Dutch writer, translator, journalist and resistance man.
After an unfinished grammar school at the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, the young Nico Rost ran away from home to become a writer.
His first publication was “Groote dichters van den laatsten tijd” (1921). For this anthology of the romantic poetry of the Tachtigers (Kloos, Hélène Swarth, Henriette Roland Holst, Boutens, tec). At that time he lived in poor circumstances, had a year before married the pregnant Maud Kok, was father of Molletje, and two years later of their son Tijl, who was hospitalised for months. His work was poorly received, but after his military service Rost could make a living from writing.
In the years 1923-1933 he lived in Berlin where he worked as a translator (f.i. of Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz) and as a correspondent of the newspaper De Telegraaf and the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer. Rost visited Moscow, Prague and Berlin during these years. For the literary magazine Groot Nederland, he wrote literary criticisms.
Rost also visited the Soviet Union and became a member of the KPD, the German communist party. When Hitler came to power, Rost was detained in the concentration camp Oranienburg in February 1933, north of Berlin. He was released after three weeks. He reported on his experiences in his ‘Letter from a concentration camp’ and settled in Brussels. From there, he travelled to Spain, where in the Spanish Civil War he opted for the government of the Republic and against Franco. After the victory of Franco, Rost returned to Brussels. Rost also translated many German novels in the 1930s, including Erich Maria Remarque, Hans Fallada, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Toller and Arnold Zweig.
In Brussels Nico Rost married the Jewish widow Edith Blumberg (8 July 1892, Berlin). Her former husband Max Lissauer (11 Nov 1893, Berlin – 12 July 1940, Buchenwald) had been killed bij the Nazi’s.
Rost was active in the resistance, but mainly with his writings (risking capital punishment as well under the Nazi’s). In Brussels, he delivered anthologies from the work of RC Bakhuizen van den Brink, EJ Potgieter, Jacob Geel and PC Hooft under the pseudonym Abel Eppens; under a different pseudonym, N. de Praetere, he published translated aphorisms by the eighteenth-century German philosopher and physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, under the title Het kleine fundamententen-boek. A Lichtenberg breviary (1942). Rost, who relied on the power of the written word, attributed great value to this resistance act. The German authorities did not like the evasion of their censorship.
Nico Rost was arrested in 1942 by the German occupying forces. After the prison of Scheveningen (Oranjehotel) ) and camp Vught he eventually ended up in Dachau . Rost had an abscess on his leg and was admitted to hospital (Revier) where he could read books to his heart’s content. He chose mainly German classics; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , the brothers Friedrich von Schlegel and August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Friedrich Hölderlin and Arthur Schopenhauer. With equal enthusiasm he devoured works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Silvio Pellico, Franz Grillparzer, August Strindberg and Jean Racine. In the Revier he also had time to have conversations with fellow prisoners like Herman Bernard Wiardi Beckman, Gijs van Münster, Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia and Prince Xavier of Bourbon-Parma.
Nico Rost had several ‘jobs’ in Dachau. He was, among other things, Nachtpfleger at the malaria department, porter and later Revierläufer (shopping in the camp, gathering and signing the sick and death lists, and arranging the delivery of blood donors). The most important advantage of this appointment was the fact that he was vaccinated against typhoid fever, an annual illness in the camp that claimed many victims. Through his work as Revierläufer, Rost had the opportunity to speak with friends who, like him, were trapped in Dachau and spread across the many blocks, to speak and help them to prevent and overcome disease. In the Revier, Rost wrote as much as possible about his experiences and thoughts in connection with the works he read. Although this was, of course, forbidden, several people gave him as many pieces of paper as possible. These “papers” eventually formed the basis of his book “Goethe in Dachau”. On April 29, 1945, Rost was liberated from Dachau by the Americans.
“Die alte Erde steht neither, und der Himmel wölbt sich nor über mir” (“The old earth is still standing and the sky is still above me”) was the Goethe quote that helped Rost in Dachau to see the relativity of his imprisonment and of national socialism. He further elaborated this idea in his diary “Goethe in Dachau”, published in 1946. Based on the continuity of German culture, he fought anti-German sentiments by emphasising the greatness of German literature. The book sold well and was translated into German and Czech.
Rost and his wife settled in Belgium after the liberation. He was back in literary circles and had contact with Louis Paul Boon and Herman Teirlinck. Nico Rost found a friendly welcome in both new German states in the first years after the war. Rost was appreciated in the Federal Republic but as a communist, the GDR , Hungary and Czechoslovakia especially attracted him. The authorities in East Berlin even offered Rost a job. After initial rapprochement with Otto Grotewohl, the communist prime minister whose biography Rost would write, it came to a rupture between the GDR of Walter Ulbricht and Rost.
In the Dutch CPN, Rost was one of the many who were expelled from the Communist party by Paul de Groot, the authoritarian Stalinist party leader. The authorities in Berlin discovered that Rost was no longer a member of the CPN and Rost could not accept that East Germany turned away from valuable German traditions. The GDR deported him out of the country and Nico Rost returned to the Netherlands in the Socialistische Werkers Partij, a left-wing splinter grouping. In the mid-fifties, Rost established his hopes on Poland where Gomoelkaa promising socialist experiment according to Rost. The advantage for Rost was that, now that the GDR no longer allowed him, he was particularly welcome in the Federal Republic.
In my father’s friends (1956), Rost left a sensitive portrait of the Jews who lived in and around Folkingestraat in Groningen. The book is a monument to this almost completely extinguished group of people and tells about their daily life, their poverty, piety and study. In the years after the war Nico Rost committed himself to the restoration of relations between the Netherlands and Germany, the detection of war criminals and the fight against (neo) fascism and also for the recognition of the suffering that European gypsies (Roma and Sinti ) in the war.
Nico Rost lived from his pen; therefore he also wrote numerous humorous or informative pieces and pieces for prospectuses and company magazines of companies and organizations such as the Associations for Aliens Traffic (VVV). He also held many paid lectures. Nico Rost was a member of both the (Dutch) National and International Dachau Committee and was one of the founders of the memorial site that is now the concentration camp.
After 1955 Rost has published little more. In 1958 he received the Marianne Philips Prize and five hundred guilders for his entire oeuvre. The Cultural Prize of the Province of Groningen (1966) awarded to him could no longer receive Rost, who was not overloaded with prizes during his lifetime. That a tree was planted in Israel in June 1966 can also be seen as an acknowledgement of Rost’s life and work.
He died on 1 February 1967 in Amsterdam.
Link to German Wikipedia