Queer Places:
Herengracht 401, 1017 BP Amsterdam
Begraafplaats Zorgvlied
Zorgvlied, Westerveld Municipality, Drenthe, Netherlands
Friedrich W. Buri (January 18, 1919 – † May 29, 1999) was a German poet and writer. His birth name was Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski. Together with
William Hilsley he belonged to the closest circle of friends around
Wolfgang Frommel. Like Hilsley, Buri was a teacher at the Quaker School Eerdeafter fleeing Germany, before he went into hiding after the invasion of the Dutch troops and survived the war in an Amsterdam hiding place, the Castrum Peregrini.
Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski[1] came from a German Jewish family. His parents were the merchant Max Wongtschowski (1877-1949) and Emma Seelig, who came from Rheinhessen. In 1921 the family moved to Frankfurt am Main and lived in the old town, in a four-room apartment on Braubachstraße near the cathedral. [2] The three sons Kurt (born 1909), Hans (born 1914) and Adolf Friedrich (born 1919) were born here. From 1925 to 1929 Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski attended elementary school and then the Wöhler-Realgymnasium in Frankfurt until the big holidays in 1933. While he remembered little about his school days, he described in detail the housing situation and family life – including a mild suicide attempt.[3] During his high school years, he found access to the youth league "Die Kameraden" through his brother Kurt. Kurt had been given the name "Arco" in this environment, and even the younger comrades, to which Adolf Friedrich still belonged, were enthusiastic about the names appearing in it against the background of their reading of the Germanic legends of gods and heroes: "My comrades became Odin, Ymir, Thor, Balder, Loki. I chose the name of the Asen god Buri. With my peers, the proud names were lost more or less quickly. 'Buri' stuck to me, because my brothers stubbornly called me like that and finally my parents bowed to the custom, especially since my actual baptismal name Adolf did not really fit me anymore due to the same name as my famous contemporary.[4]" The "famous contemporary" Hitler, who was appointed German Chancellor on 30 January 1933, changed the life of the Wongtschowski family permanently. Buri was no longer allowed to attend high school as a "non-Aryan" after the summer holidays, and the parents and brothers soon made plans for emigration. Arco, who worked as an authorized signatory in a trading company, was to go to South America and from there prepare the relocation of the family. For this purpose, the family also considered a craft training for Buri to be useful, which is why he began an apprenticeship with a Jewish Frankfurt master painter after the summer holidays of 1933.[5] Buri was "one of the last Jewish craftsmen before the Frankfurt Painters' Guild to pass the journeyman's examination" and "finally received the journeyman's certificate in a solemn ceremony together with many other Frankfurt 'donors'". Buri did not mourn the aborted school education and was sure that the learning of this practical profession had provided a useful basis for his further life and taught him to use his hands. With regard to the intellectual school education denied to him, he referred to the happiness he had received through encounters with people "from whom I could learn under what conditions and in what way one can gain insights into spiritual contexts that are necessary for right action. Among these people, however, there was no one who would have been in a standing position to teach me how to handle a hammer, a brush, a meter measure. So I am glad to have acquired these important skills, paradoxically precisely through the intervention of a state power hostile to my life."[6] Until the middle of 1937 and the move to Berlin, Buri worked as a painter in Frankfurt.
