Background
KOSSMANN, Ernst was born on January 31, 1922 in Leiden. Son of F.K.H. Kossmann and D. Touw.
historian university professor
KOSSMANN, Ernst was born on January 31, 1922 in Leiden. Son of F.K.H. Kossmann and D. Touw.
Kossmann attended the Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam. After the war he studied History at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He graduated in 1950 and in the same year married his fellow student Johanna Putto.
In 1954 Kossmann obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from Leiden University, with a doctoral thesis entitled Louisiana Fronde.
He was professor of Modern History at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His magnum opus is He had two brothers. The Kossmann family was partly of Jewish descent and they came from Germany before they settled in the Netherlands.
The Second World War meant an interruption of his education.
The latter wrote a novel, De Nederlaag (The Defeat), that was based on their experiences during the war. In 1957 he went to London as professor of Dutch History and Institutions.
In 1962 he became professor at the University College London. In 1966 he became professor of Modern History at the University of Groningen.
In 1981 he delivered his Huizinga Lecture in the Pieterskerk in Leiden.
He died in Groningen in 2003. Kossmann was considered a writer with a refined style, and an erudite scholar. His intellectual outlook was sceptical, ironical, detached.
In an interview in 2007, his former student Frank Ankersmit gives a description of him: He had an unusually strong and fascinating personality -- I never met anyone even remotely coming close to what he was like.
If he had decided for a political career, the recent history of my country would have been completely different from what it is now. lieutenant rarely happened, but if he really felt that this was necessary he could raise a rhetorical storm blowing away everything and everybody.
Indeed, when thinking of him, I never am sure what impressed me most, his scholarship or his personality. He was a truly wonderful manitoba
He joined again as member in 1973.
Over conservatisme (On Conservatism), Amsterdam: Athenaeum Polak & Van Gennep 1981 (Huizinga Lecture, in Dutch).
Royal Netherlands Academy, of Sciences. Royal Belgian Academy, of Sciences.
Married Johanna A. Putto in 1950.