Wendela Bicker

Wendela Bicker (1659), portrait by Adriaen Hanneman

Wendela Bicker (baptized December 30, 1635 - July 1, 1668 ) was the wife of Johan de Witt .

Life

Overview of the main family relationships of the Amsterdam oligarchy around the families Boelens Loen , De Graeff , Bicker (van Swieten) , Witsen and Johan de Witt in the Golden Age .

As the daughter of Mayor Johan Bicker (1591-1653) and Agneta de Graeff van Polsbroek (1603-1656), she was a descendant of the two most influential Amsterdam families of the Dutch Golden Age . Wendela grew up in a city palace on Keizersgracht .

Wendela Bicker met her future husband Johan de Witt at a meeting between her uncle Cornelis de Graeff and the young statesman. De Witt had been the first man in the republic as a council pensioner since 1653 , but ran a “miserable bachelor household” in The Hague . Johan's father Jacob urged him to find a suitable wife, to start a family and a "proper household" with her. Wendela made this undertaking easier for him insofar as she presented herself as a "gentle woman of slim and graceful stature", "with blond curls and soft eyes". In the late summer of 1654, de Witt began to court her. The couple's wedding took place on February 16, 1655 in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. Holland's national poet Joost van den Vondel recited a poem written for the occasion at this celebration.

After the wedding, the young couple moved to The Hague, where de Witt worked as a pensioner for Holland and West Friesland in the Binnenhof - the old residence of the Counts of Holland. On the advice of the English ambassador Sir William Temple , the couple set up a large household with numerous servants and two liveried servants for the council pensioner in their new residence in the "Hofsingel" .

Wendela gave birth to eight children within twelve years of marriage, three of whom died young. She took her mother's job very seriously, ran the household herself and also looked after Johan's old father Jacob. In the long run, however, this exceeded their strength. When her two-year-old daughter Elisabeth died in June 1668, Wendela was at the end of her strength and she died after a four-day illness at the end of June or the beginning of July of the same year. On July 6, Wendela Bicker was buried in the family grave in Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk with a large participation of the population .

Many family members helped Johan de Witt by taking care of his five children - including Johan II. De Witt - during this difficult time . After de Witt's murder in the summer of 1672, Wendela's cousin Pieter de Graeff took care of the orphans .

Literature (excerpt)

• Herbert H. Rowen: John de Witt - Statesman of the "True Freedom". Cambridge University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-521-52708-2 .
• CA van Sypesteyn: Mededeelingen omtrent het huiselijk leven van Johan de Witt en zijne vrouw Wendela Bicker. Haagsche Stemmen 1 (1887/1888), pp. 155-167 and 245-255.
• Tjaherta Johanna Servatius: Wendela Bicker. In: Tjaherta Johanna Servatius (Ed.): Vrouwen uit onze historie. Callenbach, Nijkerk 1940, pp. 170-180.
• AMH Smeenge: Wendela Bicker. In: Jaarboek van het Genootschap Amstelodamum. Volume 35, ISSN  0923-0254 De Bussy, Amsterdam 1938, pp. 89-105.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography in the Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenes.
2. ↑ Lithography from the wedding  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.