D1.8.22: [Untitled]

D1.8.22: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek argues for federalism in Germany and the Cape Colony to decentralise power and accommodate population heterogeneity across a vast territorial expanse. He proposes how federalism and constitutionalism achieve a limitation and separation of powers to avoid America's experience, where over-centralised power destabilised. Examining the project for a united Germany, Bleek extols the merits of unifying individually ineffectual polities as a cohesive whole under hegemonic Prussia while accommodating idiosyncrasies. He remarks that difficult times create pragmatic men like Lincoln, with the ideal hardness of character, 'fitted for the iron rule'. Bleek then pivots to complaints about the Stercus Company's disruptive operations near Salt River's Fort Knokke. Northerly winds carry the effluvia over to Observatory and as far as Mowbray. Perhaps to convey the intensity of local winds, he remarks that Easterners cite it as one of Table Valley's acute discomforts.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

23 February 1865

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Government (centralised), Confederations (in Europe and America), revolution, Swiss Republic, capital (a fixed), Lincoln (his personal thoughts on abolition), Bismarck (his reluctant role in unification), unification (of German States), Italia Una, Stercus Company, Salt River, Fort Knokke (close to the Salt River mouth), effluvia (carried by the wind)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, February 23rd, 1865. 'Fort Knokke' refers to Fort De Knokke (1744 to 1926), formerly situated on Cape Town's foreshore.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.