Friedrich W. Buri (1919-1999) (geb. Adolf Friedrich Wongtschowski) von
Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht
On August 5, 1933, Kurt Wongtschowski took his brother Buri with him at a meeting of the "comrades" that was no longer legal at that time. Buri met Hans-Joachim Schoeps and – for him of far greater importance – Wolfgang Frommel for the first time.[7] A friendship arose from this first encounter, which Buri characterized with a quote from Stefan George: "Friendship between men must be educational and tragic, otherwise it is disgusting. But then it is a break-in into the bourgeoisie." [8] One could dismiss what seems to have happened to fourteen-year-old Buri here as a youthful rapture for a much older man, but it was an emotional state that lasted beyond Frommel's death and which was also repeatedly encouraged by Frommel. Buri, as well as his later friend William Hilsley, embody Frommel's "prey scheme" almost ideally: Both were thirteen and fourteen years old respectively when they came into contact with the older man, who gave them the feeling of being fully there for them, recognizing them as equals despite the age difference. Frommel, who certainly maintained sexual contacts with his "students", as Claus Victor Bock reported from his own experience[12] and his friends, however, "never defined themselves as homosexual, just as their role model Stefan George did not want to see his erotic inclination towards men and boys referred to with this word": "The introduction of the term 'homosexuality' into the scientific and emancipative discourse at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was rejected as a rather vulgar scientific construction that could not really grasp the complex play and cultural significance of erotic and emotional ties among men. This complex historical identity formation cannot easily be reduced to the term 'homosexuality'. [13]" Buri dreamed of "being alone with Wolfgang, wherever, to feel his attention completely focused on me, to bask in their undivided rays, as if there were no one but us in the world." [15] But Frommel evaded this claim to exclusivity, letting Buri know that there were also other friends. In addition, he was transferred to the radio station in Berlin in mid-1934, which also added a spatial distance. Wolfgang Frommel's brother Gerhard, who had been teaching at the Frankfurt Hoch Conservatory since the summer of 1933 and whom Wolfgang had instructed "to take care of me during his absence, to look after me as his deputy, so to speak",[16] made Buri "acquainted with his young friend Melchior Bengen". [17] For Buri, who had just set up the attic room of his parents' apartment for himself, "Melchior was the first one I received there and with whom I solemnly inaugurated him. We lit the candles, smoked cigarettes on which we placed incense grains, read each other our poems, and happily praised each other for celebrating a friendship under a common revered star." [18] Linguistically, this is the "spiritual-erotic male society" already quoted above, which is invoked here, whereby it remains in limbo where exactly the border between "spiritual" and "erotic" runs. But even if Buri confesses that after "the merger with Wolfgang, Melchior was the first friend of my year who fell to me", and whose affection was immensely good for him,[19] the spiritual moment seems to have prevailed in this relationship.
Melchior Bengen (1919–2004), the same age as Buri, later became an internist and died in Munich. He remembered an encounter with Buri in the autumn of 1933, when he met him with his white binder cart: "We greeted each other happily, but I drove on because I wasn't quite sure whether meeting me was so sudden and under these circumstances agreed. In any case, my feeling for him bordered on awe when I, the bourgeois high school student, met him, the little painter apprentice with two lives, him who had already worked for E.M. (Ern Morstwitz ) and at the same time worked daily as a house painter - that reminded me of Harun al Raschid, a prince disguised as a beggar in 1001 Nights." (Quoted after Stephan C. Bischoff: Afterword - Time Table - Name Index. P. 233.)
It was only after his encounter with Melchior Bengen that Buri reported on his first conscious sexual experience with "a blonde boy of my caliber", whom he had met by chance on the tram. The fact that this boy turned out to be a Hitler boy at the agreed meeting and greeted Buri in uniform was an irony of fate, but did not detract from the common desire: "Our boyish exuberance chased away my inhibitions and unclear moral uptightness. As if detached from the daily reality of my present, I saw both of us cavorting together in a sun-drenched meadow landscape from an ancient past and forgot every thought of what else was to become of this game. [20]" At their next meeting, Buri told the story with the Hitler boy to Frommel, who was more than concerned about it because there was no information about the boy and his family circumstances. The only reassuring thing was that Buri had not revealed anything about himself to the boy, and so it was decided to refrain from further encounters.
The years in Frankfurt am Main were coming to an end for Buri. He met Percy Gothein here, was a model for the artists Fritz Kotzenberg and Helmut Baumann, who were friends of Frommel, and spent the summer holidays of 1936 with Wolfgang Frommel in Berlin, who at the time lived with Frida Hildesheimer, the mother of William Hilsley, who was already working as a teacher at the Quaker School Eerde.[22] During these years, Buri's family was busy organizing their departure from Germany. Brother Hans had moved to South Africa and Kurt had gained a foothold in Brazil together with his wife. From there he carried out the preparations for the reunification of the rest of the family, in which Buri was also to be included. "Our apartment in Braubachstrasse became more and more uncomfortable, furniture that we would not be able to take with us, stood around empty or was picked up one after the other by friends and relatives of my parents. After all, we lived with half-packed suitcases, on call, so to speak." [23] Buri could not make friends with the idea of emigration. On the one hand, he was tormented by the thoughts of the working life that would be ahead of him as a painter in a foreign country, on the other hand, he resisted the idea of giving up his friends and cultural involvement. Frommel tried to encourage him to leave the country, referring to the danger of war, which in his view was likely, and to the threat of doom for the Jews; this was in vain. Buri told his parents that he would not leave with them. In June 1937, the Wongtschowski family emigrated to Brazil, Buri moved to Berlin.
