Lutz van Dijk
Lutz van Dijk is a German and Dutch author and educator.
Biography
Lutz van Dijk initially worked as a special education teacher in Hamburg and later joined the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Van Dijk also spends time in Cape Town. Prior to settling in the Netherlands, he left Germany and lived in New York City, where he moved to in 1973. He also became a [Dutch nationality law|naturalized Dutch citizen].Van Dijk received his doctorate in 1987 at the University of Hamburg, with his thesis being in the field of educational sciences and teachers who opposed Nazism in Germany. In the summer of 2009, he was named an honorary professor in poetics at the Research Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature at the University of Oldenburg.
In his writing, Van Dijk deals with topics related to Nazism and homosexuality and, since 2018, he has published children's books. Van Dijk also wrote Kampala-Hamburg, a book about a gay refugee from Uganda who escapes persecution in his native country and flees to Hamburg with the help of German LGBTQ+ activists. Van Dijk wrote most of his books in German, with many of them translated into Afrikaans, Xhosa, and English. In 2024, he wrote an autobiography recounting his childhood in a city divided by the Berlin Wall, and his decision to move to New York City as soon as he turned 18.
In early 2001, Van Dijk founded the aid organization HOKISA in a town near Cape Town. His partners in the NGO mostly were South African activists. HOKISA provides support for children and young people who have lost their parents to AIDS or who are themselves HIV-positive. The first HOKISA home opened near Cape Town in 2002.