First about that book, a coffee table book, the author says. It is 700 pages thick and weighs around four kilos. Gerard Stout wrote it in four languages: in Dutch, German, English, French and even a bit in Drents. Stout grew up in Erica without realizing that his parental home was once in the shade of a historic hotel. Only later in his life did he discover that there had been Hotel Hofhuis in the backyard of his birthplace: “I knew there was a deep well, which I still closed as a child, but I didn’t know the story behind that hotel,” says he.
His search for the history of Hotel Hofhuis brought Stout to the original owner: “Johan Wilhelm Hofhuis who had his ancestral roots in Neuenhaus in the county of Bentheim in the Kingdom of Hanover. Many members of his family emigrated to the Netherlands. Hofhuis Groef Turf, had farms And bought the hotel in Erica. The hotel was there until around 1930 and was subsequently demolished. The stones were reused for houses in the neighborhood, something that noticed later when Stout discovered that three white houses in the area were built from the hotel’s rubble.