Alphons Diepenbrock

Brought up in a prosperous Catholic family, although he showed musical ability as a child, the expectation was that he would enter a university rather than a conservatory.

And so he studied classics at the University of Amsterdam, gaining his doctorate cum laude in 1888 with a dissertation in Latin on the life of Seneca.

Apart from the Ancient Greek dramatists and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, he was inspired by, among others, Goethe, Novalis, Vondel, Brentano, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, Baudelaire and Verlaine.

Throughout his life, Diepenbrock continued his interests in the wider cultural sphere, remaining a classics tutor and publishing works on literature, painting, politics, philosophy and religion.

On 8 August 1895 in Rosmalen he married Lady Wilhelmina Elisabeth Cornelia Petronella de Jong van Beek en Donk.