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In Dutch, "Kunst means Art". It is a versatile term used to describe creative expression, fine arts, and personal skill or craftsmanship.
Preface from the Book
By Peter Nelson
When I first met Harmanna Kunst, our connection quickly evolved into a meaningful friendship. I was drawn to her straightforward nature and the quiet strength of her character- a woman whose life is defined by unwavering devotion and a sacred vow to her husband, Johannes Kunst: to protect his art and preserve his legacy.
As our friendship grew, she introduced me to Johannes’ art. What began as an encounter with a stranger’s work soon became something far deeper. I began to see not only the beauty and complexity of his art, but the symbolic language of a man who used creation as a means of survival.
Johannes was born into a world defined by the rhythmic “click-clack” of Nazi boots against the bricks of Leeuwarden. His story offers a vital parallel to that of Anne Frank. While they shared the same occupied soil and the same looming shadow of the Holocaust, Johannes represents the non-Jewish Dutch child who was not hidden away but forced to walk the streets of a strangled nation. Where Anne was confined to her “Secret Annex,” Johannes found refuge in his grandparents’ attic in Opeinde.
This attic was not a place of hiding, but a sovereign sanctuary. Like Anne, Johannes carried the urgent need of a child at war- to make sense of a fractured world. Where she used a pen to record reality, Johannes used imagination to transform it. In those rafters, he built a “safe world,” replacing the language of war with a personal vocabulary of symbols. If a pen records a story, imagination preserves the soul until it is ready to heal.
That attic became the foundation of his life’s work.
Johannes witnessed what no child should: the hollow eyes of hunger and the silent terror of occupation. At the war’s end, as Canadian soldiers entered the city, he watched young men- boys not much older than himself- fall into the same grass, regardless of uniform. In that moment, he understood something profound: they were all simply “young and hurt.” That realization became the root of a lifelong compassion that would define his work. Johannes painted every day, not as a discipline, but as necessity. For him, art was breath.
To know Harmanna today is to understand the devotion that sustained them through five years of separation and 52 years of marriage. Since Johannes' passing, she has become the sole steward of his legacy- meticulously preserving thousands of works and safeguarding the letters that once bridged an ocean. Her commitment is not abstract; it is lived, daily, and unwavering.
My role as Legacy Manager of the Johannes Kunst Archive is not simply professional- it is personal. I came to understand that I was not managing a collection, but protecting a survival story told through paper and canvas. Through Johannes' work, I came to know the man himself.
This book is an effort to bring that story into the light- from the quiet attic in Opeinde to the vast body of work he created over a lifetime.
Today, that work continues through three guiding pillars: preservation, visibility, and legacy. Every effort helps ensure that Johannes’ voice is not lost to time but shared with the world he spent a lifetime observing.
Johannes once said, “War is something I have thought about every day of my life.”
Through these pages, I invite you to see what he saw- and to discover the beauty that can still emerge from even the darkest human experience.