Bart FM Droog
(born in Emmen, 1966) is a poet,
investigative journalist, publisher and
taxi driver.
As a poet, he
gained fame with the internationally
operating poetry and music group Dichters uit Epibreren
(Poets from Epibreren, 1994-2011). Jan Klug was the
group's musician. In 2003 the group
received the Johnny van Doornprijs
voor de Gesproken Letteren.
Droog was
Groningen's first official city poet
(2002-2005) and spiritual father of the Lonely Funeral
(Eenzame uitvaart
/ Einsame Beerdigung),
a project in which poets write and recite
poems at funerals of people with no
traceable next of kin. He was also the
municipality poet of his birthplace Emmen
(2008-2010).
As publisher he launched the works
on these lists.
As an investigative journalist, he
and his colleague Jaap van den Born became
internationally renowned for their
publications on watercolours, paintings and
poems wrongly attributed to Hitler, also
known as 'The Hitler Forgery
Industry'. Their research resulted in
2019 in the seizure by the German police of
some 60 fake Hitler paintings.
With Van den Born and Munich
professors Christian Fuhrmeister and Stephan
Klingen, he wrote the chapter ‘Zur
Beurteilung von (Reproduktionen von) Adolf
Hitler zugeschriebenen Skizzen im
Teilbestand <<Auftrag Speer>>’,
for the book Der Aufrag Speer der
Staatlichen Bildstelle Berlin, Zur
wissenschaftlichen Erschließung eines
fotografischen Bestandes im Messbildarchiv
des Brandenburgischen Landesamtes für
Denkmalpflege und Archäologischen
Landesmuseums (2022)
He also researched and published
about murders,
war
victims, plagiarism cases (for
instance 1, 2, 3 and 4) and related
matters.
Since February 2024, Droog also
works as a taxi driver.He lives in Eenrum,
in the North of Groningen province in the
Netherlands.