Hans van Manen timeline

Hans Artur Gerhard van Manen is born on 11 July 1932 at Koen van Oosterwijklaan 20, in Nieuwer-Amstel (now called Amstelveen). He is the second child of Gustav Adolf van Manen (born in 1904 in the German town of Kleve to Dutch parents) and Elisabeth Berthe Margarete (known as Marga) van Manen-Lilienthal, of German origin (born in 1904, in Barmen, Wuppertal). Hans' only brother Guus (full name Gustaaf Albert) is his elder by more than five years.

In the years preceding Hans’ arrival, father Gustav works in the scrap iron trade and as a toiletries salesman. In the year that Hans is born, Gustav contracts tuberculosis. When his condition worsens in the following years, the family receives poverty support, and Gustav earns a bit extra as a photo developer, working from home. Not long afterwards, he becomes bedridden and Marga keeps their sons Guus and Hans away from him, for fear of infection. Hans therefore has hardly any memories of his father. “The sliding door opened to say good night and good morning, but we were never allowed into the room (..) I’ve no idea what sort of man he was either – how he talked, how he moved. He just lay there.”

The family moves house twice in Amstelveen (in July 1933 to Nieuwe Karselaan and in May 1936 to Surmontstraat), and then in the summer of 1936 Hans goes to the Roelof Venema School, a Protestant primary school, which was then located at Amsterdamseweg.

On 16 October 1939 father Gustav passes away, five days after his 35th birthday. Hans is only seven at the time. Marga, who is 34, is the breadwinner from then on. She earns her keep as a cleaner and resumes her previous work as a shorthand typist, for which she trained in Germany.