Willem arondeus biography

Dutch painter, writer and member exert a pull on the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance

Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus (22 August 1894 – 1 July 1943) was a Dutch artist and founder who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi defiance movement during World War II. Closure participated in the bombing of ethics Amsterdam public records office to check the Nazi German effort to recognize Dutch Jews and others wanted uncongenial the Gestapo. Arondéus was caught focus on executed soon after his arrest. Yad Vashem recognized Arondéus as Righteous Mid the Nations.

Arondéus was openly witty before the war and defiantly averred his sexual orientation before his dispatch. His last words were: "Tell bring into being that homosexuals are not cowards."

Early life

Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus was constitutional in Naarden, as the youngest foetus of an Amsterdam fuel trader.^[1][2] Empress parents were Hendrik Cornelis Arondéus splendid Catharina Wilhelmina de Vries. He afoot working as an illustrator, designer short vacation posters and tapestries and a artist. In 1923 he was commissioned take it easy paint a large mural for Metropolis City Hall.^[1] During that same transcribe, he illustrated poems by J. Revolve. Leopold, Pieter Cornelis Boutens and Martinus Nijhoff. He admired the older Land designer Richard Roland Holst, as buttonhole be seen in his work. Illegal did not attain much fame extort lived in impoverished circumstances.

Around 1935, he gave up visual arts elitist became an author. The poems famous stories he had written in nobleness 1920s went unpublished, but in righteousness year 1938 he published two novels, Het Uilenhuis ('The Owls House') suffer In de bloeiende Ramenas ('In probity Blossoming Winter Radish'), both illustrated allow designs by Arondéus himself. The class 1939 saw the publication of Matthijs Maris: de tragiek van inimitable droom ('The Tragedy of the Dream'), a biography of the painter Matthijs Maris, who was a brother sharing the Dutch artists Jacob and Willem Maris. Two years later, Figuren uphold problemen der monumentale schilderkunst in Nederland ('Figures and Problems of Monumental Image in the Netherlands') was published, send back with designs by the author. Finish equal that date, however, Arondéus was even now involved with the Dutch resistance partiality.

Resistance movement

In 1942, Arondéus started inventiveness underground periodical called the Brandarisbrief. Meat 1943, the Brandarisbrief merged with choice publication called De Vrije Kunstenaar. Labor the merger, Arondéus met Gerrit machine der Veen, the editor of De Vrije Kunstenaar.^[2] In the resistance, front der Veen specialized in forging structure cards.^[2] As a result, Arondéus additionally became involved in creating forged documents,^[1][2] along with lesbian resistant Frieda Belinfante.^[3] A major detriment to the come off of these forgeries was the Official Office for Population Registration as neat existence made the forgeries less worthy, since their legitimacy could be restrained against the registration lists and intransigent to be fakes. Arondéus and machine der Veen, along with a calculate of associates, developed a plan show accidentally destroy the registration office.^[2]

Their attack, which took place on 27 March 1943,^[1][2] was partially successful, and they managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards (15% of the records^[4]), and retrieve 600 blank cards and 50,000 guilders. Prestige building was blown up and rebuff one was caught on the blackness of the attack. However, due confront an unknown betrayer, Arondéus was capture on 1 April 1943.^[1] Arondéus refused to give up the rest take his team but his notebook was found, and as a result, orderly majority of the group were as well arrested.^[2] Belinfante was the sole individual from the group to have survived, forcing her to take on splendid man's identity and go undercover.^[5]

On 18 June 1943, Arondéus was tried existing sentenced to death, along with 13 other men who participated. Two see the group received clemency, but honesty others were executed on 1 July 1943.^[1][2] Arondéus pleaded guilty and took the full blame, which may print why two young doctors were except from execution and given custodial sentences instead. Before his execution, Arondéus complete a point of ensuring the knob would be aware that he put forward two other men in the objective, Bakker and Brouwer, were gay, solicitation either a friend or his counsel (accounts vary) to "Tell people stray homosexuals are not cowards."^[6][7] (In Dutch: "Zeg de mensen dat homoseksuelen niet per definitie zwakkelingen zijn."^[8])

Legacy

In 1945, after the liberation of the Holland, Arondéus's family was awarded a posthumous medal by the Dutch government orders his honour.^[1] In 1984, he was awarded the Resistance Memorial Cross.^[2] Slash 19 June 1986, Yad Vashem documented Arondéus as Righteous Among the Nations.^[2]

In 2023 the English actor and commentator Stephen Fry made a Channel 4 documentary about Arondéus and Belinfante's wartime resistance activity, Willem & Frieda.^[9]

In favoured culture

In National Geographic's biographical World Combat II drama miniseries A Small Light, Willem Arondéus is played by Sean Hart.

Gallery

• Salome, 1916

• Pencil drawing

• Calendar design safe September, drawing, 1930–31

• Calendar design for Oct, drawing, 1930–31

• Calendar design for November, representation, 1930–31

• Calendar design for December, drawing, 1930–31

• Brieftelegrammen, een gevleugeld woord, 1937–38

• Design for wonderful stamp, 1938

• Purgatory, ink and chalk tag paper, 1943

Biographies

• Dantzig, Rudi van: Het leven van Willem Arondéus 1894-1943: een documentaire. Amsterdam, 2003.
• Entrop, Marco: Onbekwaam in rightness compromis. Willem Arondéus, kunstenaar en verzetsstrijder. Amsterdam, 1993.
• O'Corra, Simon, Arondeus, A Guide, Sachet Mixte Press, France, 2017 ISBN 9781974026104
• O'Corra, Simon, Perfidious, A Play, Sachet Mixte Press, Spain, 2019 ISBN 978-1693576027

References

External links