Annie Romein-Verschoor

Annie Romein-Verschoor (1920s)

Anna Helena Margaretha Romein-Verschoor , b. Verschoor (born February 4, 1895 in Nijmegen , † February 5, 1978 in Amsterdam ), was a Dutch author and historian . She wrote numerous books, often together with her husband Jan Romein , and has received several awards in the Netherlands. In 1946 she campaigned for the publication of the book Diary of Anne Frank and wrote the foreword to the first edition.

biography

Youth and education

Annie Verschoor came from a seafaring family . She first spent her youth in the Netherlands. In 1906 the family moved with five children to Surabaya , where the father worked as a mechanic for the Navy . Annie Romein attended the Hogereburgerschool (HBS) there. She suffered from malaria , the tropical climate, but also from the colonial atmosphere there. In 1910 a story by Verschoor was published for the first time in the Nieuwe Soerabaja Courant , under the pseudonym Alva-Betha . The following year the family returned to the Netherlands.

There Annie Verschoor completed the HBS and then prepared at home for the state exams in Greek and Latin to study literature and history at the University of Leiden . She attended lectures by the philosopher G. JPJ Bolland and the cultural historian Johan Huizinga . From 1915 to 1920 she wrote around 30 articles for the student newspaper Minerva . In it, she dealt with topics such as social responsibility, the rejection of censorship, “the double vocation” of women and the effects of colonialism.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 caused Annie Verschoor and her fellow students to study Marxism and get involved in socialist organizations. For Romain-Verschoor and her future husband, Marxism meant the task of “recognizing the big picture”. Annie Verschoor-Romain was an admirer of Rosa Luxemburg . In 1919 she wrote about them: “A fighting woman must sacrifice much of what could be best about her; gentle friendliness, peace and harmony, but in a world full of blatant contradictions it is not about being lovable. ”She later translated Luxemburg's letters from prison into Dutch.

Marriage and political engagement

In 1920 Verschoor married her fellow student Jan Romein and graduated in Dutch. In the same year she joined the Communist Partij van Nederland (CPN), from which she was excluded in 1927 after internal party disputes with her husband. In the 1930s she was a member again for a short time. The couple, who shared a passion for social and political engagement, moved to Amsterdam , where Romein became editor of the communist magazine De Tribune and later professor at Amsterdam University. Annie Romein-Verschoor took care of the three children born in quick succession and worked as a journalist at the same time, while she kept her husband free for his scientific work. Between 1926 and 1932 she wrote around 200 reviews on Scandinavian and Dutch literature for the Algemeen Handelsblad .

In the 1930s, the Romein couple published the books De lage landen bij de zee (1934), an illustrated history of the Netherlands, and Erflaters van onze beschaving. Nederlandse design uit zes eeuwen (four parts, 1938–1940), a collection of biographical essays on personalities from Dutch history. Both works brought them national recognition. 1935 doctorate Annie Romein-Verschoor about De Nederlandsche romanschrijfster na 1880. A literary sociological study , for which their own reviews of books by and about women served as a basis. Her doctoral supervisor was Albert Verwey . Her dissertation was published in 1936 under the title Vrouwenspiegel . For this book she received the Dr. Wijnaendts Francken-prijs der Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde . Politically, Annie Romein-Verschoor moved away from communism during the years of the Moscow Trials (1936–1938) and became involved in organizations and magazines in which intellectuals and artists of different political views worked together. She became secretary of the anti-fascist Bond van Kunstenaars ter verdediging van Kulturele Rechten, founded in 1935 .

War and post-war years

After the Romein couple learned of the bombing of Rotterdam by the German Wehrmacht on May 14, 1940 , they set off with their three children on their bikes to IJmuiden to catch a ship that was to take them to England. "The couple feared that the Dutch National Socialists, under the protection of the German occupiers, would take immediate action against 'the Reds', to which they both [...] undoubtedly belonged." They boarded a trawler , which did not go out because the seamen tried to extort as much money as possible from the people from the situation and the time of departure was unclear. They left the ship and placed the children with their grandparents in The Hague . Briefly she thought of suicide to commit. However, they returned to their apartment in Amsterdam and set out - like many other Dutch people - to destroy diaries and other documents and to take books out of the house.

In the following war years , Romein-Verschoor was involved in the illegal magazine De Vrije Kunstenaar . Jan Romein was held by the German occupiers in the Amersfoort transit camp from January to April 1942 . After his release, the Romein couple went into hiding and lived in a house near Blaricum until the end of the war . There they also hid several Jewish friends, including the son of the writer Abel Herzberg , for which they were posthumously honored in 2011 as Righteous Among the Nations .

In 1946 Annie Romein-Verschoor and her husband received the diary of his daughter Anne , who had been murdered in the Holocaust in 1945, from the hands of a German Jew named Otto Frank . Frank was looking for support to publish the diary as a printed book. Despite the efforts of Annie Romein-Verschoor, this did not succeed at first, whereupon Jan Romein wrote an article about the diary for the newspaper Het Parool . Interested publishers then got in touch, and the following year the book Het Achterhuis appeared for the first time, with a foreword by Annie Romein-Verschoor.

