Johan Huizinga

Johan Huizinga was born in 1872 in Groningen, in the Netherlands, the son of a professor of physiology. He studied Dutch literature and languages, including Sanskrit, at the University of Groningen and wrote his doctoral thesis on a theme from ancient Indian drama. He taught history at a secondary school in Haarlem before becoming a professor of history at Groningen in 1905 and at Leiden in 1915, where he remained for the rest of his career and served as rector. His most famous book, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919), also translated as The Autumn of the Middle Ages, describes life, thought and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the end of an age rather than the start of the Renaissance. In Homo Ludens (1938) he argued that play is a basic element of human culture. During the German occupation the university was closed, and he was held hostage in a camp for a time. He died in 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war.

Johan Huizinga is also an author in the library: author page and works.

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