Articles with BPN identifiers

Gerrit Achterberg (20 May 1905 – 17 January 1962) was a Dutch poet. His early poetry concerned a desire to be united with a beloved in death.
Achterberg was born in Nederlangbroek in the Netherlands as the third son of a family of eight children. He was raised as a Protestant within the Calvinist tradition. His father was a coachman until the automobile gained popularity. Achterberg was a very good student, and in 1924 he embarked on a career as a teacher. In the same year, he made his literary debut together with Arie Dekkers, who had encouraged him to write, together publishing De Zangen van Twee Twintigers (English: The Songs of Two Twenty-Somethings).
Meanwhile, Achterberg became more withdrawn and introverted. After he was turned down by the military due to "sickness of the soul", he threatened to kill himself.
Achterberg's literary career began to take off when Roel Houwink presented himself as his mentor. Achterberg published his collection "Afvaart" in 1931, in which his famous theme, of a love irrevocably lost, was already strongly present. After the publication of "Afvaart", Achterberg suffered a mental breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric institution several times. His mental instability caused occasional violent outbursts.
These eruptions of violence escalated in 1937. At that time, Achterberg was living in Utrecht and was again engaged to be married. On 15 December 1937 he tried to force himself on Bep van Es, the 16-year-old daughter of his landlady. When the latter tried to stop him, he shot and killed her, and wounded her daughter. After the shooting, he turned himself in and was sentenced to involuntary commitment. He was committed until 1943. During this commitment and the period following (between 1939 and 1953), he published 22 collections of poetry.
In 1946 he married his childhood friend Cathrien van Baak, with whom he lived in Leusden until he died from a heart attack in 1962.In 1959, Achterberg received the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire body of work.
Achterberg's most famous work is the Ballad Reiziger doet Golgotha (A Tourist Does Golgotha) and the sonnet sequence Ballade van de gasfitter (1953;Ballad of the gasfitter). J.M. Coetzee included this sonnet sequence in an anthology of his English translations of Dutch poetry entitled Landscape with Rowers (2004). Earlier in his career, Coetzee also wrote an essay on this sonnet sequence, titled: 'Achterberg's "Ballade van de gasfitter": The Mystery of I and You' (1977),

Robert Hans van Gulik (Chinese: 髙羅佩; pinyin: Gāo Luópèi, 9 August 1910 – 24 September 1967) was a Dutch orientalist, diplomat, musician (of the guqin), and writer, best known for the Judge Dee historical mysteries, the protagonist of which he borrowed from the 18th-century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An.

Piet Oege Bakker (10 August 1897 – 1 April 1960) was a Dutch journalist and writer. He was joint editor for many years of the weekly magazine Elseviers Weekblad.
His most famous work was the trilogy written between 1941 and 1946 dealing with the experiences of the street urchin Ciske Vrijmoeth, alias Ciske the Rat. These novels sold in their hundreds of thousands, and later appeared in translation in more than ten other countries. The story has been filmed twice, in 1955 and 1984, and a musical version ran from October 2007 to November 2009.

Jacob Moleschott (9 August 1822 – 20 May 1893) was a Dutch physiologist and writer on dietetics. He is known for his philosophical views in regard to scientific materialism. He was a member of German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (since 1884).

Emmanuel Hiel (30 May 1834 – 27 August 1899), was a Flemish-Dutch poet and prose writer.
Hiel was born at Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde. During his life he held various jobs, from teacher and government official to journalist and bookseller, busily writing all the time both for the theatre and the magazines of North and South Netherlands. His last posts were those of librarian at the Industrial Museum and professor of declamation at the Conservatoire in Brussels.Hiel took an active and prominent part in the so-called Flemish movement in Belgium, and his name is constantly associated with those of Jan van Beers, Jan Frans Willems, and Peter Benoit. Benoit set some of Hiel's verses to music, notably in his oratorios Lucifer (performed in London at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere) and De Schelde ("The Scheldt"). The Dutch composer Richard Hol (of Utrecht) composed music for Hiel's Ode to Liberty, and van Gheluwe used Hiel's verses in his Songs for Big and Small Folk (second edition, much enlarged, 1879). That music greatly contributed the popularity of Hiel's writing in schools and among Belgian choral societies.Hiel also translated several foreign lyrics. His rendering of Tennyson's Dora was published in Antwerp around 1871. For the national festival of 1880 at Brussels, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence, Hiel composed two cantatas, Belgenland ("The Land of the Belgians") and Rer Belgenland ("Honour to Belgium"), which, set to music, were much appreciated.Hiel's efforts to counteract Walloon influences and bring about a rapprochement between the Netherlanders in the north and the Teutonic racial sympathizers across the Rhine made him very popular with both. A volume of his best poems was in 1874 the first in a collection of Dutch authors published in Leipzig, Germany.He died in 1899 at Schaerbeek.

