Spirit Of Resistance Jeroen Dewulf by Jeroen Dewulf 9781571134936, 157113493X instant download after payment.

T HE GERMAN INVASION OF THE NETHERLANDS on 10 May 1940 was not only a tragedy for the Dutch people; it was also a tragedy for Dutch literature. In just a few weeks the intellectual leaders of an entire generation  would  disappear.  In  the  chaos  of  the  battle  of  Rotterdam,  Doeke Zijlstra, editor-in-chief of the publishing house Nijgh & Van Ditmar, was killed  by  a  stray  bullet.  Publisher  Robert  Leopold,  who  feared  German revenge  for  his  publication  of  Hermann  Rauschning’s  critical  work Gespräche mit Hitler (Conversations with Hitler, 1939), shot himself. The promising  Jewish  writer  Jacob  Hiegentlich  took  poison  and  died.  The young poet Tom de Bruin was accidentally shot by a nervous Dutch sentry who  mistook  him  for  a  German  parachutist.  Jo  Otten,  author  of  neo-Romantic prose, died from a stray bomb during the assault on The Hague. 

Hendrik Marsman, the most celebrated Dutch poet of his time, tried to escape but the ship that would have taken him to England exploded and he  drowned.  By  then  two  of  the  most  prominent  essayists,  Edgar  du Perron and Mennoter Braak, had already died; du Perron collapsed from a heart attack during the bombardment of an airport near his home, and Mennoter Braak committed suicide upon the news of the Dutch surrender to the Germans. What might seem to be the final act of a Greek tragedy was only the beginning. During the occupation at least 770 men and women in the underground publishing movement would lose their lives.