(2001) JLP 46: 103-114

ADAT LAW AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY:

IN MEMORIAM JOHAN FREDERIK (HANS) HOLLEMAN

(18 DECEMBER 1915 – 28 AUGUST 2001);

WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY

Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Han F. Vermeulen

Abstract

Hans Holleman was the son of Frederik David Holleman (1887-1958), the renowned adat law scholar. Inspired by his father’s concern with the colonial administration of justice in the Netherlands East Indies and in his country of origin, South Africa, Hans Holleman studied Roman-Dutch law and ethnology in South Africa, and 1945 became a research fellow at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Between 1952 and 1962 he held further academic posts and posts in African administration in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. In this part of his career he wrote Shona Customary Law (1952), the papers which were later collected in Issues in African Law (1974), and many other papers. In 1963 he moved to the University of Leiden, succeeding in 1969 to the chair in adat law. He retired early for health reasons in 1979, disappointed that he and his field of study had become marginal to the main interests of the university.