While still in Frankfurt, Buri had also confronted Frommel with the fact that he did not intend to emigrate together with his parents. He immediately wrote a letter to his friend William Hilsley ("Cyril"), who had been working as a music teacher at the Quaker School Eerde in the Netherlands since 1935: "Wolfgang implored Cyril to find a way to let me come there." Hilsley obtained a promise that Buri could come to the school as an assistant to the factory teacher.[24] Since Buri had no previous education for this activity, Frommel found "in Berlin the people with whom I should learn in crash courses of two and a half months everything I would need in terms of knowledge and skills for my upcoming position in Eerde". This was the decisive factor for the move to Berlin, where Buri also lived with Frida Hildesheimer, the mother of William Hilsley. He acquired bookbinding knowledge and skills, was taught calligraphy, learned the craftsmanship of leather from a shoemaker and worked with a sculptor.[25] The acquisition of these more practical knowledge and skills underwent its pedagogical and didactic transformation over the weekends. Buri received the instructions for this from the then still young work teacher Kurt Zier (1907–1969),[26] who also introduced him to puppet building. The preparations for the activity in Eerde were completed, the passport was released by the authorities in Frankfurt, then came the bad news from the Netherlands: The management of the International Quaker School Eerde withdrew its commitment to hire. It had been prohibited by the Dutch authorities from hiring foreign workers without an official certificate, and the same certificate was refused by the authorities because the influx of German refugees was to be contained. However, William Hilsley, who had conveyed this message, gave also an advice. He knew Kees Boeke, who ran the Quaker-inspired reform school "Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap" in Bilthoven near Utrecht and was ready to hire Buri. In August 1937, Buri left Germany and entered the Netherlands. Buri became an assistant to the school carpenter in the "Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap", with whom he also lived. He was given the opportunity to learn English and Dutch and participated in an upcoming opera performance at the school. And he fell in love with a young Dutch woman, Nel, which upset his emotional balance, as he confessed. William Hilsley also came over for the opera performance. Buri hid from him his inner turmoil. Percy Gothein's visit a short time later was also frustrating. Buri attempted suicide one evening in the forest with white tuber leaf fungi. The next day, after his disappearance was noticed, he was searched for unsuccessfully. Hilsley, who had come over from Eerde, informed Frommel, who was staying with his parents in Heidelberg. He arrived in Bilthoven the afternoon of the following day and immediately participated in the police-assisted search. He found Buri, sleep-drunk and with swollen eyes lying under a pile of leaves. Over a meal at a Bilthoven restaurant, the entire story that led to the suicide attempt was discussed between Frommel and Buri. Frommel insisted (with reference to a George verse) to be released from responsibility for Buri's life, who from then on had to take responsibility for his own life decisions. At the same time, he reaffirmed the friendly bond. The name of Nel, the "being of the opposite sex" under whose spell Buri had briefly fallen, fell only once and rather incidentally. Frommel immediately campaigned for Buri to be given a job in Eerde, because in Hilsley's "proximity he would be able to free himself from the status of the temporarily uprooted more easily". Frommel negotiated with Kurt Neuse, who himself did not want to do anything more for Buri in order not to endanger the school. After all, in this way he received the tip that only "Minister Bolkestein as the highest authority in the Ministry of Education" could bring about a satisfactory solution, which prompted Frommel to make an immediate trip to The Hague, where he managed to get directly to the minister and win him over for a positive opinion. With an official work permit, Buri was able to transfer to the "International Quaker School Eerde" in September 1937.[31]
Buri worked at the Quaker School for almost exactly three years before he "disappeared" in the south of Holland after the invasion of the Germans, as Bock puts it, in September 1940.[32] In his own memoirs, this time occupies only a small part, as he was prevented from continuing his work when it was recorded by the death of Wolfgang Frommel. Buri began his memories of Eerde with the reception by Hilsley, who was warm, but at the same time served as a clarification: "He wanted to confess to me immediately that it was not easy for him when he noticed for the first time that I had taken Wolfgang's place as second. But now he is very happy to have me next to him as a younger brother. I could help him with many things, which should certainly strengthen his position in Eerde. I would soon see that my recent worries on this island would be quickly forgotten and overcome."