Jan de Vries

Who was Jan de Vries?

Jan Pieter Marie Laurens de Vries was a Dutch scholar of Germanic linguistics and Germanic mythology, from 1926 to 1945 ordinarius at Leiden University and author of reference works still in use today.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War, de Vries was part of the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer, a National Socialist censorship body corresponding to the Kulturkammer, and prominent in the Ahnenerbe. In a 1940 pamphlet and in radio speeches, he demonstrated sympathy for Nazi ideology; in 1944 he fled to Leipzig. After the war, he was imprisoned and stripped of his academic position.

De Vries was born in Amsterdam and demonstrated anti-democratic views before the war; he had a great enthusiasm for German culture. However, he rejected the doctrine of the "Nordic race", and was frequently criticized by influential Nazis for insisting on differentiating Dutch culture from German, and for specific actions, such as seeking to found a new journal that would be open to anti-Nazi contributions, and planning to make Ethnography a full subject of study at a Catholic university.