Image 1: Students In Amsterdam or Leiden circa 1930, (c) John Goodwin Collection
At a Sunday market near the old Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam in 2018, there were many stalls selling photographs, artwork, paintings, and vintage pin badges in various designs, colours, and patterns. One photograph struck me as particularly interesting. I inquired about the picture, and when the Dutch stallholder learned I was from the UK, he wanted to argue with me about why the UK should exit the European Union. With other shoppers looking on and shaking their heads, the stallholder aimed to provoke a response. On holiday with my family and not wanting to engage in any debate, I made it clear I was only interested in the picture of a group. However, the interaction with the stallholder is a relevant detail as the image seemed to be a prescient ‘call back’ to debates of belonging, identity, of ‘ingroups’ and ‘outgroups’, of opportunities lost or at least unfulfilled and the dangers of nationalism.
The photograph was unsettling and gave me an uneasy feeling. The setting was familiar – a classroom or seminar room, as indicated by the chalkboard. The maths equations were unfamiliar and seemed too complex for a school. Those in the picture were students in their late teens or early twenties. It was difficult to judge by their fashion, but it might have been the late 1920s or late 1930s. The image has many similarities to other contemporary pictures. For example, the photography is similar in style, feel and tone to the photographs of Norbert Elias, alongside other students and academics, taken by Gisele Freund in the early 1930s (see Deutsches Literaturarchiv). Similarly, the images resonate with the photographs of the ‘Bauhaus women’, short hairstyles and dress designs that are reminiscent of a 1920s or 1930s aesthetic (see Otto and Rössler 2019).
The assumed date, the location, and the image of young intellectuals during a time of tragic upheaval in European society made me wonder what happened to those in the photograph. It was a photograph that connected the past, present, and (prophetically) possible European futures. Such reflection relates to broader sociological concerns of biography and autobiography within the lives of a displaced generation of intellectuals from Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.
Poetic Inquiry – What do you see?
Physics in Leiden: Ψ and Γ
An incidental find amongst a market stall’s ephemera
An arresting image, closely framed and dramatically lit to remember
Faces with an intense, direct gaze that fully commit to an aperture
Posed portrait, sober upright and formal, without temper for framing and tone
Possible futures will be postponed through mass flight
European hopes and pasts in one image, unknown
Sepia, not back and white; the outlook is unclear, but the appearance is still bright.
For now, high-collared, high ideals, high learning
Advanced theoretical physics or mathematics
Austere 1920s intellectualism, unsmiling
A student seminar group knowledge-based yearning
Geometric figures and Greek letters on a board, their backs are turning
An elite European institution like Amsterdam or Leiden
With Lorentz or Ehrenfest?
Varied attire but academically coded
In suits, ties, dresses, and blouses are dressed.
(c) John Goodwin 2025
References
Deutsches Literaturarchiv – https://www.dla-marbach.de/
Otto, E., & Rössler, P. (2019). Bauhaus women: A global perspective. Herbert press.
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