Dutch journalist and writer. Van Hasselt was the son of bacteriologist Dr Jan Albert van Hasselt (1880-1951) and Catharina Johanna Geertruida Clasina Cool (1894-1987). He studied history and Modern Greek at the University of Amsterdam and visited Greece for the first time in 1951 with a study group. In 1959 he settled permanently in Athens as a correspondent for the Algemeen Handelsblad, later TVNZ for Greece and Turkey from 1967. In 1994 he retired. Nevertheless, he still wrote regularly reports for the newspaper, as about the Greek Crisis of 2010. With the establishment of the military dictatorship in 1967, Frans van Hasselt was expelled by the regime. The seven years that followed were spent in Istanbul, from where he continued his reporting on Greece, while his knowledge of Turkey deepened. Since that time, he had homes in both in Athens and Istanbul. Frans van Hasselt died on February 25 2011 at the age of 83 in his sleep at his home in Athens.
