Anna Helena Margaretha (Annie) Romein-Verschoor (4 February 1885 – 5 February 1975) was a Dutch writer and historian. She received the

Constantijn Huygens Prize The Constantijn Huygens Prize (Dutch: ''Constantijn Huygens-prijs'') is a Dutch literary award. Romein-Verschoor studied Dutch and history at the University of Leiden, where she met and married (on 14 August 1920) the Dutch journalist and historian

Jan Romein Jan Marius Romein (30 October 1893 – 16 July 1962) was a Dutch historian, journalist, literary scholar and professor of history at the University of Amsterdam. A Marxist and a student of Huizinga, Romein is remembered for his popularizing ...

. With her husband, she would author two popularizing books on Dutch history that established their national fame: ''De lage landen bij de zee'' ("The

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

by the sea", 1934), a

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

national history that reached a wide audience, and ''Erflaters van onze beschaving'' (" Testators of our civilization, four volumes, 1938–1940), a collection of 36 biographies of famous Dutchmen (and one woman,

Betje Wolff Elizabeth ("Betje") Wolff-Bekker (24 July 17385 November 1804) was a Dutch novelist who, with Agatha "Aagje" Deken, wrote several popular epistolary novels such as ''Sara Burgerhart'' (1782) and ''Willem Levend'' (1784). Biography Betje Bekker w ...

) of bygone centuries, seventeen of them written by Romein-Verschoor. She joined the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...

in 1920 but had definitively left that organisation by 1937. Romein-Verschoor's 1935 Ph.D. thesis was printed and published in 1936 as ''Vrouwenspiegel''. A study of female authorship in the Dutch language since 1880, the work was reprinted in 1977 and well received by the resurgent feminist movement of the 1970s. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the Romeins were forced to go into hiding. In the following

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

era, they were politically isolated as non-affiliated communists. Romein-Verschoor always remained true to the communist ideal, but publicly defended

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...

and denounced

socialist realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...

as a "constant distorting of reality to match theory". Nevertheless, she was highly successful and popular as a writer. Her 1970

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

''Omzien in verwondering'' ("Looking back in wonder") became a

bestseller A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties (novel, nonfiction book, cookb ...

. Romein-Verschoor wrote an introduction in the First Edition of "Het Achterhuis,"

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

's original 1947 printed book about her diary, later reprinted as ''

The Diary of a Young Girl ''The Diary of a Young Girl'', also known as ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Neth ...

''.

References

Annie Romein-Verschoor
(Biography, with photo),

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

Annie Romein-Verschoor
at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Romein-Verschoor, Annie 1895 births 1978 deaths 20th-century Dutch historians Dutch women historians People from Nijmegen Constantijn Huygens Prize winners Marxist feminists Dutch Righteous Among the Nations Dutch socialist feminists Anne Frank