Justus Hiddes Halbertsma ( ; ; 23 October 1789 – 27 February 1869)Breuker 1993, p. 588.Breuker 2016, p. 1126.Rademaker-Helfferich. was a Frisian writer, poet, minister, lexicographer and linguist.Breuker 1993, pp. 587–591. Today, he is primarily known for the poetry and short story collection De Lapekoer fan Gabe Skroar, which he wrote with his brother Eeltsje, publishing the first edition in 1822.Breuker 1993, p. 594.Dykstra and Oldenhof, p. 37. Afterwards, this work was continually expanded, and also came to include contributions by a third brother, Tsjalling, until all the Halbertsma Brothers' prose and poetry was posthumously collected in 1871 to become the famous work Rimen en Teltsjes.Breuker 1993, pp. 603–606. Although the literary value of this collection was later disputed by some critics,Breuker 1993, pp. 594–596. it is undeniable that Rimen en Teltsjes played a role of crucial importance in the development of a new literary tradition after Western Frisian had been used almost exclusively as a spoken language for three centuries.Jensma, p. 197.
Life Youth and background Justus Hiddes Halbertsma was born on 23 October 1789 in the village of Grou, in the central part of the Dutch province of Friesland,Dykstra and Oldenhof, p. 38. in the house of his parents on Kowemerk ("Cow Market") street.Wiersma, p. 7. He was the eldest son of the baker and small-time merchantBreuker 1993, p. 587.Oppewal and Boorsma, p. 16.Wiersma, s. 7. Hidde Joasts Halbertsma (1756–1809)Terpstra, p. 317. and his wife Ruerdtsje (or Riurtk) Tsjallings Binnerts (1767–1809).Wiersma, pp. 7–8. He had three younger brothers: Tsjalling (1792–1852),Breuker 1993, p. 591.Terpstra, p. 316. Binnert (1795–1847), and Eeltsje (1797–1858).Breuker 1993, p. 592. Two children who were born later died in early childhood, the little boy in 1803, and the little girl in 1805. The four brothers were very close, possibly as a consequence of the fact that both their parents died at a relatively young age in 1809, when Justus was just twenty years of age and the others were even younger.Wiersma, pp. 8–9. Justus, Tsjalling and Eeltsje, who, as authors, became known as the Brothers Halbertsma later in life,Hemminga, p. 56. were much like their father, while Binnert more resembled their mother.
Ruerdtsje Binnerts was a scion of a prominent family in Grou. Her people were Mennonites, and although her husband had been raised a Calvinist, he converted after marrying her. From Justus' letters Ruerdtsje emerges as a smart businesswoman, a loving mother, and a deeply religious person.Wiersma, p. 8. About Hidde Halbertsma, the father, much less is known. It is thought that he might have been a mariner before his marriage. He is described as a gentle soul, who was, however, apt to take offence, and could be quite sharp-tongued in such cases. In 1784, he published a long Dutch-language poem under the title Schrikkelijke IJsgang en Overstroominge in Gelderland ("Terrible Ice-drift and Flooding in Gelderland"). From this intriguing work it is clear that his sons' literary talents were a family trait.
In 1858, Justus Halbertsma explained the difference between his parents' families when he wrote: "One cannot deny the Halbertsmas a greater skillfulness, speed of thought, a greater adroitness, quickness, and talent than the family of Ruerdtsje Tsjallings; but wat help was that to them against the poverty which overcame most of them, while Ruerdtsje Tsjallings' family for the most part maintain prosperity to this day as part of the dignified middle class?" Against the superior power of those who calmly and calculatedly grew rich, he wrote somewhere else, the Halbertsmas could only "avenge themselves through satire."
Education, clerical career, and family Halbertsma's mother Ruerdtsje was the main force behind the thorough education her sons received. Justus she sent to the French school in the provincial capital of Leeuwarden for a year, and after that, she enrolled him in the Latin school in Leeuwarden from 1801 to 1806. At the advice of his mother and the Mennonite minister Jan Brouwer, from Leeuwarden, Justus Halbertsma chose a clerical career, for which he studied theology at the Mennonite Seminary in Amsterdam from 1807 to 1813.Wiersma, p. 9. In that period he also immersed himself in the study of the North Germanic languages. In 1814, Halbertsma became minister in Bolsward, where he remained until 1821. Afterwards, he served the Mennonite congregation in the city of Deventer, in the province of Overijssel, from 1822 to his retirement in 1856.
Halbertsma married Johanna Iskjen Hoekema (1794–1847), a Mennonite minister's daughter from Workum, who came from a well-to-do middle-class family, on 10 May 1816. Through his wife Halbertsma attained possession of the farmstead Westerein, near Workum, where he and his family often spent a couple of weeks in summer. Apart from those holidays, he lived out his entire life in Deventer. Halbertsma and his wife had five sons from a good marriage, which was however not without its share of problems. Of these sons Petrus, Hidde, and Tsjalling studied linguistics or medicine, while Watse en Binnert became mariners. As a father, Halbertsma experienced a large amount of grief, as his son Petrus died in 1851 in a psychiatric hospital, while Binnert died in 1861, and Hidde took his own life in 1865.
