguished himself.

Beginning with a series of articles in 1905, his forceful advocacy that Afrikaans rather than Dutch should be accepted and promoted as the formal written language of the Afrikaners made him one of the outstanding leaders of the “Second Afrikaans Language Movement.” He was also one of the founders of the Afrikaanse Taalgenootskap (Afrikaans Language Society, 1905), the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy for Science and Art, 1909) and Die Brandwag (Sentinel, 1910), a magazine which made a great contribution to the language struggle by providing a vehicle for many new and talented Afrikaans writers.

Preller wrote numerous articles and reviews himself, and was a discerning and stimulating literary critic. His own Afrikaans style was striking and effective but idiosyncratic; ironically, he was prone to use Dutch where sound Afrikaans equivalents already existed.

After retiring from journalism in 1936, Preller devoted himself to writing books and articles on Afrikaner history, the collection and preservation of all relevant sources, and the editing and publication of the more significant of them. Among the most important of his numerous works are a biography, Piet Retief, Lewensgeskiedenis van die Grote Voortrekker, Pretoria, 1906, and two collections of documents, “Voortrekkermense”, Cape Town, 1918-25 and 1938, and “Voortrekker-wetgewing.” Pretoria, 1924. These books were concerned with the major period of Boer migration, the Great Trek.

As a nationalist historian, Preller’s other major interest was the Second Anglo-Boer War. Quite untrained, he himself admitted that he was only as objective as his duty as an Afrikaner allowed. The outcome of the war had done grave damage to the Afrikaners’ self-confidence; Preller’s contribution to their resurgence was considerable, much more so than his contribution to scientific history. He was aware of that, and well pleased that it should be so.

A. L. HARINGTON