Menno ter Braak was a Dutch writer and literary critic, considered the Netherlands’ most important essayist and cultural critic during the Interbellum period. His shrewd intellect and challenging of preciousness in art earned him the title of the ‘conscience of Dutch literature’.

Together with friend and collaborator Edgar du Perron he founded the influential literary magazine “Forum”, which called for a rejection of contemporary aestheticism, as well as the Committee of Vigilance of anti-National Socialist Intellectuals.

In 1937, Ter Braak wrote what today stands as one of the most scathingly perceptive indict­ments of the Nazi movement, “National Socialism as a Doctrine of Rancour”, in which he expressed his urgent concern for the growing popular­ity of National Socialism. Upon the German invasion in 1940, he took his own life within hours after the Dutch surrender.

See for a full list of essays, publications and fiction (and often freely available to download or read online): http://dbnl.nl/auteurs/auteur.php?id=...