Josef Cohen

Born in Deventer in 1886 into a Jewish family, Josef Cohen grew up surrounded by local traditions and spent much of his youth roaming the countryside along the IJssel. Those early wanderings helped shape the regional feeling of his fiction and sparked his lifelong interest in legends and folk tales.

He began publishing while still young, worked briefly as a journalist, and later studied German language, literature, and philosophy in Göttingen. In the years that followed, he built a literary career with novels, songs, tales, and regional stories, including work set on the Salland heath and in the wider Overijssel landscape.

Alongside his writing, he became the first director of the public reading room and library in Groningen in 1914. That combination of author and librarian suited him well: he remained closely connected to books, readers, and storytelling throughout his life, and he died in 1965.