Monument to Jacob Israël de Haan
Jodenbreestraat
Outside Rembrandt's house on Jodenbreestraat stands a memorial to the Dutch writer Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924), known as the 'Poet of the Jewish Song'. He was born in Smilde (a village in the north of the Netherlands) in 1881, son of a Jewish cantor.
De Haan settled in the 'Pipe', a working-class neighbourhood of
Amsterdam, earning his living as a teacher and writing for the
socialist newspaper Het Volk (The People). The publication
of his novel Pijpelijntjes in 1904 caused a huge scandal.
In it he openly declared his homosexuality.
Later he was to return to the Orthodox Judaism of his youth. He
joined Mizrachi, the religious stream within the Dutch Zionist
Union and in 1919 set off for the Promised Land. There he settled
in Jerusalem, teaching at law school and writing copy for Dutch
newspapers such the Algemeen Handelsblad (General Trade
Journal) and De Groene Amsterdammer (Green Amsterdam).
Here too he wrote his famous Kwatrijnen (1919-1924)
(Quatrians), in which he describes his journey to Jerusalem and his
experiences there.
One of the poems is very well-known, in which he describes his
homesickness - for Amsterdam when he is in Jerusalem, and
conversely for Jerusalem when he is in Amsterdam.
De Haan's homosexual longings continued to trouble him, and at
the same time he grew increasingly sympathetic towards the
ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as to the position of the
Arabs.
In 1924, when De Haan was just about to return to the Netherlands,
he was assassinated, probably by pro-Zionists. De Haan was at this
time active in the ultra-Orthodox party. The murder of Jacob Israël
de Haan was the first political assassination to take place in
Palestine.
