PEDAGOGICAL EROS: AN IDEAL WORTH STRIVING FOR
An interview with Dr. Edward Brongersma
by Martin Maassen
The following article was published in issue 3 of Koinos, Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 4-6. The three black-and-white illustrations accompanied the original article.
“With Jongensliefde (Loving Boys) part 2, Edward Brongersma’s magnum opus on paedosexuality regarding boys has been completed,” says the back flap of the Dutch edition. KOINOS paid a visit to Edward Brongersma, an 82 year old ex-lawyer, ex-senator and boy lover, in his villa at the west coast of Holland. We talked about elderly people and the things that never pass: the intimacy between man and boy.
AT the beginning of my conversation with Brongersma we talk about the melancholy arising from the transitoriness of life.
Brongersma: “In a year’s time I have lost three very dear friends, the kind of friends who’d back you no matter what. Especially the recent death of Bernard Delfgaauw (a leading Dutch emeritus professor of philosophy, MM) has affected me quite a lot. He was definitely the most honest human being 1 have ever known. During fifty years of friendship, we both experienced deep sadness, as well as moments of great beauty. We still had a chance to celebrate his eightieth birthday in a very special way. Four friends described their relationship to one of his books in discourses of fifteen minutes each. Bernard and I intended to write a book on the ethics of boy love. Although we were in heartfelt agreement, we went looking for what we disagreed on.”

It was never to be. After his first stroke, Delfgaauw lost his sense of direction. His condition rapidly declined. So it never got beyond the publication in 1987 of their exchange of letters on the reasonableness (or unreasonableness) of religion. Prior to Delfgaauw’s death, two of Edward Brongersma’s other beloved friends had also died: “Angelino's friend” (more about him later on, MM) and a friend from France with whom Brongersma had set out upon many travels to the Far East.[1] The death of his French friend had been the cause for a conversation with his general practitioner.
Brongersma: “You are entitled to your life, which means that you are also entitled to your death. Fortunately I discovered that my general practitioner is open to these views.”
Edward Brongersma had been born in 1911 as son of an ophthalmologist (“my mother held no community status”). After a grammar school education including classical languages and literature, he studied Law, and, after the onset of the Second World war, he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Salazar’s Portuguese corporative state. From 1946 onwards Brongersma has successively been councillor, member of the Provincial assembly, and member of the Senate. In 1950 he temporarily had to resign from active politics because of his conviction on a section of the law which forbade homosexual intercourse between an adult and a young man between the ages of 16 and 21. From 1963 up till 1977 Brongersma was once again a member of the Senate.
What was the overall atmosphere at home like in your youth?
“Liberal, up to a certain level. My parents were dyed-in-the-wool liberals. Although my mother had been raised as a liberal Lutheran, we were not involved in any kind of religion. Instead they presented us with an overview of the world’s religions. There was a high degree of freedom of conviction.”
Also in the area of sexuality?
“We never discussed that subject. However, my father firmly believed that age groups should stick to themselves. Physical contact was taboo. We didn’t kiss at home, for instance. It was supposed to be unhygienic. Just like drinking from an other person’s cup. There were no physical displays of tenderness.” Yet, at a relatively early age Brongersma knew about his interest in boys. “My father possessed a collection of books on sexology. So, theoretically I was already pretty well informed at an early age. Moreover, as editor-in-chief of the school paper I could roam about freely throughout the school. Naturally, I studied the books on Das Schwarze Erdteil with quite a bit of excitement. All those pictures of stark naked boys and men, which were quite a rarity in those days. I have always been fascinated by the enormous variety in the sexual life of these people.”

Brongersma went to university at a time when many young people were politically right-wing orientated (“We were deeply disappointed in democracy”). Brongersma saw building a corporative, non-fascist, non-totalitarian, state as a chance to do justice to the shared interests of employers and employees. That is one of the reasons why he chose this theme as the subject of his dissertation. The day he finished his manuscript of his thesis, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway...
Immediately after the Second World War, Brongersma became a councillor of the emergency council in Heemstede (a rather fashionable little town at the west coast of Holland, MM) for the social democratic Partij van de Arbeid. Almost simultaneously, he became a member of the Senate, a position he would abandon in 1950 for thirteen years. After his re-entrance in the Senate, he was in the position to collaborate on the abolition of the section of the law under which he himself had been convicted.
Because he owes a lot to the Partij van de Arbeid, he finds it hard to discuss his departure in 1989 from this party. During the first interview session he asked me to make no mention of it. After lengthy hesitation he finally agrees to mention this emotionally painful, personal information. “In general I wasn’t always satisfied with the party line, I suppose nobody is. But the moment they entered a passage on the extension of the statute of limitations on sex crimes in the election programme, the time had come for me to turn my back to the party. I had already been against the extension of the statute of limitation on war crimes. Limitation is a wholesome institution, especially in this area, with its tremendous hysteria about incest... If you only knew what things you can talk into little children...”
Brongersma confesses that he now sympathizes with the left liberal D66. A letter from a social democratic MP (the chairman of the standing parliamentary Justice Committee, MM) couldn’t make him change his mind. Despite reservations, he lets me read their exchange of letters. The female MP appears to agree with Brongersma. Nowadays Edward Brongersma devotes much of his spare time to the management of the Brongersma foundation. The foundation possesses some 135 binders of personal archives, which include a great deal of personal correspondence. As an example, he shows me the correspondence, including the photographic material, of “Angelino’s friend”. Angelino’s framed angelic face glances over our shoulders. Brongersma considers the relationship between Angelino and his adult friend as the paragon of boy love. He lets me read a letter in which the now adult Angelino makes it clear that he owes everything in life to his friend.[2]
Is this material of the foundation accessible at all?