[35] Buri moved into a room in the attic of the castle and was quickly integrated into school life. Although he belonged to the teaching staff, at the beginning of his work at the age of eighteen he hardly differed from the students and moved in the work lessons in the group to which he was assigned as a helper, almost as an equal among equals. He was also given responsibility for a four-person room in the boys' wing as a "room father", a kind of tutor function, which also included leisure time care. He himself received English lessons and continued his education in weaving and pottery. The Dutch Quakers already knew or suspected that there were homoerotic circles at the school and asked Kurt Neuse, who had been acting headmaster since the beginning of 1938, to intervene against it. He resisted this request and was, possibly therefore never confirmed as official headmaster, as Hans A. Schmitt, formerly a student in Eerde and later german-American historian, suspected. Thanks to Neuse's "liberal" attitude, Hilsley and Buri were able to stay at the school. But it remains unclear what Neuse and other teachers knew about what the Quakers took for granted. Neuse was right when he defended the individual sexual preferences of teachers – as long as this did not affect the students entrusted to them. The fact that this limit was crossed, however, is shown by the experience reported by Bock with Frommel, who from 1939 often gave lectures at the school. What Neuse knew is difficult to judge. What is certain, however, is that not only Hilsley and his friend Buri maintained their individual's sexual preferences and that due to the small age difference between them and the students entrusted to them, there was a particularly distanceless climate. Bock reports that Buri has repeatedly given him his room as a retreat, and it was precisely this room that became Bock's secret meeting place with friends after Buri's submersions. In September 1939, Frommel visited Buri and Hilsley in Eerde from Paris. When he wanted to board the train to Paris at the end of his holiday stay, the three learned about the outbreak of the war through an extra sheet sold on the platform. Frommel then remained in the Netherlands.[40] In June 1940 Hilsley was interned and in September Buri went into hiding. This ended their common history at the "International Quaker School Eerde", but the friendships with individual students that developed here remained of central importance to Buri.
For Frommel, Buri and their friends, a woman of central importance became central in the next few years: Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht was the one who helped Buri to his first hiding place with the painter Charles Eyck and his Swedish wife Karin: he had left Ommen in September 1940 and found shelter with artist Charles Eyck in Limburg. When the 'Jewish Star' was introduced on 1 May 1942 it became unsafe there. Frommel visited him and invited him to come to Amsterdam. This was far from easy. Vincent Weijand agreed to travel by taxi past a pre-arranged place near Sittard on his way to the station, and on impulse take Buri along as a hitch-hiker. At the station, Wolfgang Frommel awaited the two young men and took them to Amsterdam. He used a yellow band which he still kept as a German in the Netherlands from his short military service in the Wehrmacht. Meanwhile Charles Eyck had discovered a letter of Buri saying that he planned to commit suicide. Gisèle welcomed the heroes with red roses. It happened on 8 July 1942, on Frommel's fortieth birthday.[41] The aforementioned reception by Gisèle van Waterschoot took place at Herengracht 401 in Amsterdam, which was given the name "Castrum Peregrini" by Frommel, which was transferred to the publishing house and then to the foundation after the Second World War. "The hiding place was named after a Crusader castle near Haifa called 'Castrum Peregrini' (Pilgrim's Castle)." [42] Gisèle van Waterschoot had rented a floor in this house as a second home in the autumn of 1940. On the floor above lived the married couple Guido and Miep (Wilhelmina Benz) Teunissen, "with whom Gisèle became friends and who subsequently became co-conspirators. Guido was a carpenter, organ builder, all-rounder". The first to be temporarily accommodated here was Wolfgang Cordan, who was followed by Frommel a short time later. "The apartment on the Herengracht received its first real submersible when a new address for Buri had to be found in July 1942."