Play media file

Handover of the Literature Prize of the Municipality of Amsterdam in 1948

Also in 1946 Romein-Verschoor was the editor of the communist magazine De Vrije Katheder , which had already been founded while illegally. The cooperation ended when the CPN demanded in 1950 that the magazine should orient itself pro- Soviet , which it refused. In an article in De Waarheid , the party organ of the CPN, she was then referred to as the "stooge of the American warmongers". As a representative of a “third way”, Annie Romein-Verschoor criticized both Soviet and Western politics. She condemned the Soviet intervention in the Hungarian uprising as well as the dealings with Boris Pasternak and distanced herself from the Soviet development, which she called "a continuous transformation of reality into a doctrine".

In the following years Annie Verschoor-Romein worked as a journalist, essayist and writer on various topics from the fields of politics, history and literature. “Through her non-conformist life and her texts, which were characterized by sharp value judgments, she represented a new type of woman in the Netherlands in the post-war period: independent, politically and socially engaged, not limited to the role of housewife.” In 1948 she was awarded the prose prize of City of Amsterdam awarded for their novel Vaderland in de verte . In 1951/52 she traveled with her husband to independent Indonesia , where she had spent part of her childhood. Jan Romein gave lectures there, while his wife had to spend a long time in the hospital because of a hip problem. After the trip she published the book Met eigen ogen. Heugenissen van een Indonesian rice (1953).

Last years

Jan Romein died in 1962, and his wife prepared the publication of the work Op het breukvlak van twee eeuwen (1967), which had resulted from years of joint work. She continued to deal with historical topics and literary sociology . She also turned to feminism issues and wrote articles for the feminist magazine Opzij . In the 1970s, the women's movement recognized her as an important forerunner and re-appreciated her works. Her work Vrouwenwijsheid (1980) appeared posthumously , in which she wrote sharply that Anja Meulenbelt's book Die Scham ist über (1976), which was celebrated by feminists, was a case of “ paranoia ”.

From September 1969 Annie Romein-Verschoor lived in the Rosa Spier Huis retirement home in Laren , a residence for older artists. Anger about the way society treats the elderly inspired her to Ja vader, nee vader (1974). A bestseller was her two-part autobiography Omzien in verwondering (1970–1971), with which she emerged stronger from the shadow of her husband and for which she received the Constantijn Huygensprijs . In 1977 she was awarded the Dr. JP van Praag-prijs of the Dutch Humanist Association honored again.

In one of her last publications, Annie Romein-Verschoor wrote that the Russian Revolution had developed into an "endless path of violence against violence": "That is a late, hard-won insight." On February 2, 1978, the day on She suffered a cerebral haemorrhage during a program dedicated to her on television . She died three days later in the Burgerziekenhuis in Amsterdam.

Commemoration

Memorial plaque on Romein-Verschoor's birthplace in Nijmegen

From 1979 to 2005, the Annie Romein Prize was awarded in the Netherlands to women authors whose work is particularly dedicated to the equality of women.

Annie Romeinsingel was named after her in Leiden . There are streets that bear her name in several Dutch cities and towns.

literature

• Barbara Beuys : Living with the Enemy. Amsterdam under German occupation . Hanser, 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23996-8 .

Web links

Commons : Annie Romein-Verschoor  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Annie Romein-Verschoor on Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (dbnl). Retrieved February 10, 2020

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Angenies Brandenburg: Verschoor, Anna Helena Margaretha (1895–1978). In: resources.huygens.knaw.nl. August 1, 2013, accessed February 10, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Jos Perry: Verschoor, Anna Helena Margaretha. In: socialhistory.org. 1998, accessed February 10, 2020 (Dutch). 
3. ^ ^{A b c d e} Christoph Strupp: Romein-Verschoot, Annie. In: uni-muenster.de. 2007, accessed February 10, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Beuys, Leben mit dem Feind, pp. 88f.
5. ↑ Beuys, Leben mit dem Feind, p. 91.
6. ↑ Beuys, Leben mit dem Feind, p. 117.
7. ^ Christoph Strupp: Jan Romein. In: uni-muenster.de. 2007, accessed February 10, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashemby January 1, 2019 - The Netherlands (pdf). Retrieved February 10, 2020.
9. ^ Romein Marius & Anna (Verschoor). In: righteous.yadvashem.org. Retrieved February 13, 2020 . 
10. ^ The publication of the diary. In: annefrank.org. October 15, 2018, accessed February 10, 2020 . 
11. ^ Holocaust memory in the museum. P. 242 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
12. ^ J. Kruizinga Gerrit Vermeer: Romein-Verschoor, Dr Annie. In: ensie.nl. June 22, 2018, accessed February 10, 2020 . 
13. ^ Annie Romein-Verschoorprijs. In: emancipatie.nl. Retrieved February 10, 2020 .