Bert van Stekelenburg (original) (raw)

Bert van Stekelenburg 1940 - 2003

Author and editor of works on ancient history and literature Professor of Latin at Stellenbosch University until 1996

Albert Victor (Bert) van Stekelenburg was born on 31 March 1940 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
In 1965 he started his career teaching Classics at Dutch academic high schools. In 1971 he received a doctorate in Classics from the University of Leiden, after a stint of research that took him to Rome (1968 to 1969). Thesis: Redevoeringen bij Cassius Dio
During 1972 the young graduate took some time off to travel through Africa, from Cairo to the Cape, and gravitated to Stellenbosch, where he found a vacancy in the Department of Latin. In the following February Bert van Stekelenburg started as lecturer, beginning a career that lasted until 1996, when he took early retirement as Professor and Head of the Department of Latin, but continuing as part-time lecturer in the newly formed Classics Department, until 1998, after which he occasionally taught as guest lecturer and was a frequent and popular public speaker.
Bert's facility with languages, both ancient and modern, and his deep learning were phenomenal. Within the first year of his migration to Stellenbosch, he was already publishing in Afrikaans. Bert's research interests (published in Akroterion) during those first years were largely historical or didactic. An early article was on the Stellenbosch University Roman coin collection (1978) and numismatics remained one of his abiding interests and teaching specialities.
In 2002 he established the annual 'Grevenbroek Prize', to go to the best undergraduate (third-year) student in Latin at the University of Stellenbosch.
Bert is gratefully remembered by the wider Stellenbosch community for his work in many community projects as member of Stellenbosch Round Table, and later of Rotary International. During his term as President of the Stellenbosch Chapter, he instituted innovative ways of fund-raising for the Hospice movement and other charities.
In the seven years following his official retirement Bert undertook many bird-watching expeditions, travelling in turn to various parts of the world. He walked the length of the Pyrenees, criss-crossed South America, went on a motorcycling trip through Kenia, spent a long time in the jungles of Indonesia, travelled to Nepal and India, watching birds and living with the locals.
Bert van Stekelenburg died on on 11 March 2003, when returning from an expedition to Patagonia to watch a particular species of penguin in its own habitat, he fell overboard about four nautical miles off the coast of Chile.

Books:

Redevoeringen bij Cassius Dio, Delftsche Uijgevers Maatschappy, 1971
Tria Saecula series (Co-authors: Frans Smuts and Suretha Bruwer), Stellenbosch, 1980-1982 (tri-lingual annotated Latin texts for school and university use)
Lexis Latina, Pretoria, 1985 (a basic 1500-word Latin vocabulary, featuring high-frequency word lists suitable for both literary and legal Latin studies)
De Iure (editor), Pretoria 1991 (a set of legal Latin texts for law students)