The Van Pletsen Saga
by Helen Lewald (nee Van Pletsen)
Translated by Blane van Pletzen-Rands
Click here for extended Genealogy
PREFACE
by her son, Roon Lewald
When my mother completed her hand-written chronicle of her Van Pletsen ancestors in 1974, a typed manuscript produced by an admiring relative was photocopied many times and found its way to numerous members of her tribe throughout South Africa. As far as I am aware, the Afrikaans-language manuscript remains the only known history of the Van Pletsens (or Van Pletzens with a “z”), and graphically portrays a typically huge clan of Afrikaner (Boer) descendants of mingled Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers.
I was nevertheless astounded when, during a random web session in 2008, I stumbled on a faithful copy of the “Van Pletsen Saga” in both the original Afrikaans AND an English translation in this very same blog. From Bonn in Germany, where I have lived since emigrating in 1971, I immediately contacted the responsible blogger in New York. I was delighted to find out that editor Blane van Pletzen-Rands is indeed a remote relative as well as a fellow expatriate, with a similarly nostalgic attachment to the positive aspects of Afrikaner traditions and the expressive Afrikaans language with its fine literature. Like many Americans, post-colonial South Africans – especially those who have joined a swelling diaspora in Europe, both Americas and Australasia in recent years – are deeply interested in their ancestral origins. Since Blane came upon a copy of the Saga during a visit to relatives in South Africa, he has therefore made it a centrepiece of his blog. The many comments it has attracted show that it has become a watering hole for virtually migrating Van Pletsens and other South Africans. (more…)
Die „Saga der Van Pletsens“
Chronik der Familie Van Pletsen von Helen Lewald, geb. van Pletsen*
[Aus der Originalsprache Afrikaans ins Deutsche übersetzt und kommentiert von ihrem Sohn, Roon Lewald]
Helen and Albrecht in their Berlin student years
Vorwort
Nachdem meine Mutter im Jahre 1974 in Pretoria die Chronik ihrer Familie handschriftlich verfasst hatte, wurde das von einem Vetter säuberlich getippte Manuskript von ihrer Verwandtschaft als einzig bekannte Ahnengeschichte dieser in Südafrika weit verzweigten, burischen Sippe mit großem Interesse begrüßt. Sozusagen im Samisdat-Verfahren ging die 9-seitige Chronik von Hand zu Hand und tauchte bald auch bei Stammesmitgliedern auf, von deren Existenz nicht einmal sie in ihren eifrigen Recherchen erfahren hatte. (more…)
But what good came of it at last? 36 years after “The Yellow Train”
By Roon Lewald
As a young staffer of a U.S. news agency’s Bonn bureau in Germany 36 years ago, I was seconded to command the agency’s forward desk in the Dutch town of Assen during the final week of a sensational train hijacking by armed South Moluccan terrorists. In an autobiographical short story (see “The Yellow Train”) posted on this blog a few years ago, I described the lasting emotional impact on me of the events. (more…)
A place in social history
By Roon Lewald
Philipp Roesler
Proving how perilously close success is to failure in politics, the swift rise of Guido Westerwelle to power as Germany’s first openly gay vice-chancellor, foreign minister and party leader has ended just as quickly. As reported in “Coming Strongly” late last year, Westerwelle’s marriage last September to Gerhard Mronz, a prominent sport events manager who had been his publicly acknowledged lover for several years, was a notable step forward for gay social normalization. The low-key public reaction to a wedding that would have been legally meaningless and both socially and politically suicidal only a few years ago also burnished the country’s international image by showing that liberal democratic values are here to stay in Germany. (more…)
Doubt, Uncertainty and Belief
A sermon on John 20:19-31 preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Chelsea New York, on the Second Sunday in Easter, April 19th 2009
I am a bit of a doubter. Actually that’s a lie. I am a big doubter. If this were an Doubter’s Anonymous meeting, I’d probably say “Hi, my name is Blane and I’m a doubter.” There are some things that I just have a hard time believing in. And there are other things in my life that, if I hadn’t experienced them for myself – seen them with my own eyes, witnessed them for myself – I would never have believed them if someone else had told me it were so. (more…)
Martin Luther King of Georgia
January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968
We have flown the air like birds,
השכלנו לטוס באוויר כמו ציפורים
حلّقنا في الهواء كالعصافير
We have swum the sea like fishes
השכלנו לשחות בים כמו דגים
سبحنا في البحر كالأسماك
But have yet to learn the simple act
אך עדיין לא למדנו את המעשה הפשוט….
