IMPOSSIBLE SKIES: Life with my brother, the artist, Walter Meyer

By Frans Meyer

In December, 2017, Walter Meyer was stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife by his wife, Sophia. Dubbed "South Africa's own van Gogh" and critically acclaimed as the finest landscape artist to emerge from this country in the last century, his brutal death left a deep void. Written by his brother, Frans, along with rare insights from Walter's rehab journals, Impossible Skies explores the artist's roots, his genius as a painter and a poignant relationship between two brothers. 
 
 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melinda Ferguson Books
• Release date: Apr 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781990973673

Frans Meyer

Frans Meyer was raised in Pretoria and studied at the UPS, Grootfontein Agricultural College and 43 Air School. He spent years farming in Somerset East and became a commercial pilot and operations manager in North Africa. He currently writes non-fiction and lives in Cape Town with his writer-wife, Michelle, and their two cats.

Book preview

PART ONE:

Roots

CHAPTER 1

Our grandparents

Our father is a third-generation South African German, his progenitors originally from Oldendorf in the Celle region of Lower Saxony in Germany. They immigrated to South Africa in the late 1800s, settling in the Piet Retief district and the areas southwest of the town close to Hermannsburg in the province today known as KwaZulu-Natal.

The German immigrants were part of a Lutheran drive to establish missions in what was considered deep and dark Africa by so many Europeans and, as a result, many German churches and schools were built. Our dad’s great-grandfather, Georg Heinrich Meyer, donated farmland to build both a church and a school at Wittenberg and volunteered to do all the church’s woodwork.

Even today, the German community in that part of the world is a stoic and tightly knit collective, and many traditions established over two centuries ago remain in place. The Wittenberg School and Lutheran Church are still thriving, and I presume the sturdy woodwork in the church that my great-great-grandfather created continues to play a role more than a century later.

Our dad, Hugo Julius Meyer, was born in Piet Retief in what was then the Eastern Transvaal (today Mpumalanga). He spent much of his childhood in Gege in rural Swaziland (eSwatini) and later attended school in Piet Retief. But when he was 16 years old, our grandfather, Carl Walter Meyer, my brother’s namesake, suddenly passed away from a heart attack. He was only 44 years old. His death left our grandma, Ouma Irmgard, a single parent to four children: two boys and two girls. Dad was the eldest.

Oupa Walter, who’d had a knack for numbers, had once owned a farm store at Gege but later moved to Piet Retief, where he also ran a shop and established himself as a part-time accountant. During this time, he studied to improve his prospects and at the time of his death was planning a move to Pretoria to allow his children to further their own studies. Then fate served its cruel blow.

As the eldest son and now fatherless, our father became the man of the household. Later, when he himself became a dad, he would share his father’s approach when it came to providing for his children’s futures. We grew up with the certainty that our father would do anything to assist us, and he continues to do so.

Dad skipped a grade or two at school and was relatively young when he matriculated. He enrolled at the University of Pretoria (Tuks) in 1954 when he was only 16 years old to study to become a teacher. In those years, less affluent rural folk needing a bursary could basically choose between becoming a doctor, a minister or a teacher. When Dad arrived in Hatfield, Pretoria, he spoke fluent German and Zulu but only a smidgen of Afrikaans and English. He found everything in the big city daunting but also exciting.

He had inherited our grandfather’s head for maths, and we grew up hearing stories of how he crammed far too much into his initial teaching lessons and overloaded the unfortunate students with complicated info. He soon switched to Tuks’ newly established Civil Engineering faculty. Engineering proved to be his calling.

Our ouma, Irmgard Catherine Marié Meyer (née Schütte), was born on 4 May 1917 and was only 38 years old when her husband passed away. Now a widow, Ouma Irmgard dedicated herself to taking care of her four fatherless children and, later in life, she once told our mom that she had never remarried because she could not risk a new husband not getting along with her children.

Ouma Irmgard, a quiet and typically meticulous German woman, was an excellent cook. She was also extremely caring. We grew up with her telling us stories about the dedication and hard work required to make German-style cured meat and sausages. She had learned these things when she handled the Gege farm store’s butchery as a young woman. She excelled at needlework and baking bread, one of her specialities being traditional butterkuchen¹, and she always got the melted butter and brown-sugar ratio on top of the delicious cake precisely right. We kids literally fought over the stuff.

Like our father, Ouma spoke German and Zulu and only a bit of Afrikaans and English.

While Dad was studying in Pretoria, she worked in a shop in Piet Retief and rented out rooms to students to make ends meet. Those were hard times. Finally, once Dad had completed his studies, she joined him in Pretoria, bringing along the rest of his siblings.

