Born in Noordwijk on 24 December 1869, Roland Holst was brought up in the affluent, liberal Christian family of the notary Theodore Willem van der Schalk and Anna Ida van der Schalk-van der Hoeven. Roland Holst attended four years of boarding school in Velp and studied French in Liege. Roland Holst soon came to develop a talent as a poet. She married the artistRichard Roland Holst in 1896 and befriended the poet Herman Gorter, who prompted her to read Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Around this time she became politically active and began her career as a writer on political, historical and philosophical fields.
Poetry
Around 1890, Henriette met Albert Verwey, who with Willem Kloos was among the leaders of the Tachtigers and the founders of De Nieuwe Gids. In 1892 she met the painter Jan Toorop. She wrote about Toorop and Verwey in her first sonnets. In these poems she showcased her intense needs as an artist, more precisely: as a poet.
Socialism
At the age of 27 Roland Holst joined the SDAP. She was then working night after night in smoky halls calling for workers' struggle to improve their miserable fate. She became part of the party leadership and, in 1900, was delegated to the Second International. At the conferences of the International, she came into contact with prominent Marxists such as Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leon Trotsky. In 1911, Roland Holst had joined as an orthodox Marxist in the SDAP. Unlike most other orthodox Marxists, she did not immediately move over to the Social-Democratic Party. Against the advice of Rosa Luxemburg in some years she remained non-partisan. She founded in 1915, along with a number of SDAP and SDP members, the Revolutionair Socialistische Vereeniging. While in the CPN, she sided with Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, and the left communist fraction of the party. "Rode Jet" also played a role during the revolutionary turmoil of November 1918. On 13 November she went with David Wijnkoop at the head of a procession on the Orange-Nassau barracks in Amsterdam, to celebrate the brotherhood with the hussars. Intervention by the security forces resulted in two dead, the only victims of the "revolution that did not happen". In 1927 she broke with the CPN. She later joined the Communist Workers' Party of the Netherlands, a council communist party.
Henriette had deep slumps. She suffered from depression, bouts of anorexia, anemia and heart disease but when she was well she struggled with an unrelenting zeal to improve the position of workers, youth, and women. Her first poems were passionately for socialism. She wrote among other things, the Dutch text for the anthem "The Internationale". Later, her work took a more religious character. Among her writings were plays, biographies, journalism, and radio plays. During the Second World War she was active in the Dutch resistance, as editor of the resistance magazine De Vonk, then De Vlam. Though of a well to do background, she was certainly not a "salon socialist". At the end of her life she wrote the autobiography Het vuur brandde voort. She died in Amsterdam on 21 November 1952 at the age of 82. A bust was placed in her memory in her birthplace of Noordwijk in 1969.
Works
Poetry collections:
het Jeugdwerk .
Sonnetten en Verzen in Terzinen geschreven; original edition and Scheltema Holkema's Bookshop, Amsterdam, 1896.
Reprinted in simpler form of being. WL and J. Brusse, Rotterdam in 1913 and 1922 and out. BZZTôH, The Hague 1983. Political work: .
De groote spoorwegstaking, de vakbeweging en de SDAP, Den Haag 1903.
Algemeene werkstaking en sociaaldemocratie, Rotterdam 1906.
De opstandelingen, Een lyrisch treurspel in drie bedrijven, Amsterdam 1910.
De philosophie van Dietzgen en hare beteekenis voor het proletariaat, Rotterdam 1910.
Revisionistische en Marxistische tactiek in de kiesrecht-beweging, Rotterdam 1910.
De strijdmiddelen der sociale revolutie, Amsterdam 1918.
De revolutionaire massa-aktie. Een studie, Rotterdam 1918.
De daden der Bolschewiki, Amsterdam 1919.
Verslag van het Derde Internationale Communistische Congres, 1921.
, 1921.
Communisme en moraal, Arnhem 1925.
Kapitaal en Arbeid in Nederland, Rotterdam 1932.
Herman Gorter, Amsterdam 1933.
Rosa Luxemburg. Haar leven en werk, Rotterdam 1935.
