Dutch religious anarchistic designer and painter, a vegetarian who died in Dachau.
He was the fourth and last child of the poor socialist Jacques Charles Lebeau (1837), machine driver and shopkeeper, and Grietje Scholte (5 March 1839, Amsterdam – 31 Dec 1912, Den Haag), who married 1 May 1867 in Amsterdam. His birth underground in an Amsterdam cellar was announced by his father in De Werkmansbode: “We (siblings) announce with regret, that a Brother was born under the name of GEORGE JOHN CHRISTIAAN, .. for the reason that we are now required to share every single part of our diet, dress and cover with him.
It is of irony, that the vegetarian Chris Labeau died near the end of WWII of malnutrition in the concentration camp of Dachau, after refusing the not hundred percent vegetarian “soup” provided by the Nazi’s, and thus giving it to others. He also refused smoking and drinking alcohol, coffee and tea.
As a young boy he sold with his father the weekly “Recht voor Allen” of the anarchistic pastor and revolutionary Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. But he also became influenced by theosophy and Eastern philosophy. In his religious paintings of Apostles for churches, he integrated portraits of the by him admired Gandhi, Lenin and the American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, without the church goers noticing it.
Personal
On 7 May 1902 he married in Haarlem the widow Anna Maria Leverington (11 February 1871, Driebergen – 1954), who had a daughter Marie Ine Baars (1898-1957). He got a daughter Autarchina LeBeau (23 June 1907) with her. They divorced 27 February 1919 in Den Haag, after Lebeau left his wife on June 22, 1915, to start a free marriage with the designer Nella Heijting Augusta (1877–1942), widow of Abraham van der Vies. She already had a daughter and a son from that marriage. This free marriage ended in March 1925.
On 7 May 1932 he started a free marriage with Maria Sofia Herman. On 12 November 1935 he married in London with Ilse Ruth Voigt. This marriage was dissolved by divorce on 14 January 1937.
His last marriage was with a Jewish refugee. Chris used his artistic and traditional knowledge for the large-scale falsification of identity cards and other documents for the resistance in the so-called Kunstenaarsverzet.
On 3 November 1943, Lebeau and his wife were arrested for helping Dutch Jews. Lebeau took all the responsibility, so that his wife was released. He could get back his personal freedom, when he promised to refrain from illegal work, but he refused. Via Camp Vught, where he was held on February 24, 1944, he was deported on 25 May 1944 to Dachau. In captivity he remained a vegetarian, and gave his food away and refused soup if he thought there was meat in it. He died of exhaustion, malnourishment and typhoid on 2 April 1945.
Link to German Wikipedia