The Life and History of Harry Mulisch
Harry Mulisch was a dutch writer who died on Saturday aged 83
He escaped the concentration camps with his Jewish mother because his father worked for a german bank dealing with confiscated jewish assets
He wrote novels that helped his countrymen confront the moral ambiguities of their role during the Nazi occupation of Netherlands
The novel tracked 35 years in the life of anton steenwikj as he tries to come to terms with the wartime murder of his family by ss after the body of a dutch nazi police chief, killed by the resistance, is found on their doorstep.
Novel explored the difficulty of attributing guilt to those who resisted and those who collaborated with the nazi
It was made into a film that won the 1987 oscar in the foreign language category
Although Harry Mulisch was a great writer, he was famously disliked in the Netherlands as a man.
He had a reputation for being difficult, arrogan, something of a womanizer and whi his like for Italian designer suits and flashy jewellery.
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was born in Haarlem on July 29 1927, the son of Karl Mulisch, an Austrian career officer in his thirties who had emigrated to the Netherlands, and an 18-year old German-Jewish girl born in Belgium – the daughter of the house in which Karl lodged. The marriage did not last. When Harry was nine his mother abandoned husband and son and left for the bright lights of Amsterdam. Afterwards his father brought him up with the help of a German maid.
Karl Mulisch left the army to work for a bank, but lost his job when the bank's Jewish owners fled the advance of the Nazis. Through contacts in the German High Command he found a job with Lipmann-Rosenthal, an "empty" bank whose original owners had also joined the exodus. After a few months Harry discovered that it was the bank where Jews deported to concentration camps were forced to lodge their assets: "It was a robber bank," Mulisch recalled, "and my father was one of the directors."
He detested his father
He escaped the concentration camps with his Jewish mother because his father worked for a german bank dealing with confiscated jewish assets
He wrote novels that helped his countrymen confront the moral ambiguities of their role during the Nazi occupation of Netherlands
The novel tracked 35 years in the life of anton steenwikj as he tries to come to terms with the wartime murder of his family by ss after the body of a dutch nazi police chief, killed by the resistance, is found on their doorstep.
Novel explored the difficulty of attributing guilt to those who resisted and those who collaborated with the nazi
It was made into a film that won the 1987 oscar in the foreign language category
Although Harry Mulisch was a great writer, he was famously disliked in the Netherlands as a man.
He had a reputation for being difficult, arrogan, something of a womanizer and whi his like for Italian designer suits and flashy jewellery.
Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch was born in Haarlem on July 29 1927, the son of Karl Mulisch, an Austrian career officer in his thirties who had emigrated to the Netherlands, and an 18-year old German-Jewish girl born in Belgium – the daughter of the house in which Karl lodged. The marriage did not last. When Harry was nine his mother abandoned husband and son and left for the bright lights of Amsterdam. Afterwards his father brought him up with the help of a German maid.
Karl Mulisch left the army to work for a bank, but lost his job when the bank's Jewish owners fled the advance of the Nazis. Through contacts in the German High Command he found a job with Lipmann-Rosenthal, an "empty" bank whose original owners had also joined the exodus. After a few months Harry discovered that it was the bank where Jews deported to concentration camps were forced to lodge their assets: "It was a robber bank," Mulisch recalled, "and my father was one of the directors."
He detested his father