AB III-05

Description

Albert Brussee

HERMAN GERRIT  BRUSSEE – EEN MENS MET WILSKRACHT

My father, Herman Gerrit Brussee (1903-1995), was an educationist at heart. At the age of 18, he was already standing in front of the classroom! In the evenings, he studied for a Secondary Education Certificate for Physics and Chemistry and for three Low Education Certificates for Mathematics, Economics and English, respectively. This gave him the opportunity to teach in those subjects at Extended Primary Level (ULO). Partly because of the ever-growing number of children, father decided to write school books as a secondary activity, and it soon became clear that this was his great strength. In 1937, he published Moderne natuurkunde voor ULO [‘Modern Physics for ULO’], a series of four textbooks, all together accounting for 175 printings of 2,000 copies each. Thus, about 350,000 copies of this first series alone were sold! Other successes were a series of physics workbooks for the higher classes of primary schools (Part I: 84 print runs!), and Met de jaargetijden mee [‘Along with the Seasons’], a number of workbooks for botany and zoology (Part I: 67 print runs). Altogether, some 3,600,000 books by H.G. Brussee have been sold. This made him one of the best-selling (schoolbook) authors in the Netherlands in the 20th century.

On the occasion of his 88th birthday, I made a catalogue of his oeuvre. This simple home edition (stencilled; A4 format) was revised and expanded in 2024 and is now available in book form. The 210-page monograph opens with a fairly comprehensive sketch of his life, illustrated with many photographs. This is followed by the catalogue of his oeuvre, divided into the following categories:

– Physics and Chemistry (51 editions)
– Biology (60 editions)
– History (18 editions)
– Foreign languages (16 editions)
– Reading books for primary school education (27 editions)
– Miscellaneous (2 editions)
– Articles (9).

The catalogue is illustrated with covers of his books, which give a wonderful picture of the evolution that the art of illuminating textbooks went through in the 1940s to 1980s. It is followed by fifteen excerpts from various editions, which give a good idea of the versatility and quality of his oeuvre; original typesetting and illustration material were reused as much as possible.

ZAKELIJKE GEGEVENS
© 2024 AB Music Productions & Editions, The Hague.
ISBN: 978-94-51221-4-4.
Language: Dutch; 210 pages; paperback; full-colour edition.