Jef Last

Passions

Vocation

Dutch poet, writer, translator and cosmopolitan known as a socially compassionate man. He had a Catholic background. However, he was a very young member of the SDAP and the "AJC". These principles, he could not practise as an assistant manager of the Enka in Ede, and eventually he resigned. He left the revisionist social democracy to become a member of Henk Sneevliets (Revolutionair Socialistische Partij). With his revolutionary friend André Gide, he travelled in the summer of 1936 to the Soviet Union. The pair was well received, but saw through the organized tribute and returned back to the west disillusioned. Much later Last wrote a book about his friendship with Gide. He last fought in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades, which was on the side of the Spanish Republic. As a result he lost his Dutch citizenship for military service for a foreign power. Shortly after the Second World War, his citizenship was returned. From 1950 to 1953, he lived in Indonesia, particularly in Singaraja (Bali), where he worked as a teacher at a secondary school. He was friends with president Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. He was married to Ida ter Haar from 1923, whom he divorced and later re-married. They had three daughters. Jef was bisexual. He was co-founder of the homosexual emancipation Shakespeare Club, the forerunner of the COC. The last years of his life were spent in the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren. After his death on 15 February 1972, his body was made available to science. Link to Wikipedia biography