Fortunately, Dad had been able to study courtesy of a Department of Roads bursary, and he started his new job at the department in November 1958. The entire extended family shared a small, two-bedroomed apartment in Sunnyside. Ouma and Dad’s sisters, Zenta and Isolde, shared a room and he and his younger brother, Mannfred (Oom Mannie), shared the other. Tannie Zenta studied part-time, and she and Dad helped support Ouma financially.

Once she had settled in Pretoria, Ouma worked as a cashier at Ginsberg’s department store, rode the bus from Sunnyside daily and walked to the Lutheran church on Park Street on Sundays. While we were growing up, she spent a lot of time at our home. Our folks travelled extensively because of our dad’s job, and he enjoyed having Mom’s company on the trips. The upside was receiving presents on their return – there were Davy Crockett beaver hats from the States, lederhosen² and dirndls³ from Germany, wood carvings, toy guns and pens with tiny boats sliding along their shafts.

While on their extended forays abroad, they always roped in Ouma to look after the four of us. She spoiled us with traditional German cooking and fresh, warm raisin bread with lashings of butter and impressively long home-made rusks. As most grandkids do, we probably took advantage of her, staying up late and breaking various other rules.

We were independent as kids and usually walked to Laerskool Pretoria-Oos and later to Afrikaans Hoër (Affies). Living relatively close to our schools was fortunate because our grandmother didn’t have a driving licence. Back in Swaziland, she had driven the farm truck without one. When she retired, she became an assistant at a nursing home in Sunnyside. Our father visited her every Thursday afternoon after work, and on each occasion, she welcomed him with tea and freshly baked biscuits.

Ouma Irmgard passed away on 15 December 1999, when she was 82.

As her first grandchild, as well as an introvert, Walter always had a special bond with Ouma Irmgard. He felt at home with her, and her passing affected him deeply. In one of the journals he kept at one of the many rehab facilities that he would later attend, Walter recalled her with great fondness:

I always adored my grandmother, Ouma Irmgard. She worked hard. I think I felt sorry for her as well because she was alone. Her husband – my granddad, whose name I have – died when my dad was 16 years old. I always had a lot of respect for my grandmother. She was good with her hands, knitting and cooking, and was modest. A few years ago, I was in Pretoria when she was close to her end and saw her for the last time. It was a very emotional event. The last few words she said to me were that I must not cry. Which I was doing.

Our great-granddad Derk, on our mother’s side, was the son of Frans and Pieterke Rumpff (née Kloosterhuis) and was born in Middelstum (the Netherlands) on 6 July 1878. A minister in the Gereformeerde Kerk (or Dopper⁴), he had immigrated to South Africa as a young man. The story goes that, when he visited, he enjoyed the heat so much compared to the cold and overcast Netherlands that he decided to lay down his roots and never return to Europe. He eventually sent for his sister, Tante Janneke (my daughter’s namesake), to join him.

Oupa Derk and his wife, Femke, had only one son, Frans Lourens Herman Rumpff, our mom’s father and our grandpa, who was born on 5 June 1912. He was known for being one of the justices who acquitted all 156 of the accused in the Treason Trial between 1956 and 1961, which was the precursor to the Rivonia Trial that took place in 1963–64. Nelson Mandela was one of the 156 prisoners who were released. Oupa Frans, who would later become Chief Justice of the Republic between 1974 and 1982, was well-read and tall – probably the reason for my brother’s height – and died on 4 April 1992 at the age of 79.

Oupa married our maternal grandmother, Monica Rumpff (née Krüger) on 22 December 1939. Ouma Monica, a short-statured but feisty woman, and her mom, Hester Krüger, were both artists, so Oupa Frans became part of an artistic family. As children, we were told how our great-grandmother, Ouma Hester, found being married to her husband, Dr Isak Krüger, a Dopper church minister just like Oupa Derk, somewhat problematic, especially when her artist’s temperament clashed with her duties as chairperson of the Church Sisters. She was an introvert, and the endless meetings and organising of the Sisters were not her cup of tea. Although she always managed to fulfil her duties, she found the going tough. Her husband dedicated his retirement years to assisting his wife with her exhibitions and supporting her artistic career.

As a young woman, Ouma Monica had studied fine art in Berlin, but she returned to South Africa when Oupa Frans feared the imminent outbreak of World War II. Our mom, Sonja Rumpff, was born on 9 May 1941 in Pretoria and is the eldest of four sisters. She (and Walter) undoubtedly inherited their talent from that side of the family and, over time, Mom dabbled in leatherwork, fabric painting and woodcarving. However, her real passion is for knitting and needlework. After studying at the University of Potchefstroom, she became a social worker until our parents started a family in 1965. In hindsight, studying social work would later come in handy due to the family drama she would have to face as both a parent and a grandparent.

