Bleek Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel

Bleek, Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel, philologist, son of the preceding, was born in 1827 at Berlin. He applied himself to the study of the languages of South Africa, and in 1855 accompanied Bishop Colenso thither. In 1860 he was appointed librarian of the Gray Library, Capetown, where he continued his philological investigations until his death in 1875. His chief works are The Languages of Western and Sontliern Africa, 1856, Reynard the Fox in South Africa: Hottentot Fables and Tales, 1864, A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, 1862. He also began a Bushman-English and English-Bushman Dictionary, which was considered of such importance that after his death the Cape Colony Assembly appointed a successor to continue the work.