Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight was an artist, author and a member of the Dutch Resistance in World War II. Today's Out Spotlight is Willem Arondeus.

Born in Naarden,Netherlands August 22, 1894, Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus was one of six children, to parents who were theater costume designers in Amsterdam. Growing up in Amsterdam, at age 13 he attended the former Quellinus School, the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where he devoted himself to decorative painting. At 17, he came out to his family about his homosexuality, which resulted in leaving home and severing contact with them.

“Arondéus was a special and obstinate man from Noord-Holland who, already in 1914 at the age of twenty, contrary to spirit of the age openly talked about his homosexuality. In those days, even in the circles he frequented, for many this was a bit too much".

Traveling and after a short stay in Paris he settles down and starts living in 1920 in Urk and later on in Breukelerveen. Falling in love as well, first a fisherman from Urk, name Jurie, and then later for the young gardener from the Veluwse, named Gerrit Jan. These relationships are cause for his sometimes bitter self-dissections. "Do I have love, true love for someone [...] or is it all seemingly, but temporary emotion?" he asks himself.

During this time, he is working as a visual artist, illustrating poems, and received commissions for posters and calenders. He also designed Christmas stamps or charity stamps which are published by the Dutch postal services in 1923. That same year he receives a commission to make a mural for the town hall of Rotterdam, his breakthrough as a visual artist. For the poem 'The Dying' from one of his supporter and inspiration Adriaan Roland Holst he makes an engraving.

From 1930 to 1932 he makes hall nine tapestries with ornaments around the arms of Noord-Holland towns for the County Seat. The next year he receives a commission for a wall painting for the consultation Bureau of the City Health Department in Amsterdam. On three walls he portrayed the hunt, the fishery, the shipping and the agriculture.

In 1932, he moved to the country side near Apeldoorn and met Jan Tijssen, a son of a greengrocer. They lived together for the next 7 years. Life as a artist wasn't easy. His specific style of painting which is already considered behind for the times and his artistic work hardly pays for a living. Struggling, he refused to go on welfare. They experience poverty on a regular basis.

Around 1935 turns away from the visual arts and he devotes himself to writing. His debut in 1938 is the novel The Owl House for which he receives an honorary award from publisher Kosmos. His next novel In the Flowering Winter Radish is also received well, though critical sounds are heard about his style of writing. In 1939 his first art historian book is published, a biography of Dutch painter Matthijs Maris. In general this is considered his best work. With that book his financial situation improved

And two years later, Figures and Problems of Monumental Painting in the Netherlands, was published, again with designs by the author. By that date, however, Arondeus was already involved with the Dutch resistance movement against the Nazis.

In 1941, knowing how dangerous it was with his increasing activities for the resistanc he sent his Tijssen back to their home in Apeldoorn.

Together with Willem Sandberg and Gerrit van der Veen he falsified identity cards for the Jews and also wrote the Brandaris Letters.

In the Brandaris Letters, he observed cases of cultural collaboration and called for resistance when the Nazis would threaten the arts like they did with the foundation of the Chamber of Culture. In 1942 his Brandaris Letter was combined with the artist resistance magazine The Free Artist founded by musician Jan van Gilse. He tried to incite his fellow artists to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Earlier than others, he realized that the demand by the Nazi occupiers that all Jews registered with the local authorities were not, as the Nazis claimed, for their own safety, but rather so they could be deported to the Westerbork concentration camp and from there to the death camps in Poland.

There concerted operations in Holland to hide Jews among the local population, with various underground organizations preparing forged documents for Jews. Arondeus was a member of one such group, Raad van Verzet (Resistance Council). Within a short while, the Nazis began to uncover the false documents by comparing the names with those in the local population registry. To hinder the Nazis, on March 27, 1943, he led a group in attacking the Amsterdam registry building and setting it one fire in an attempt to destroy records against which false identity papers could be checked. Thousands of files were destroyed, and the attempt to compare forged documents with the registry were hindered.

Within a week, Arondeus and the other members of the group were arrested.

From his death cell in the prison at the Kleine Gartmanplantsoen in Amsterdam he wrotes his last letter to a friend: “There's only wonder because it's so easy to depart in love from life, so happy to commemorate, what you leave behind, without bitterness”.

The group of 12 were executed July 1, 1943. In his last message before his execution, Arondeus, who had lived openly as a gay man before the war, asked, “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” He wanted to prove gays and lesbians could be as brave as anybody else.

In 1945, after the liberation of the Netherlands, Arondeus was awarded a posthumous medal by the Dutch government.

Posthumously, in 2001, 20 of his homo-erotic poems were published, 'Aloof strophes', inspired by the work of Boutens. They were written in during his time in Urk.

In December 2004 the County Government of Noord-Holland organized an annual lecture as a living memory to the Noord-Holland artist and resistance fighter Willem Johan Cornelis Arondéus. With the lecture and the debate civilians and politicians offera stage to freely, if needed, even controversial, exchange of ideas about current and to the County relevant social theme's.