Jan Hendrik Wolkers (26 October 1925 – 19 October 2007) was a Dutch author, sculptor and painter. Wolkers is considered by some to be one of the "Great Four" writers of post-World War II Dutch literature, alongside Willem Frederik Hermans, Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve (the latter authors are also known as the "Great Three").Wolkers was born in Oegstgeest. He became noted as an author in the 1960s mainly for his graphic descriptions of sexual acts, which were often subject of controversy. His 1969 novel Turks Fruit was translated into ten different languages and published in English as Turkish Delight. It was also made into a highly successful movie, the Paul Verhoeven-directed Turks Fruit (1972) which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and in 1999 won the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century.Wolkers declined several literary awards. In 1982 he refused the Constantijn Huygensprijs, and in 1989 he refused the P.C. Hooftprijs.
From 1980 until his death, Wolkers resided on the Dutch island of Texel. He died on 19 October 2007, aged 81, at his Texel home and was cremated in Amsterdam at De Nieuwe Ooster cemetery.
A number of his outdoor sculptures in the Netherlands have been subject to vandalism, presumably due to his use of glass as a construction material. Some examples are the Auschwitz monument in Amsterdam and the monument on the dike at Ceres on Texel. In reaction to the destruction of the monument in 2003, Wolkers announced that he would use less glass and more steel for such monuments in future. The Jac. P. Thijsse monument on Texel does contain more steel, but glass is still a substantial part of the artwork.
Since 2019, the private and literary archive of Jan Wolkers has been available at Leiden University Library.

Jan Greshoff (15 December 1888, Nieuw-Helvoet – 19 March 1971, Cape Town) was a Dutch journalist, poet, and literary critic. He was the 1967 recipient of the Constantijn Huygens Prize.

Cornelius David Krieghoff (June 19, 1815 – March 5, 1872) was a Dutch-born Canadian-American painter of the 19th century. He is best known for his paintings of Canadian genre scenes involving landscapes and outdoor life, which were as sought after in his own time as they are today. He painted many winter scenes, some in several variants (e.g. Running the Toll).

Pieter Frans van Kerckhoven (10 November 1818 in Antwerp – 1 August 1857 in Antwerp) was a Flemish writer and one of the leaders of the early Flemish movement. He was the son of a broker, and his well-off birth allowed him a decent education. After he had first been instructed in a private school, he passed through the Antwerp athenaeum together with his contemporary and friend Domien Sleeckx. Van Kerckhoven was in that period a tireless reader and spent almost his entire pocket money to buy books of the French traditional authors. During his youth, Van Kerckhoven was, just like the rest of its family, very religious. After Van Kerckhoven in 1836, graduated from the Antwerp athenaeum, he studied medicine in Italy, at the University of Bologna. In Italy, Van Kerckhoven witnessed the restless and rebellious Risorgimento. The confrontation with the liberal and anticlerical Risorgimento movement would determine his later progressive-liberal conviction. Van Kerckhoven evolved from a pious catholic to an enthusiastic and persuaded liberal. In spite of the personal change which Van Kerckhoven underwent in Italy, he remained, however, religious.
Van Kerckhoven obtained the degree of baccalaurean in medicine and philosophy, but in June 1838 he suddenly returned to Antwerp, without finishing his studies. It is commonly believed that in Bologna it became too warm under the feet of Van Kerckhoven, after compromising contacts with the clandestine Carbonari movement. In Antwerp he would continue his medical studies at the Elisabeth hospital, but he would give them up quite rapidly. During that training he got acquainted, as it happens, with the students Jan De Laet and Hendrik Conscience, who almost immediately recognized his artistic talent and introduced him to the romantic artist group of the city. Already rapidly Van Kerckhoven would turn out to be himself one the central characters of the Antwerp cultural scene. Beside his office career (first in the business of his father and later at the city administration) he was now very active as an artist, literature critic and as head editor of several illustrated magazines, among which the Noordstar and the Vlaemsche Rederyker. Van Kerckhoven was also a member of literary societes of a private character, such as De Hermans, Het Heilig Verbond en De Olijftak. As a novelist he was not as popular as Hendrik Conscience, but nevertheless he was quite successful as an author and enjoyed as a lot of appreciation as a literature critic.
Reciprocal envy and Van Kerckhovens strive to make the Flemish movement more liberal, led as from 1846 to a split with Hendrik Conscience, who saw more in the alignment of the Flemish movement to the catholic politicians. The conflict escalated fast and it became, in 1847, a bitter feud which was fought out in the Antwerp magazines De Roskam en De Schrobber. In the leaflet De Vlaemsche Beweging (1847), aimed against Conscience and his allies, Van Kerckhoven displayed his brio as a polemist.
In these years it went well for Van Kerckhoven as he became a city clerk and published with Ziel en lichaem (1848) and the novel Liefde (1851) the pinnacle of his literary oeuvre. Moreover, he tirelessly contributes to the Vlaemsche Rederyker, a literature-critical illustrated magazine, of which he had been head editor since 1847. In 1852, Van Kerckhoven was even raised to knight in the Leopold order. however at the beginning of 1857 he became seriously ill. He appeared to suffer from tuberculosis and died some months later, aged 38.

Pierre Kemp (1 December 1886 – 21 July 1967) was a Dutch poet and painter, the recipient of the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 1956 and the P. C. Hooft Award in 1958. His younger brother was the writer Mathias Kemp.
Kemp was born in Maastricht and died there in 1967. In Limburg, the province where he was born, people made fun of his surname; in several dialects of Dutch and the regional Limburgian language, 'kemp' (as kennep and general Dutch hennep) is the colloquial term for marijuana.