Lodewijk Grondijs

[1] Working as a teacher at the Dordrecht Technical Institute in 1914, he quit his post when the Great War broke out and secured a position as war-correspondent for the Dutch newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, traveling to Belgium.

Later in September 1915, he left for Russia at the invitation of general Aleksei Brusilov where he was allowed to accompany the Russian 8th Army as a correspondent of The Daily Telegraph.

He apparently respected the fighting qualities of the common Russian soldier and expressed his admiration numerous times in his articles.

And although an academic by profession, he seemed to relish the adventure and excitement of war-time journalism and of warfare itself; he is said to have taken active part in combat along with his Russian hosts on many occasions.

Oddly he appears to have found the time to obtain a doctor's degree in physics at the University of Kharkiv in 1917 on the thesis Elektromagnetische Feldgleichungen bewegter Systeme.

[1] After the Bolshevik victory he settled in Paris, becoming associated with the Laboratoire des recherches physiques and studying Byzantology and art history.

In the early 1920s he settled in Paris working for the Laboratoire des Recherches Physiques of the Sorbonne and studying history of arts and Byzantology.

In 1936-37 he was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, afterwards in 1939 accompanying the Hungarian army as it occupied Ruthenia, as a result of the Munich Agreement.

[1] His openly expressed appreciation of the bravery of Russian fighting-men, based upon his first-hand experiences during the Great War, did little to endear him to the occupying German and collaborating Netherlands authorities and he was dropped from favor, apparently narrowly missing incarceration because of these views.

[1] In 1941 he obtained his second doctor's degree at the Sorbonne with the thesis L'iconographie byzantine du Crucifié mort sur la croix.