On Sunday 13 October, the exhibition ‘A Dutch Lawrence of Arabia?’ will be on display for the last time at Synagoge Groningen. In the previous months, exactly 100 years after he was murdered, journalist and writer Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924) was the focus of this exhibition. In the recently published book ‘The multiple lives of Jacob Israël de Haan’, the makers of the exhibition give even more interpretation to the turbulent life of the man who was considered by some to be a Dutch Lawrence of Arabia.
De Haan is best known in the Netherlands as the author of Pijpelijntjes, the first openly homosexual novel in the Dutch language. His verse of poetry ‘Naar vriendschap zulk een mateloos verlangen’ has been included on the Gay-monument in Amsterdam. As a result, his work as a journalist in the turbulent period after World War I is less known in the Netherlands. De Haan worked in Mandate Palestine as a correspondent for the Algemeen Handelsblad and later for British media such as The Times and Daily Mail. However, his stay in Jerusalem and his broader views on politics, culture and religion, including Zionism and Arab-Palestinian nationalism, remain largely unknown. In 1919, De Haan left for Palestine, where he was assassinated exactly 100 years ago, in June 1924, for his sharp criticism of political Zionism. This book gives context to the Palestine years within the biography of a man with many faces.
The book is available at Synagoge Groningen (€21.50). As an e-book, it can be downloaded for free.
A book about the work of De Haan's contemporary, the author and photographer Frank Scholten (1881-1942), has also been published in the same series: Palestine illustrated revisited. 100 Years after Frank Scholten's visit to the ‘Holy Land’. This publication is also available for download as an e-book and as a hardcover at Synagoge Groningen (op=op).
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