As a literary figure Halbertsma had been greatly influenced in his student years by his acquaintance with the well-to-do and influential Amsterdam merchant Jeronimo de Vries, who championed a national art, inspired by the Dutch Golden Age. These ideas flew in the face of more modern notions advocated by writers such as Hiëronymus van Alphen and Johannes Klinker. For Halbertsma, who was first and foremost a Frisian, and only secondly a Dutchman, this meant an orientation towards national Frisian ideals,Breuker 1993, pp. 588–589. from which emanated two goals he set himself in life.Breuker 1993, p. 589. Firstly, he wanted to preserve the Western Frisian language by using it for writing again after it had been used almost exclusively as a spoken language for three centuries.Boelens et al., p. 116.Wiersma, p. 11. From that it followed that he had to get the Frisians to read in their own language (otherwise, writing it would not be of much use), and that he should record the Frisian vocabulary in a dictionary, which would be the first dictionary ever of the Frisian language. And secondly, Halbertsma wanted to put renowned Frisian people from the past in the spotlight, to serve as an example for his contemporaries.
To attain his first goal, Halbertsma had to use his writings to penetrate the daily life of the Frisian people. This he achieved by authoring folk literature with his brother Eeltsje. The state and social status of the Western Frisian language at that time becomes clear if one observes the fact that Halbertsma and his brothers, though they laboured tirelessly for the use of Frisian as a written language for poetry and prose, lapsed into Dutch for their correspondence with each other, and apparently did not feel that was in any way strange.Boelens et al., s. 116. As Halbertsma remained the editor of Eeltsje's work for his entire life, their poetry and short fiction were strongly connected and published together from the very beginning.Breuker 1993, p. 593. For that reason the linguist Foeke Buitenrust Hettema would describe Halbertsma later as the 'literary agent' of his brothers Eeltsje and Tsjalling. In 1822, their early works were collected under the title De Lapekoer fan Gabe Skroar ("Gabe Tailor's Rag Basket"; original, archaic spelling: De Lape Koer fen Gabe Skroor), a booklet consisting of 36 pages, and including six poems and one short story. This publication was attributed to the fictional 'Gabe Skroar', a lame farmer's son who became a tailor and a writer, but died young.Breuker 1993, p. 597.Twerda, p. 297. This character was in all probability a creation of Eeltsje's. Hiding behind such a fictional author was fairly normal at that time.
The first edition of De Lapekoer fan Gabe Skroar, published in 1822, consisted of 200 copies only.Terpstra, p. 313.Twerda, pp. 297–298.Wiersma, s. 5, 11. Those were not sold, however, but at the expense of Halbertsma presented to acquaintances of his all over Friesland.Twerda, p. 298. In that way he awoke among his public a desire for more reading-matter of this nature. These stories and poems were in fact something entirely different from what the readers were used to, not only as to what language they were written in, but also and especially concerning their informal style. The copies of the booklet often were shared around through entire networks of family and friends, and not seldom the stories and poems were transcribed by hand before the booklet was given back or passed on.
A second, expanded edition of De Lapekoer fan Gabe Skroar, consisting of 237 pages, was published in 1829, followed by a third, further expanded edition in 1834, running to almost 500 pages of a larger size.Wiersma, p. 5, 11. After that, additions were published separately in 1836 (De Noarger Rún oan Gabe Skroar), 1840 (Twigen út in Alde Stamme), 1854 (Leed en Wille en de Flotgerzen), and 1858 (De Jonkerboer and Teltsjes fan de Wize Mannen fan Esonstêd).Brothers Halbertsma 1958, pp. 589–594. By the end of his life, Halbertsma assisted in the editing of a portion of Rimen en Teltsjes (Rhymes and Tales), the comprehensive publication in which all the Halbertsma Brothers' literary works were collected. He even wrote some new pieces for it, such as the short story It Grouwe Pak ("The Thick Suit").Breuker 2016, p. 1127.
As a writer, Halbertsma strongly sensed what the public needed, but at the same time he was a somewhat distant and cerebral author, which tended to have an averse effect on his poetry, especially compared to the poems of his brother Eeltsje, who was a much more emotional writer.Dykstra and Oldenhof, pp. 38–40. Nevertheless, at least some of Halbertsma's poems, for instance Sibbel fan De Ryp ("Sibbel from De Ryp") and Nacht ("Night") have made a lasting impression.Terpstra, p. 318. That said, Halbertsma's short stories were much more acute thanks to his limber use of language, his lively style of writing, and the fact that he refused to mince his words, leading to a rough, scoffing, and sometimes darkly grim atmosphere. His subject-matter Halbertsma collected from various sources, including German and French oral literature, which he matchlessly revised and placed in Friesland. He was a non-conformist, whose sharp judgments of the works of others made him far from universally loved. Before everything else, Halbertsma as a writer was an essayist and a satirist, who liked to include topical political and social questions in his literary works. From the anecdotes of people who knew or met him, he emerges as a sharp-witted and extremely diligent man of capacious erudition who was a droll story-teller.