Huizinga, Johan

HUIZINGA, JOHAN. - Dutch historian, b. 7 Dec. 1872 at Groningen, d. 1 Feb. 1945 at De Steeg.

He first studied comparative philology and Sanskrit, then devoted himself to historical studies, earning the chair of history at the University of Groningen (1906) with a study on the origins of Haarlem; from there he moved in 1915 to the University of Leiden.

The work that won him universal fame and established him as a classic of "Kulturgeschichte" was Herfsttij der middeleeuwen (Italian trans., "Autunno del Medioevo", Florence 1940), a masterly description of Burgundian society in the 14th-15th centuries. H. studies the transition, in that society, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, focusing his examination on the "way" of life of the knights and of the people, on symbolisms and allegories, on forms of devotion, on the concepts of life and death, on myths and dreams. With this work he provided, against historicist intellectualism, a prototype and a model of historiography attentive to inner human resonances.

In the following years his scholarly activity knew no pause: among his works are remembered the Erasmus (Haarlem 1924, Italian trans.: Erasmo, Turin 1941), a profile perhaps somewhat flawed by the scant placing of the humanist within the historical-political problems of his time, but exquisite in its delineation of the man of "half-tones", of the word "never completely pronounced", "master of mental reservation"; Homo ludens (Italian trans., Turin 1946), in which he illustrated life as play, as style, resolving the initial formula "Kultur als Spiel, nicht Kultur aus Spiel"; Patriotisme en nationalisme in de Europeesche geschiedenis tot het einde der 19e eeuw (Haarlem 1940), besides various essays collected by W. Kaegi, in German translation, in Wege der Kulturgeschichte (Munich 1930), in Im Bann der Geschichte (Basel 1943), in Parerga (Basel 1945). His other writings In de Schaduwen van Morgen (1935, Italian trans. La crisi della civiltà, Turin 1937), Wenn die Waffen schweigen (Basel 1945), and Mein Weg zur Geschichte (ibid. 1947) are not only expressions of a sensibility, but testimony of a sadness, often without hope, for a world of culture and civilization that is collapsing.

During the Second World War H. was arrested and confined in a concentration camp for his opposition to the "new German order", and, once freed, he was ordered into forced residence near Arnhem.