لكننا لم نتقن بعد، تلك المهارة البسيطة ….
Of walking the earth like brothers
של ללכת על האדמה כמו אחים
أن نمشي على الأرض كالأخوة
Words by: Martin Luther King Jr.
מילים: מרטין לוטר קינג הבן
من أقوال:مارتن لوثر كينج
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how my blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 9 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 104 posts. There were 23 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was March 28th with 192 views. The most popular post that day was Nigel High School Reunions.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mormonsformarriage.com, bsg8.org, search.conduit.com, and mariaozawa2u.blogspot.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for alice in wonderland, mount athos, braaivleis, margot käßmann, and sadf.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Nigel High School Reunions February 2007
154 comments
Parable of the Good Samaritan – an exegesis November 2007
Saint George’s Home for Boys 1915 – 1991 January 2007
159 comments
Alice-aus-dem-Wunderland May 2009
1 comment
Pilgrimage to Mount Athos July 2010
4 comments
Tales from Twente: When is a Steak a Steak?
You know you live in the Netherlands when people don’t know what rump steak is! Or sirloin steak, for that matter.
When we first came to live in Almelo, I was quite bewildered by the meat counters in the Dutch supermarkets. Yes, it was meat, but what kind of meat? A roundish blob of packaged meat labelled “steak” didn’t tell me much. So, with high hopes, I used to read the cooking instructions on the back. And ended up with something resembling leather.
Then I discovered frozen imported “rump steak” at the Aldi and Lidl supermarkets. It had the texture of rump steak, only the pieces were quite small. I can recognise and buy fillet steak, known as ossenhaas or tournedos, as well as ribeye steak and entrecote steak – and that’s where it ends. (more…)
A Christmas Crèche
And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger: for there was no room for them in the inn.
Advent is here again, and the unusually persistent snow we’ve been having here in Bonn in the climatically moderate Rhineland has added a festive white touch to the view from my living room window. I have therefore set aside my work as a freelance translator for a while to indulge my creative hobbies. The first thing I did was to design my own Christmas cards, thinking that something has to be done about the commercial degradation of what has been the greatest festival of the Christian calendar for over 2,000 years. Because if I see one more card or window display wishing me a happy “Xmas”, I shall track down those responsible and give them an earful. Who is or was this faceless “X”? How did he, she or it usurp the originator Christ from the name of the feast day that once celebrated the birth of the Son of Man, and now marks only the biggest consumer spending spree of the year? (more…)
Advent: Time for Sowing
By Roon Lewald
Funeral Dirt
It’s the first of the four Advent Sundays, when folks here in Germany light the first of four candles on their Advent fir-branch wreaths and get into the pre-Christmas spirit. Even agnostics can’t help reflecting on the meaning of it all on a quiet Sunday evening when Christmas-minded people take a short break from their gift-shopping labours before plunging back into the seasonal shopping rush again on Monday (illuminations are already up and Christmas markets are booming in the city centers, and Germans are again spending this year as if the recession never happened.) With new terror scares vying with the global economic crisis for attention, the news is so depressing nowadays it’s hard to believe that there’s any room left in the world for the human love, friendship and compassion we hear so much about at Christmastime. I can only draw comfort from the knowledge that many people like myself are at least linked to other individuals by such bonds.
In this mood, I was reminded of a short story by a South African author named Charles Bosman. (more…)
Dina Ann’s Tales from Twente
Hitting the ground running
After several years in Holland, you wouldn’t think Dina (below) was raised in South Africa if you saw her and husband Johan Boessenkool (further down) pedalling away beside the grachten of Almelo on their “rijwielen” (bikes)
Back in her Dutch stamping grounds after attending the 90th birthday festivities for her mother in South Africa, René Vincent (née Van Pletsen), Dina Ann Boessenkool has delighted friends and relatives by resuming the entertaining round-robin letters that earned her an introduction on this blog last year as “Another Van Pletsen Story-teller”. This time, she wryly comments the frustrations of modern air travel, the virtues of cell-phones, the mingled blessings of the infotech age in Dutch vocational language teaching and the recently enforced Africanisation of familiar English street names in her native Durban. (more…)
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