Background
The son of a poor cantor, he turned his back on Judaism, flirted with Christianity, and joined the Socialist movement.
The son of a poor cantor, he turned his back on Judaism, flirted with Christianity, and joined the Socialist movement.
By the outbreak of World War I, however, he had reverted to an Orthodox life style and become a militant Zionist. In 1919, he left Holland for Palestine, abandoning the non-Jewish wife whose support had enabled him to obtain a law doctorate. Apparently chagrined by his lukewarm reception in Jerusalem, he soon made another about-face, turning from the religious Zionist Mizrachi to the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel party, and conducting violently anti-Zionist propaganda. This new attitude was reflected in articles written for the Dutch and British press, in the Agudat alliance with Arab nationalists, and in the memoranda that he sent both to the League of Nations and to the British mandate government.
As a literary figure, De Haan established his reputation with "Hel Joodsche Lied" (“The Jewish Song,” 1915-1921), two volumes of poetry on religious and mystical themes, followed by travel sketches and reportages entitled "Palestine and Jerusalem" (1921). When his first book, an autobiographical novelette (1904) had appeared, however, his undisguised homosexuality caused a public scandal in the Netherlands. References to it are scattered throughout his Dutch works, notably in the erotic and somewhat blasphemous poems of his quatrains (Kwatrijnen, 1924), to which ultra-Orthodox Palestinian Jews had no access. It therefore seems probable that De Haan’s Arab lovers exploited or blackmailed him for their own political ends, and that he was incapable of desisting from his anti-Zionist activities, however many warnings he received from Zionist leaders in Palestine.
After heading one Agudat delegation that went to Amman and planning another such visit to London, this outwardly pious Jew found himself a hated outcast among his own people. He was shot to death in Jerusalem, presumably by agents of the Jewish defense organization, the Haganah, and, despite police investigations together with the offer of a large reward, his killers were never apprehended.
The victim of his own tormenting inner conflicts, a man forced to lead a double life, De Haan inspired a novel by Arnold Zweig.