My Lewe en Strewe

8vo; original orange cloth, lettered in black on spine, and with black lettering and Transvaal coat-of-arms to upper cover; no dustwrapper; pp. (iv) + 263; title page portrait. Spine and edges of boards sunned; earlier owner's name on pastedowns; some light foxing to endpapers, outer leaves and edges. Very good condition. (Nienaber I, p. 238) Salomon Gerhardus (Manie) Maritz (1876 - 1940), "Boer general and rebel leader of 1914, was a descendant of the Voortrekker leader Gerrit Maritz … Maritz became an admirer of Nazism. He joined the Greyshirt movement in the Union, but resigned in 1934 to form the South African National Democratic movement. He was farming in South-West Africa at the time, but paid frequent visits to the Union to make speeches attacking the Jews and Freemasonry. In August 1939 he was charged in the high court, Windhoek, with engendering racial hostility in South-West Africa by the distribution of his book, My lewe en strewe (Pretoria, 1939). On 34 August he was found guilty, the presiding judge stating that the book had been '… written with the deliberate object of encouraging bad feelings towards the Jewish race'. … Maritz was short, stocky, broad-shouldered and dark-complexioned. In his prime he was endowed with exceptional physical strength about which many striking anecdotes were recorded by his contemporaries. His courage, energy and ruthlessness made him a formidable opponent in the field. In civilian life his impetuosity, restlessness and lack of business acumen precipitated a series of financial setbacks. He undoubtedly had a personal magnetism, but his arrogance, violent temper and pathological racial prejudices made him many enemies and often alienated his friends." (Dictionary of South African Biography, Vol. I., pp. 513-515)