author
Arnold Aletrino
1858–1916
A Dutch writer and physician from the influential Tachtigers circle, he brought literary sensitivity and medical curiosity to the same page. He is also remembered for early, unusually humane writing about homosexuality at a time when such work was rare.
1 Audiobook
Hermaphrodisie en Uranisme
by Arnold Aletrino
About the author
Born in Amsterdam in 1858, Arnold Aletrino was a Dutch writer, physician, and criminologist of Sephardic Jewish background. He became associated with the Tachtigers, the group of late 19th-century Dutch authors who pushed for a more personal and modern literary style.
Alongside his literary work, Aletrino trained and worked as a doctor, and that scientific background shaped much of his nonfiction. He wrote on criminal anthropology and also published studies of homosexuality in Dutch and French, arguing against the idea that it should be treated simply as moral failure or degeneration. That made him an unusual and important voice in early sexological and social debate.
He died in Switzerland in 1916. Today, he is remembered not only as a novelist and essayist, but also as a figure who linked literature, medicine, and a more compassionate view of human difference.