[43] He was succeeded in February 1943 by Claus Victor Bock. The permanent residents of Herengracht 401 were joined by a circle of friends, almost all former students of Eerde, who did not have to go into hiding. The community was structured by different circle affiliations. Claus Victor Bock, Manuel Goldschmidt and Buri belonged to the inner circle around the charismatic leader Frommel. In the second circle the young Dutchman Vincent Weyand (or Weijand) was the primus inter pares – Frommel's favourite. But he did not live at the Herengracht. He lived in Bergen and later in a room on the Singel. He was a son of the painter Jaap Weyand and his Jewish wife, and therefore half-Jew according to the Nazis. Gisèle was the 'mother' of the circle, also as an artist. She was important because of the help and resources she provided. She was also the one who provided the hiding places. Fellow artists who did not join the Kulturkammer, like Mari Andriessen and Adriaan Roland Holst – Roland Holst later on did join under pressure – supported her with food coupons; as did Adriaan's brother Eep. But neither Gisèle, nor Miep Benz, as women, were allowed in the all-important nightly poetry readings. These readings were the main social activity. Guido, although not an intellectual, was part of them, since he was a man.[44] Both Buri's memoir and Claus Victor Bock contain very detailed descriptions of everyday life at Herengracht 401 and about living together there.[45] Security was always at risk, house searches took place, friends were arrested and deported. Fears and nervousness could easily have made life more difficult. Gert Hekma (born 1951), lecturer in homosexual and lesbian studies at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam, wrote in April 2004 in an article about the beginnings of the Castrum Peregrini: At the Herengracht in Amsterdam, at the corner of the Beulingstraat and across from the Leidsegracht, there is a world-famous house, dubbed by Mattias Duyves 'The gay version of the Anne Frank house'. ... Most of the residents were gay but they never called themselves that.[48] Buri describes the fact that the sexual self-image of the prisoners was not so clear and that heterosexual relationships were also cultivated using the example of his relationship with Gisèle van Waterschoot, which in turn put a heavy strain on his relationship with Wolfgang Frommel. Although Frommel feared that the relationship between Buri and van Waterschoot could endanger the house community in Herengracht 401 from the inside out, it remained stable and survived the end of the war. She was spared the fate of Anne Frank and her roommates in the Secret Annex at Prinsengracht 263, but some of her closest friends fell victim to Nazi terror.
Amsterdam was liberated on May 5, 1945 by Canadian soldiers, the city was, apart from the few people who could survive in hiding places like the Herengracht 401, "Jew-free". "On 13 September 1944, the 93rd and last transport train left the Westerbork transit camp. Of the 140,000 Jews who had lived in the Netherlands in 1940, 102,000 had been murdered, almost 90 percent of them in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor. This means that the Netherlands has the most terrible record among all the countries of Western Europe."[51] After the liberation of the city, Buri moved out of the house at Herengracht 401 and began a new life. He trained as a graphologist and then worked for several years in his own practice. After "a being of the opposite sex" had torn the ground from under his feet in 1937, he married the Dutchwoman of German origin Marianne Strengholt, called Jannie (1913–1995), in 1948. Buri had already met her shortly after the liberation: "It was Frommel who, without suspecting the consequences, brought these two people together."[52] Jannie Strengholt, who had known Frommel since 1943, came from a middle-class family and had already been in contact with Max Beckmann since childhood, who also lived in Amsterdam during the war and met Wolfgang Frommel there.[53] In the 1950s, Strengholt also had a kind of guidance function for the young women, who were always treated marginally in the circle around Wolfgang Frommel, as Joke Haverkorn reports: "A party also took place for us "girls" from time to time. The girls' parties were plain and simple. They took place less frequently and consisted of a solemn reading of one of the books or cycles of George's poetry and a festive meal. Jannie Buri, a teacher at the Quaker School and a friend of W., was our voorgangeron these occasions. In their beautiful rooms decorated with art at Amsterdam's Oosterpark, we came together for a 'reading' and enjoyed being together in a small circle."[54] In 1951, Buri and Jannie Strengholt and their daughter Renate, returned to Germany for the first time – on a motorcycle, and in the autumn of the same year they received a visit from Buri's mother Käthe, who lived in Brazil with his brother Kurt ("Arco") and his family. In 1952 a circle was closed: Buri and his family moved to the house "De Esch" at Schloss Eerde, where the Quaker School had been re-founded and where William Hilsley lived and taught again. Buri no longer worked as a graphologist, but became a drawing teacher and gave work lessons at the school. Gradually, Buri and Jannie Strengholt also took on other functions and became house parents for a group of boarding school students. In addition, Buri intensified the writing of poems, which became increasingly important for him: "Without poetry, my existence is not complete, not justified."