C. Louis Leipoldt

Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt (LY-polt; 28 December 1880 – 12 April 1947), usually referred to as C. Louis Leipoldt, was a South African poet, dramatist, medical doctor, reporter and food expert. Together with Jan F. E. Celliers and J. D. du Toit, he was one of the leading figures in the poetry of the Second Afrikaans Movement. Apart from poetry, Leipoldt wrote novels, plays, stories, children's books, cookbooks and a travel diary. He is numbered amongst the greatest of the Afrikaner poets and was described by D. J. Opperman, himself a noted South African poet, as "our most versatile artist".

Biography

Leipoldt was born in Worcester in the Cape Colony, the son of a preacher, Christian Friedrich Leipoldt, of the NG Kerk in Clanwilliam and grandson of the Rhenish missionary, Johann Gottlieb Leipoldt, who founded Wupperthal in the Cederberg. His mother was Anna Meta Christiana Esselen, daughter of Louis Franz Esselen (1817–1893), another Rhenish missionary at Worcester. His early education was largely at home and for a while, during the Second Boer War, he was a reporter. Between 1902 and 1907, with funding from the botanist Harry Bolus, he read medicine at Guy's Hospital in London and travelled in Europe, America and the East Indies. At times his health was poor. For a period of some six months during 1908, he was the personal physician of the American newspaper magnate, Joseph Pulitzer, aboard Pulitzer's yacht.

Later Leipoldt's career was varied. For a period he was a school medical doctor in London before becoming the Medical Inspector of Schools in the Transvaal and then in the Cape Province. He returned to journalism for a while (1923) but finally settled down as a paediatrician in Cape Town in 1925. He never married. He died in Cape Town but, because of his deep love for the Hantam— a mountainous and wild district north of Cape Town— his ashes were laid to rest in the rugged Pakhuis Pass (Storehouse Pass), near Clanwilliam.