{"id":515,"date":"2025-10-21T16:10:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walkofpride.amsterdam\/?post_type=hero&p=515"},"modified":"2026-06-30T12:51:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:51:31","slug":"anna-blaman","status":"publish","type":"hero","link":"https:\/\/walkofpride.amsterdam\/en\/heroes\/anna-blaman\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Blaman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author: Emma van Zalinge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Blaman wrote poems, short stories, and novels. She was also a courageous and pioneering lesbian role model. Rather than concealing her orientation in a time when people pretended that female homosexuality did not exist, she lived her life openly as a lesbian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI swear I will try to be as purely myself as I can\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anna Blaman, the pseudonym of Johanna Petronella Vrugt, was born in Rotterdam on January 31, 1905. She was the second of three children. Her father, Pieter Vrugt, owned a few bicycle shops. After his death, when Anna was twelve, her mother sold the shops and began running a boarding house. From 1928 onward, her boarding house was located at 50a De Vliegerstraat in Rotterdam; Anna would live there in a room of her own for the rest of her life. At the age of 17, she fell in love with a girl, but their relationship went no further than friendship. Her sister Corrie wrote that their mother had reacted positively to Anna\u2019s coming out and that the topic was not discussed further after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After staying with her aunt in Brussels at the age of 18, Anna wrote: \u201cI swear that for the rest of my life I will try to be as purely and courageously myself as I can.\u201d Her aunt had insisted that she go to the theater \u201clooking like a fashionable young woman, in high heels, with carefully styled hair, wearing a lace dress with a low neckline.\u201d Anna recalled sitting in the theater \u201cwith death in my heart,\u201d<\/a> primarily because she had not refused to take part in this \u201ccharade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talented and in demand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After secondary school, she attended a teacher-training college and eventually worked as a teacher at several elementary schools. When she was admitted to the Bergweg Hospital in Rotterdam with a kidney condition in 1936, the nurse who cared for her was Alie Bosch, with whom she began a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of her weak health, she did not seek a new job, although she did obtain a secondary teaching qualification in French during the Second World War. She gave private lessons at home and earned her living through her literary and journalistic work, as a dramaturge, and by giving lectures. She was a talented, much sought-after speaker. She was sympathetic, had a sense of humor, and was a good listener to those who had problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toward the end of the war, Alie Bosch fell in love with a dance instructor, which led to a break with Anna. Their friendship would only stabilize again in the early 1950s and lasted until Anna\u2019s death. Starting around 1948 she had an erotic relationship lasting several years with a married writer, Marie-Louise Doudart de la Gr\u00e9e.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna died in 1960 from the effects of a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried at Rotterdam\u2019s Hofwijk cemetery. The origin of her pen name is a carefully guarded secret. It is said to stand for \u201cB<\/em><\/strong>en L<\/strong>iever A<\/strong>ls MAN<\/strong><\/em>\u201d (\u201cI prefer being a MAN\u201d), though other theories also exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLesbocode\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1941 she made her debut with Vrouw en vriend<\/em> (Woman and friend), in which she processed her (short-lived) relationship with a woman who recited texts on stage. The main character in the novel\u2014Anna\u2019s alter ego\u2014is a man. When it became clear that she had written about her relationship with a woman, the book served as a \u201ccode\u201d in lesbian circles. Having it on one\u2019s coffee table signaled that one was attracted to women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The break with Alie Bosch prompted Anna to write Eenzaam avontuur<\/em> (Lonesome adventure) in 1948. The book was received with both praise and disapproval. Celebrated Dutch author Simon Vestdijk called it a masterpiece, but its (homo)erotic passages led to a considerable upheaval in the Christian press. Anna remained calm about it and initially even agreed to cooperate in a \u201cbook tribunal\u201d held regarding the book in 1949. She had assumed that would be \u201ca serious debate between two literary experts,\u201d so when she saw what charges were being brought against her, she withdrew. It must have caused her pain. She took comfort in the fact that \u201cthe press unanimously expressed outrage at such cultural vandalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veiled<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The municipality of Amsterdam awarded the book the Amsterdam Prize for Prose in 1949. She would receive that prize again in 1956 for Op leven en dood<\/em> (publish in English as A Matter of Life and Death<\/em>). That same year she was awarded the most prestigious Dutch national literary recognition, the P.C. Hooft Prize, for her entire body of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While her novels and short stories are largely autobiographical, she wrote in a veiled manner about being lesbian. When writing about relationships with her lovers, she \u201cdisguised\u201d herself as a man involved in a (heterosexual) relationship with a woman. Love between two women was only suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2019t Mandje<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In real life Anna did not conceal her lesbian orientation at all: she had brief affairs with women, she often wore trousers, and she rode a motorcycle, which was unusual for women at that time. Together with her friends she was a regular customer at Bet van Beeren<\/a>\u2019s Caf\u00e9 \u2019t Mandje in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By expressing herself in ways that were considered inappropriate for women in the 1950s, she inspired women to free themselves. Women in that period were not expected to have sexual feelings, let alone to show them, or to write about them. It was already hard enough for women to build an economically independent life at that time, let alone to create a life together with another woman\u2014if such an idea even occurred to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courageous and pioneering<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps her greatest achievements are that she presented herself as she was and wrote about homosexuality as something just as self-evident as heterosexuality Nearly all her novels and stories have homosexual and lesbian characters who are not ashamed about their sexual identity and do not beg for acceptance or understanding. Through her self-confidence and the openness with which she lived her homosexuality, she serves as a courageous and pioneering lesbian role model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An archive on homosexuality founded in Leeuwarden in 1983 was named the Anna Blaman House. In 1992 it became part of IHLIA LGBTI heritage. At the beginning of this century, renewed interest in her work emerged. To mark the 50th anniversary of her death, 2010 was proclaimed the \u201cAnna Blaman Year\u201d and Eenzaam avontuur<\/em> was republished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rotterdam writer, playwright, and theater teacher Anna Blaman became a household name by writing candidly about her own life as a lesbian. 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