Andreas Burnier

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Catharina Irma Dessaur, alias Andreas Burnier (1986)

Andreas Burnier ( pseudonym for Catharina Irma Dessaur ; born July 3, 1931 in The Hague , Netherlands ; died September 18, 2002 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch writer and professor of criminology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (KUN).

Burnier is one of the important precursors of the second women's movement in the Netherlands. In her extensive life's work, she also dealt with euthanasia , transsexuality and Judaism . Doris Hermanns describes her as a “radical thinker and an outsider”.

Life

Catharina Irma Dessaur was the oldest child of a liberal Jewish family, her father was a traveling salesman. She received special support from attending a Montessori school . During the Second World War she went into hiding for three years (1942–1945) at constantly changing addresses, separated from her parents for security reasons. During this time she took the name Ronnie van Dijk . After the war she went to Amsterdam with her father. Then she graduated from a high school in The Hague and then studied medicine and philosophy in Amsterdam. Dessaur was unable to complete this course because a professor refused to support her as a young woman.

In September 1953, for reasons of convention, she married the publisher J. Emanuel Zeijlmans van Emmichoven, with whom she had two children. She got to know anthroposophy through him and her father-in-law Frederik Willem Zeylmans van Emmichoven . She dealt with Rudolf Steiner in her later publications. In 1961 the couple divorced and Dessaur studied social sciences. She received her doctorate in Leiden with a thesis on social criminology. After her divorce, she confessed her homosexuality and turned to literature. She published under the pseudonym Andreas Burnier, while under her real name she was professor of criminology in Nijmegen from 1973 to 1988 . The photographer Paul Franssen became her partner for 17 years. Then the writer and librarian Ineke van Mourik (* 1949, pseudonym Daniel van Mourik ) was her second partner for 20 years. Dessaur died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 71 and was buried in the liberal Jewish cemetery Gan Hasjalom Amstelveen . Part of her work was not published until after her death.

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Her first novel, Een tevreden lach , was the first work in Dutch literature in 1965 to write about female homosexuality. In 1969, in her most autobiographical book Het jongensuur (German Knabenzeit ) , she expanded this subject, which continues to be important to her, to include transgender feelings. There the female protagonist prefers to be a boy.

In the 1960s Burnier was an important forerunner of the second women's movement or the second wave of feminism (Dutch Tweede feminist golf ). Her speeches and publications provided inspiration, but she did not appear as an activist, although she became a member of the Man Vrouw Maatschappij (MVM) action group in 1968 . She had already taken up some topics before the Dollen Mina was founded in 1970. As early as 1971 she made the proposal to found a chair for women's studies or a free university .

It was only after her retirement that Burnier dealt intensively with Judaism, to which she no longer had any points of contact after she went into hiding in 1942. In 1997 her novel De wereld is van glas (The world is made of glass) on this topic was published. In 1999 she founded an educational center for liberal and Orthodox Jews, where she held seminars until her death. Together with rabbis and the journalist Manja Ressler, she created a new edition of the Siddur of the Liberal Congregation, which appeared in 2000. In 1995 she coined the term “ father-Jew ”.

In addition to novels, Burnier also published essays , letters and articles, with which she initiated important social debates and regularly became the target of heated polemics. In her academic work, she fought against the legalization of euthanasia, abortion and genetic manipulation. In the liberal Netherlands, their stance was heavily criticized in the 1980s. At that time, she compared euthanasia with Nazi practices and asked questions about “voluntariness”.

Quote

“Whoever wants to penetrate the soul has to go through the upside-down world, through the emptiness, the fear, the nothing.” Andreas Burnier, Een tevreden laughs .

Works (selection)

  • Een tevreden lach (1965), German rendezvous with Stella Artois (1994)
  • De verschrikkingen van het noorden (1967), The horrors of the north (1968)
  • Het jongensuur (1969), Boyhood (1993, 2016)
  • De huilende libertijn (1970)
  • Poëzie: jongens en het gezelschap van leerde vrouwen (1974)
  • De reis naar Kithira (1976)
  • De zwembadmentaliteit (1979)
  • Na de laatste keer (1981)
  • De droom of speech (1982)
  • De litteraire salon (1983)
  • De trein naar Tarascon (1986)
  • Gesprekken in de Nacht (1987)
  • Het spirituele in de kunst (1987), The Reality of the Spiritual in Abstract Art (1988)
  • Mystiek en magie in de literatuur (1988)
  • The eighth Scheppingsdag (1990)
  • Een wereld van verschil (1994)
  • Gustav Meyrink: bewoner van twee werelden (1996)
  • Maneuvers (1996)
  • De wereld is van glas (1997)
  • Joods lezen (1997)
  • Een gevaar dat de Ziel in wil (2003)
  • Na de laatste keer (2004)

As Catharina Irma Dessaur

  • Wetenschap tussen cultuur en tegencultuur . Nijmegen, KUN, 1973.
  • De droom of speech. Het mensbeeld in de sociale wetenschappen. Een poging dead criminosofie . 's-Gravenhage 1982.
  • Do you like doden? Arguments in documents against het euthanasisame . Amsterdam 1986 (with CJC Rutenfrans).
  • The round of the past. An essay about goed en kwaad, in de vorm van zeven brieven aan de Platoclub . Amsterdam 1987.
  • Foundations of theory-formation in criminology. A methodological analysis . Berlin, de Gruyter Mouton, 2011.

Awards (selection)

biography

  • Elisabeth Lockhorn: Andreas Burnier, metselaar van de wereld. Amsterdam and Antwerp 2015. ISBN 978-90-450-2864-4 .

Web links

Commons : Andreas Burnier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DNB : Mourik, Ineke van .
  2. ↑ DNB: Dessaur, Catharina Irma .
personal data
SURNAME Burnier, Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dessaur, Catharina Irma (real name); Zeijlmans van Emmichoven, Catharina Irma (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch writer and criminologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 2002
Place of death Amsterdam