Ode to Ida Last ter Haar | You were an educational pioneer

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Hello Ida Last – ter Haar,

Like many Amsterdammers, you were born somewhere else. In Sneek in 1893. You became a social worker in Rotterdam. In 1930, you became an inspector at the Amsterdam Playground Association and supervised volunteers in playgrounds and clubhouses. A few years later, you were in Moscow and saw the children's theater of Natalia Sats. You saw how children themselves were challenged to give their input in the process of a theater performance. That was completely different from the Netherlands, where children still obediently carried out what adults told them to do when they had to perform. You started your own youth theater group, the Vrolijke Brigade in 1933 and started working in a way that rewarded the self-awareness and initiative of children. The Vrolijke Brigade included street children from the Kinkerbuurt and the Jordaan, but also other children from left-wing families. They performed in Amsterdam, but also in other places in the Netherlands, Flanders and Denmark. The children showed tricks, circus acts, telling jokes, shadow play, songs, and texts made up of improvisations on themes from their lives. The Amsterdam police always wanted to see the texts that the children used first.

Your partner, Jef Last, turned out to be gay, but you decided to stay married. You respected his orientation and continued your relationship. But later he fought in foreign military service, in the Spanish Civil War, and lost his Dutch nationality. You stayed together, but divorced, so that this did not automatically happen to you either. In the meantime you had three daughters and you were the breadwinner. Even when you got married, you realized that this man would never provide the regular income that was needed for a family. A remarkable insight in a time when male dignity was still very much intertwined with the money that was earned to support the family. After the Second World War you were able to remarry.

In 1949 you organized a clubhouse for Pro Juventute on the Frederiksplein. There Circus Elleboog started with the same principles as the Vrolijke Brigade; the possibilities of the children, their own input and sense of responsibility. You gathered people around you who could teach the children things. Until 1960 you were in charge and in that year you were appointed Knight in the Order of Orange Nassau. Circus Elleboog would have existed for 70 years.

In 1969 you went with Jef to the Rosa Spierhuis in Laren. He died and in 1972 you came back to Amsterdam and lived in the Flevohuis until your death in 1982.