On February 23, 1881, Anno Sjoerd Brandsma was born in the Ugo Monastery, near Bolsward. He was the fifth of six children, five of whom would enter the monastery.
His family was of a very old Frisian farming family. As a pupil, he attended the gymnasium of the Franciscans in Megen from 1892 to 1898. In 1898 he entered the novitiate of the Carmelite Fathers in Boxmeer. Here he chooses the monastic name Titus and under that name he has been known ever since.
The following few years, the young Brandsma spent in Rome, the center of the Catholic faith. He studied philosophy in the 'caput mundi' at the Pontifical University Gregoriana. After a study of more than three years, Titus Brandsma returned to the Netherlands. He moved to Oss and became a teacher and editor-in-chief of the newspaper 'De Stad Oss'.
His ecclesiastical and social commitment ensured that Brandsma was appointed professor at the University of Nijmegen in 1923. The native Frisian held various positions for ten years and then became rector magnificus, the head of the university. Queen Wilhelmina delighted Titus Brandsma on October 3, 1939 with a title: Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
In January 1942, the priest was arrested by the Germans for resisting Nazism. After he was imprisoned in various Dutch prisons, he ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. There he died on Sunday 26 July 1942, a few weeks after his arrival.
