George Kettmann Explained

George Wilhelm Kettmann or George Kettmann Jr. (12 December 1898 in Amsterdam – 10 February 1970 in Roosendaal) was a Dutch poet, writer, journalist, and publisher who promoted Nazism in the Netherlands. With his wife, he founded the best known Dutch Nazi publishing house, De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer. Until 1941 he was editor in chief of Volk en Vaderland (People and Fatherland), the weekly journal of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), the movement of Anton Mussert.

Life and career

Kettmann was the eldest son of a businessman and worked for his father until the company was ruined by the financial crisis of 1930, after which he worked as a journalist.[1] He joined the NSB on 2 August 1932. On 12 October he married Margot Warnsinck;[2] they had started the publishing house, De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer,[3] only shortly before he joined the party, on 14 or 21 July,[4] with the aim of promoting a new völkisch ideology,[5] which soon became specifically National Socialist. In 1939 the company published the Dutch translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.[6]

In the years before World War II, in addition to running the company, he edited Volk en Vaderland, the national weekly of the NSB[7] (until 1941) and wrote and published prose, poetry and essays, showing enormous energy. Over the years his relation with Anton Mussert deteriorated, as Kettmann accused Mussert of being unable to grasp the true, revolutionary nature of Nazism. This led ultimately to his joining the Nederlandsche SS on 7 March 1942. In September 1942 Mussert expelled him from the NSB; Kettmann was considered too radical a Nazi. He went to the Eastern Front as a war correspondent.[4]

After the war Kettmann fled to Belgium, where he was arrested in 1948.[8] Back in the Netherlands, he was accused of:

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. After his release in 1955 he refrained from any political activity. He published some volumes of poetry, in which he demonstrates not having lost his Nazi ideology.[8] [9]

Ideologically he evolved from an Italian-style fascism (1931–1933) to a Dutch Nazism (1933–1940), then to a German-oriented Nazism (1940–1942) and finally to the most radical SS ideology, desiring one great Germanic empire in Europe (1942–1945). After the German defeat he returned to his ideas of the 1933-1940 period.

Selected works

Sources

External links

  1. George Kettmann in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland

Notes and References

  1. J.J. Kelder, De Nieuwe orde en de Nederlandse letterkunde, 1940-1945 Catalogue of an exhibition at the National Library of the Netherlands, 13 September - 1 November 1985, The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1985,, p. 45
  2. Didericus Gijsbertus van Epen, Nederland's patriciaat 36 (1950) p. 360
  3. Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique 63-64 (1992) p. 382
  4. Maarten Cornelis van den Toorn, Wij melden u den nieuwen tijd: een beschouwing van het woordgebruik van de Nederlandse nationaal-socialisten, Aan het woord 6, The Hague: SDU, 1991,, p. 37 (21 July)
  5. Kelder, p. 43 (14 July).
  6. Adolf Hitler, Mijn kamp, tr. Steven Barends, Amsterdam: Amsterdamsche Keurkamer.
  7. Political Handbook of the World, 1938, Council on Foreign Relations, State University of New York at Binghamton. Center for Comparative Political Research, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938, p. 138.
  8. Jeroen Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance: Dutch Clandestine Literature During the Nazi Occupation, Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2010,, p. 63, note 18.
  9. Faschismus und europäische Literatur, ed. Stein Ugelvik Larsen and Beatrice Sandberg with Ronald Speirs, Berne: Lang, 1991,, p. 316

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