Vasalis

Dutch poet, writer and child psychiatrist.

The pen name Vasalis of the celebrated poet Margaretha Droogleever Fortuyn-Leenmans was the latinized version of her maiden name Leenmans. It was first written as M. Vasalis. Her father Hendrik Arie ("Hal") Leenmans (8 Augustus 1876, Slochteren - 29 September 1954, Den Haag) was an erudite Ph.Dr. history teacher and used the pseudonym "de vazal" in his youth poetry. Her mother Louise Ernestine Creutzberg (2 October 1876, Woudenberg - 1969) became an insurance agent in 1906, when her two children went to school. Vasalis, nickname Kiek, was the youngest and her sister was named Ank (1906-1977).

She had a happy youth at the sea side The Haque and kept good relations with her parents and sister. Her parents were Dutch Reformed liberal (vrijzinnig) socialists with a broad cultural interest that invited likely minded politicians and writers at home. She studied medicine at Leiden University (1927-1932), later anthropology and specialised in the then not yet split disciplines of neurology and psychiatry. In 1934 she started as a junior physician in the psychiatric hospital Santpoort. She also started writing her first poetry which she send to her colleague and writer Simon Vestdijk, the editor of the periodical Groot Nederland. Here she debuted with five poems (Aug 1936). Vestdijk and critics like Menno ter Braak were very impressed by her work.

At the same time she got rheumatological complaints that forced her to stop her study. From the end of 1936 till August 1937 she went to Melton Wold Guest Farm, a guest house and sheep farm in South Africa to recover. In 1938 she worked as a physician in the Wilhelmina Gasthuis (WG) at Amsterdam. Here she met neurologist Jan Droogleever Fortuyn (R'dam, 12 April 1906 - Arnhem, 10 Jan 1999), whom she married 3 March 1939. They got four children: In April 1940 her daughter Lous, April 1942 her son Dick and in the hunger winter of 1944 her son Hal.