CHAPTER 2

Our parents – Hugo and Sonja Meyer

Mom’s Dutch heritage has proven to be the perfect counterbalance to our dad’s Germanic approach to life. As a result, they form an outstanding team. As kids we were astutely aware of the way they worked together in impeccable unison – and they still do. In 2023, they celebrated being married for 60 years.

After completing his studies at Tuks at the end of November 1958 (at the age of 20) and starting work at the national Department of Roads, Dad almost immediately bought himself a new, cream-white VW Beetle. And so began a lifelong passion for owning, driving and meticulously caring for motor cars.

Seven months later, he learnt of what seemed like an exciting position at the Rembrandt head office in Paarl. The company was willing to take over and pay back his bursary, so Dad joined the cigarette maker as an apprentice manager. He was, however, soon to discover that the work was not what he had expected, so he decided to resign and join Van Wyk & Louw Consulting Civil Engineers, who had offered him a position while he was still with the department. The new company, once again, took over the remainder of his bursary debt. He would stay with the business for 27 years.

Mom and Dad were introduced to each other by Mom’s school friend, Tannie Wilma, who dated Dad’s cousin, Oom Bernhardt. When they met, Mom was just 20 and Dad 23. The courtship was not, however, without its ups and downs. Ouma Monica liked Dad a lot as a prospective son-in-law, so Mom felt somewhat pressured. Although besotted with Dad, she had barely transitioned from being a teenager and, at just 20 years of age, still wanted to explore things and spend some time on her own. But Dad (and Ouma) had other ideas and, after ardently courting Mom, eventually convinced her to accept his proposal of marriage.

Just before they tied the knot, Dad left the Lutheran Church to join the Gereformeerde Kerk, to which our mother belonged. There was no real pressure from Mom’s family; our parents simply reasoned that their children would benefit from growing up worshipping in their mother tongue, which was Afrikaans with some Dutch courtesy of Mom.

Our great-grandad, Dominee Krüger, who married our parents, had no problem with the Lutheran Church and felt it was Dad’s choice whether he wanted to move across. Although he never resisted it, changing churches was a big step in our dad’s life, as his Lutheran upbringing had always played an integral part in how he approached his world. Apart from the shift in dogma, which fortunately was not too far removed from his Lutheran roots, the decision required him to adjust to practising his religion in Afrikaans instead of German.

Our parents married on 17 April 1963. Barely three months later, Van Wyk & Louw sent the newlyweds on a construction job to the small, somewhat nondescript town of Aliwal North in the northeastern part of the Eastern Cape. Dad’s job entailed overseeing the construction quality of a road the company had been contracted to design in the area. It was a rough period in their fledgling marriage, with Mom far away and isolated from her parental support base and friends. The move also forced her to give up her job as a social worker, which she was passionate about.

Meanwhile, Dad embraced the new town and mixed with contractors at work and played golf at a rather primitive country club with the best oil-sand greens in the region. During our childhood, stories about impromptu braais on shovels in the veld with co-workers abounded. Our mom, who now found herself alone for long periods in a strange new town, must have found this a difficult time, and even today she is not a fan of those Aliwal North golfing tales. It wasn’t long before Dad suddenly stopped playing the game.

Mom fell pregnant not long after setting up her new home in Aliwal North. Two years into their marriage, and shortly after midnight on 31 January 1965, my brother, Carl Walter Meyer, was born in the local Aliwal North Hospital.

Ouma Irmgard travelled to the small outback town to help Mom with their first baby. Being so far from Pretoria for the first time in her life, the birth of Walter in the small dorp and Dad’s ardent golfing antics must have caused Mom considerable stress. She enjoyed motherhood, though. According to her, Walter was an easy baby. Eventually, and to Mom’s relief, the young Meyer couple moved back to Pretoria after my brother was born.

Walter was the first grandchild in both the Meyer and Rumpff families, and his birth heralded great joy in both families. Over time it would emerge that Walter had inherited the creativity of the Rumpffs and the work ethic and attention to detail from the Meyers from Hermannsburg, who always did things in full measure. As he grew up, it would become evident that Walter had been blessed with a combination of artistic talent, a relentless approach to hard work and perfection, and a mule-like obstinacy he got from both sides of the family. The stars seemed aligned for him to become a brilliant painter, a passionate pursuit he would yearn for and work so hard at.

CHAPTER 3

Early childhood

On arriving in Pretoria with baby Walter, who was just six months old, our parents rented half of a divided house on Troye Street, Sunnyside, where my older sister Monica and I would be born.

In his rehab journals, Walter recalled this house:

My earliest