In January 1945, two brothers walk through the snow-covered meadows of Amsterdam back to their family home in Papendrecht: having escaped the Arbeitseinsatz. Ar has just received his HBS diploma; Martin is 22. After the liberation, their adult lives begin and they each choose a different path.
Brothers in Post-War Netherlands is Carolijn’s own family history, centring on her father Ar and his brother Martin, with their younger brother Carel as the key supporting character.
Ar studies Indonesian law in Leiden, and later history as well; an idealist who believes in education, he becomes a teacher in Zeeland; Martin develops into a renowned furniture designer and, together with his wife Mia, assembles an extensive collection of modern art, ranging from Cobra to Kiefer. Carel becomes a sculptor of international renown. The influence of their father, Carolijn’s grandfather, is profound: a deeply religious builder with an interest in architecture and art, and himself a passionate naïve painter.
Carolijn not only writes about her family, she also sketches with striking detail how the conservative Netherlands was shaken up by artists after the war and set in motion by progressive movements, Provo and feminism. Brothers: a brief post-war social and cultural history of the Netherlands.
Carolijn Visser (1956) is a well-known Zeeland author and grande dame of literary travelogues about post-communist societies such as China, Tibet and Vietnam, and of family histories that have reached a wide audience. She is incisive, has an eye for human behaviour, a knowledge of history and social relations, and writes compellingly and seemingly with great ease. In 2017, Selma, Escaped from Hitler, Prisoner of Mao was awarded the Zeeland Book Prize and the Libris Literature Prize. In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from the Open University of Heerlen and in 2020 she wrote the Zeeland Book Week gift.
The Hurgronje Family Fund has made a financial contribution for the creation of this book.
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