Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

In memoriam J.G. de Casparis 31 May 1916 - 19 June 2002

2003; Brill; Volume: 159; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1163/22134379-90003738

2213-4379

Amrit Gomperts, Marijke J. Klokke,

Life and careerBom in Eemnes, the Netherlands, on 31 May 1916, Johannes Gijsbertus (Hans) de Casparis grew up in a cosmopolitan, intellectual family with four other children.De Casparis is a Lutheran Swiss name. 1 His paternal grandfather moved to the Netherlands from the village of Bergün in the German-speaking canton of Graubünden in Switzerland in the 1850s.He established the first bread factory in Leiden.Hans's maternal grandparents emigrated from Lodz (then part of Russia, now Poland) to Dresden.The family later moved to Apeldoorn in the Netherlands where his maternal grandfather founded a mat factory.Hans's father was a medical doctor and general practitioner in Amsterdam who, in his leisure time, studied Bertrand Russell's mathematics and Wittgenstein's philosophy.From an early age, Hans came into contact with many foreign languages.His mother, Anna Bukowska, spoke with him in Russian and Italian.During secondary school, he taught himself to read Russian in six weeks' time.Friends of the family included the conductor Willem Mengelberg and the musicologist Sem Dresden.On the musical scène in Amsterdam, Hans became a virtuoso pianist.