Louis Grondijs

Who was Louis Grondijs?

Lodewijk Hermen Grondijs was a Dutch war correspondent and byzantinist.

Grondijs was born in the Dutch East-Indies, now known as Indonesia, and via his mother was one eighth Indonesian. He spent most of his youth in the East Indies and graduated in 1896 from grammar school in Surabaya. A gifted academic, he graduated in mathematics and physics at Utrecht University in 1905 and continued his studies in philosophy and mathematics at Leiden University. In 1907 with J.D. Bierens de Haan he founded the Journal of Philosophy Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte and in the 1930s he became a leading expert in Byzantology.

Working as a teacher at the Dordrecht Technical Institute in 1914, he quit his post when the Great War broke out and secured a position as war-correspondent for the Dutch newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. He went into neighboring Belgium where he covered the early events of the war in Aerschot, the German war crimes at Leuven as well as the siege of Antwerp.