Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt, 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".
Leipoldt c. 1915
Leipoldt c. 1925
Faint rock art above the grave
Wupperthal is a small town in the Cederberg mountains in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It was founded in 1830 by two German missionaries of the Rhenish Missionary Society, Theobald von Wurmb and Johann Gottlieb Leipoldt, grandfather of C. Louis Leipoldt – some 100 years before the city of Wuppertal was formally established in Germany. In 1965, after the Rhenish Mission had gradually scaled down their activities in Southern Africa over a period of 40 years, a decision was taken that Wupperthal in future should become part of the Moravian Church, which by that stage had already made the transition from a mission to an autonomous church in South Africa. The town remains a Moravian mission station to this day.
Church in Wuppertal
Sketch of Wupperthal by the Norwegian missionary, Hans Christian Knudsen