[55] In 1957, the couple spent a holiday in Spain, which left deep traces on Buri, which were also reflected in publications. Another consequence of the trip was that Strengholt and Buri moved out of the house "De Esch" into an apartment in Ommen. They moved into the house "Bargsigt", which belonged to the banker's widow Selina Pierson (1882–1965). Through its owner, it had quickly developed into a cultural and literary center where various authors, philosophers and artists were guests. Regular visitors included the authors Adriaan Roland Holst (1888–1976) and Victor von Vriesland (1892–1974), the poet Jacques Blume (1887–1966) and the sculptor and painter Titus Leeser (1903–1996).[56] Wolfgang Frommel had also been a constant guest here since the early 1950s: "Selina had lived very secluded for years, after the death of her husband, until friends of W., who were teachers at the Landschulheim, had met her. Selina had offered W., the friend of the new friends, her house as a summer stay. And W. had accepted the offer immediately and had moved in with her with his 'neighbours' at the time."[57] Parallel to their move to the house "Bargsigt", where Conrad M. Stibbe, who taught at the Quaker School from 1958, also lived, Buri and Strengholt stopped working at the school for one year. They resumed their teaching activities in the Quaker School in 1958, a year before it moved its headquarters to Beverweerd Castle in 1959.[58] This relocation of the school prompted the two to buy their own house in Driebergen near the new school location. From 1959 to 1969, Buri and his wife taught at the Quaker School, and Buri wrote and published poetry. His brothers came from Sao Paulo and Johannisburg to visit, the friends from the Frommel circle frequented here. In 1964, Selina Pierson, who dedicated a poem to Buri in the same year, joined in and spent the last year of her life here. The Drieberg period also saw an event that put a strain on the relationship between Buri and his wife Jannie. Buri began a relationship with a friend of Jannie's, Marja, who was 17 years old and thus about 30 years younger than Buri. This relationship lasted for 14 years, but Jannie Strengholt did not separate from her husband, nor did she end her friendship with Marja. In fact, she suffered most painfully, which she unmistakably expresses in her memories, and yet she and Buri held on to their relationship and found each other again after long, difficult years.[59] In the second half of the 1960s, the Quaker School in Beverweerd was integrated into the Dutch school system, which meant that teachers without a Dutch exam were no longer allowed to teach. A school of a completely new character was created, where Buri, although he was able to catch up on the Dutch drawing teacher examination within three months, no longer felt comfortable. The two decided to sell the house in Dreibergen and move to Amsterdam. Buri founded his own drawing school there, the "Ateliers Buri". In addition, he continued to write poems, but increasingly became active as a translator. He translated poems by Dutch friends into German, but also poetry collections by Stefan George into Dutch (in collaboration with old "Castrum-Peregrini" friends and others). In 1983, the state of health of Wolfgang Frommel, who still lived at Herengracht 401, deteriorated. Buri took care of him and cared for him until his death in 1986. For Buri, this was for the first time the return to the house of his hiding place during the Second World War. In the aftermath of Frommel's death, there were fierce quarrels between the old friends from the circle around the "Castrum Peregrini", in which Buri became a special target. To avoid these tensions, he sold his "Atelier Buri" and moved to Munich in February 1989 together with Jannie.[60] Stephan C. Bischoff, physician and editor of Buri's memoir, had met Buri around 1979 in Amsterdam and intensified the friendship after Buri's move to Munich. In the summer of 1989, he and Buri embarked on an extensive trip to Spain together. The journey was overshadowed by several emotional explosions revealing "deep abysses in Buri's soul" and came to an end in Lausanne, "where Buri begins to cry late at night in the hotel, speaking of eerie hauntings and repeatedly lamenting his failure until he embraces me firmly, whispering Wolfgang's name. I have never felt such closeness to the friend. He is leaving me in Bern, where I was to start a new job at Inselspital on 1 July 1989."[61] In 1990 Buri's last volume of poetry, Altes zum Hummn, was published, and in 1992 Buri and Jannie Strengholt moved back to the Netherlands. They moved into a house in Doorn, which, like their former place of residence Driebergen, now belongs to the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug. In 1993 Buri finished his poetic work and appointed Stephan C. Bischoff as his literary heir. In 1995 his wife died and a few months later the old companion Kurt Meyer ("Enzio") Borchert died. Buri's own health deteriorated, the home care by his daughter Renate and assistants became no longer affordable, and so he had to move to a nursing home in Bilthoven in 1998. He died on May 29, 1999. He is 80 years old. He was buried next to his wife Jannie in the Zorgvlied cemetery on the border between Amsterdam and Amstelveen.
My published books:
