# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bleek, Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel

​BLEEK, WILHELM HEINRICH IMMANUEL (1827–1875), the leading authority on South African philology, was the son of the biblical critic Friedrich Bleek, and was born at Berlin 8 March 1827. He began his education at Bonn, where his father was professor, but, after taking his doctorate in 1850, went to Berlin to continue his studies in classical philology. His doctor's dissertation, 'De nominum generibus linguarum Africæ australis,' &c., published in 1851, shows that thus early had he been attracted by the special branch of linguistic research which afterwards occupied all his energies. He set out with W. B. Baikie [q. v.] on his expedition up the Niger in 1854, but was compelled by ill-health to turn back at Fernanao Po. In the following year, however, he was able to join Bishop Colenso in Natal, and here he devoted himself for a year and a half to the study of the language and habits of the Kaffirs. Settling at Cape Town he was appointed interpreter by Sir George Grey in 1857. Two years later he was obliged to return to Europe on sick leave, but 1860saw him again at his work with the position of librarian of the valuable collection of rare books presented by Sir George Grey to the colony. With the intermission of a visit to England in in 1869, when he was granted a well-deserved pension on the civil list, he remained busily engaged in the duties of this post and in collateral investigations into the languages of South Africa , until his death, 17 Aug. 1875. His chief works are: 1. 'The Languages of Mozambique,' London, 1856. 2. 'The Library of Sir George Grey, vol. i. Africa, vol. ii. Australia and Polynesia,' virtually a handbook of African, Australian, and Polynesian philology, London and Capetown, 1858-9. 3. 'Comparative Grammar of South African Languages,' parts i. and ii., London, 1862 and 1869, in which important distictions between two groups African languages are for the first time established. 4. 'Reyard tje Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Tales and Fables,' London, 1864 (Weimar, 1870), an interesting contribution to comparative mythology. 5. 'Bushman Folklore,' 1875. He also wrote 'Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache,' in which he endeavoured to trace the origin of language to the cries of anthropoid apes, which was published in 1868 at Weimar with a preface by his cousin Ernst Haekel. Less known is his elementary Latin grammar, published in German in 1863. He contributed philological and ethnological papers to the Berlin Gesellschaft; für Erdkunde (1853), the Philological Society (1855 and 1874), the Anthropological Institute (1872), and on African folklore and mythology and kindred subjects to the 'Cape Monthly Magazine.' So important were his researches in his special department of linguistic science that on his premature death a memorial was widely signed by the first scholars of Europe to the effect that a successor should be appointed to carry on his work, and to this the Cape Colony assembly acceded. Bleek broke fresh ground in his treatises on African philology, and his books remain the first sources on the subject. His method of work was unusually thorough ; he was indefatigable in examining natives with a view to elucidating their language, and his oral investigations were often very protracted before he could satisfy himself that he had accurately caught the precise sound of which he was in search. Personally this devoted student was kindly in disposition ​and ready to help others at any inconvenience to himself.
[Prof. A. H. Sayce in Academy, No. 178, N.S.; Haeckel in Preface to Bleek's Ursprung der Sprache; Unsere Zeit, 1876: Cape Monthly Magazine, vols. xi. and xiii., 1876 and 1876.]
S. L. P.