Boudewijn Bch

Diagnoses

Vocation

Dutch writer, poet and television presenter, known for his confabulations. He was born in a Catholic family, but often stated that he was of Jewish origin. His parents were Marinus Reinirus Buch (7 December 1917, Den Haag - ?), a civil servant and Alida Johanna Elfers (1921, wassenaar), who married in 1942 and divorced in 1961. They got six sons, of which Boudewijn and his brother Menno Buch (19 August 1951 - 8 July 2014, Amsterdam) became known as TV-presenters. The father was described as a tyrant, though Boudewijn would make a hero of him in his "autobiographical" books. Büch went to the elitist Bonaventura-gymnasium in Leiden and boasted a lot about his background. He was interested in world literature and made it to the school-paper, but being too restless to study the more boring facts of life, he could not finish the higher civil school and was in 1967 degraded to the MULO school that did not give access to the Universities. Büch got simple jobs but studied for the MO diploma of Dutch teacher in the evening. But on his papers he used impressive titles like "Drs. Drs. Boudewijn Ignatius Maria Büch, MLS, psychofarmahistoricus" suggesting that he was a highly educated scholar. His enthusiasm, charm and erudite remarks impressed many artists, intellectuals and scholars of Dutch literature. A professor in Leiden even gave Büch his book collection after his death, being convinced that he had to do with a great connoisseur. Büch was indeed a bibliophile, who at the time of his death possessed approximately 100,000 books. One of Büch's long-lived lies was that he was the father of the child Boudewijn Iskander that had died at the age of six (January 1976). Boudewijn Iskander indeed existed, but was just the child of a befriended family, not hi child and did not die. This theme formed the basis of his best-seller "De kleine blonde dood" (The small blond death, 1982), that was supposed to be a tragic ego document. In 1993 the novel was filmed. From 31 July 1988 till 21 August 2001, Büch presented the successful television programme "De wereld van Boudewijn Büch" for the VARA, in which he travelled all around the world to show and give his views on various places, people and phenomena. The dates and subjects can be found on the Wikipedia. Personal Büch never married and had no children. Without doubt he was a pathological liar, but he also had narcissistic and sociopathic traits. He could mourn so convincing that his best friends gave him money to arrange a funeral for his "lost" son. But as soon as his friends discovered the truth, he dropped them at the same moment and tried to harm them in his role as critic. After his death (of heart disease, like his father), Die Welt called him "Der holländische Reich-Ranicki". His fame grew and on the 8th International Boudewijn Büch Day of 13 December 2009 in Amsterdam it was announced that a planetoid was named after him. Years later it became clear that Büch had created his own parallel universum. Link to Wikipedia