“The most interesting part deals largely with people who are still alive. The material is only available to scientific research. Anybody who is interested will have to clarify the intentions of his research first.
“Besides, there are documents I intentionally withdraw from circulation. Documents coming from a Dutch person, 1 can show much more freely to an American or an Italian.”
Brongersma used much of his collection for his magnum opus, Loving Boys. By now, the two volumes have been published in English and Dutch. So far only the first volume has been published in German - a publication that Brongersma seems to get enraged about.
“This total lack of the aesthetic element in the German translation has caused me great grief. The cover has been stolen, the bibliography has been typographically reproduced and then those awful pictures... The book could not be sold in Holland because of those pictures! “I translated the English version myself. That’s what I am most satisfied with, anyway.” Brongersma appears to be a great defender of the pedagogical eros. Critics think that he seems to adhere to the thesis that the boy lover is the “ideal educator”, who almost acts out of a vocation. Boys who haven’t been lucky enough to meet a responsive lover, just will come to no good. Once they get a chance to see the positive results of the pedagogical eros, skeptical parents will think better of it. Woe betide those pederasts who cannot live up to the high standards of the pedagogical eros!
Doesn’t he think so himself that he is laying down very high standards to the friendship between the boy lover and his partner?
“Actually, this is something for a rare elite only. The ancient Greeks noticed that already. Although I very much dislike the word elite - after all, in my books I also refer to the “one night stand” - I don’t think it harms to set a higher ideal. I don’t look upon it as a standard, but as an ideal.”
What are your own ideals for the next twenty years?
“I won’t be around to see the end of those twenty years. I am hoping for a calm, easy death. I have now reached the point where you are wondering how you will come to your end.”
That’s what occupies you most at the moment?

“Yes, that does occupy me a great deal. The thought that a few people will miss me when I’m not around any longer, and the idea that I have made some people happy, is enough of a satisfaction to me. I very much regret the fact that I won’t be able to live to see the break-through in the area of legislation, but that requires a better understanding of the true nature of the man-boy relationship.”
Convinced as he is of the ultimate goodness of those relationships, Brongersma expresses the hope that the devil Asmodaeus will one day raise the roofs of the temples of boy love, to present the outside world with a good and penetrating view of the true man-boy love relationship. Brongersma, with all of his juicy statements on the “images of boys”, putting every ephebic beauty on a pedestal, doesn’t realize that he himself, with all of his anecdotes and revelations, has now became the unspoken incarnation of the roof raising Asmodaeus.
He accompanies me to the front door. Once again I cast an eye at the poignantly present book Een Waardig Sterven (“A Dignified Death”). Amongst his very rich collection of books, the colourful cover constantly attracts my attention. As the front door is being closed behind me, I once again take a look at the name-plate next to the door: “Dr. E. Brongersma – Lawyer” it says monumentally. Almost just as monumentally as Edward Brongersma is himself, I ponder, as I can feel the melancholy rising in my veins.
I hardly ever felt so penetratingly part of the unbridgeable gap between spring and winter in a human life. The thought that in time I too will have nothing to look forward to but those brief contacts with the paper boy, who comes around once a year to collect his tip, makes me shiver. Is this what other people call the humiliation of life?
(with the cooperation of Gorrit Goslinga)
[1] This friend was surely Pierre Jungné (died 1993) mentioned as Brongersma’s travelling companion in the Philippines and Tunisia in some of Gabriel Matzneff’s published journals. He was a boysexual doctor who ran a small private clinic in Tunis and with whom Brongersma made a journey by car across Africa that almost ended fatally due to a breakdown in the desert. [Website footnote]
[2] In November 1994, Brongersma gave a much fuller account of this story to the Canadian writer Robin Sharpe, who published it in the NAMBLA Bulletin XIX No. 1, August 1998, pp. 13-14. There Angelino’s lover is described as a radio broadcaster called Lucchio. Accompanying this website’s edition of that article will be found the portait of Angelion mentioned here and a clearer image of the figurine of Brongerma aged 13. [Website footnote]
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