Lutz van Dijk

Lutz van Dijk initially worked as a special education teacher in Hamburg and later joined the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.^[1] Van Dijk also spends time in Cape Town.^[1] Prior to settling in the Netherlands, he left Germany and lived in New York City, where he moved to in 1973.^[2] He also became a naturalized Dutch citizen.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5]

In his writing, Van Dijk deals with topics related to Nazism and homosexuality^[3] and, since 2018, he has published children's books.^[6] 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.^[2] Van Dijk wrote most of his books in German, with many of them translated into Afrikaans, Xhosa, and English.^[1] 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.^[2]

In early 2001, Van Dijk founded the aid organization HOKISA (Homes for Kids in South Africa) in a town near Cape Town.^[1] 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.^[1] The first HOKISA home opened near Cape Town in 2002.^[7]

Van Dijk was nominated in 2021 for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis,^[8] and in 2023, he was a nominee at the Stonewall Awards for his LGBTQ+ activism.^[9] In 1997, Van Dijk was awarded with the Youth Literature Award of Namibia and, in 2001, he received the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize.^[1]