Adrianus Cornelis de Bruijn

Adrianus Cornelis de Bruijn (1952)

Adrianus Cornelis de Bruijn (born November 5, 1887 in Utrecht , † September 19, 1968 in The Hague ) was a Dutch trade union leader and politician.

Life

De Bruijn first did an apprenticeship as a metalworker and then went to Germany for some time to train as a copper fitter. After his return, he initially worked in his teaching profession and began his trade union career in the Catholic Metalworking Association in 1908. In 1914 de Bruijn was appointed treasurer and finally a year later chairman. In 1925 he took over the chairmanship of the RK Werkliedenverbond (RKWV) (Roman Catholic Workers' Association), which had emerged from a merger of two organizations. De Bruijn held this position until the association dissolved itself in 1941, i.e. during the German occupation in World War II . This went back to an episcopal instruction, according to which Catholics were no longer permitted to join nazified trade union movements.

In addition to the trade union area, de Bruijn was also increasingly politically active, so he belonged to the municipal council of Utrecht from 1919 to 1923 and became a member of the new RK Staatspartij (RKSP) . From 1927 to 1929 he was represented in the parliament of the province of Utrecht and then moved to the Dutch Senate , to which he was a member until 1952, the year he was appointed minister.

In 1944 de Bruijn was together with the former Minister for Social Affairs, Carl Romme , the main initiator of the re-establishment of the daily newspaper de Volkskrant, which has not been published since 1941 . While Romme became second editor-in-chief alongside Joop Lücker, de Bruijn took on the role of chairman of the Katholieke Arbeiders Bewegungsing (KAB) , which had been founded as the successor organization to the RKWV and was now the publisher of de Volkskrant. He was also one of the co-founders of the Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP), the successor party of the RKSP . Political conflicts with Romme, who had been party chairman and faction leader of the KVP since 1946, led to his resignation from the chief editor of de Volkskrant in 1952, while de Bruijn himself became a minister without portfolio in the Drees cabinet in the same year and held this position until 1956.

After the KVP had caused the resignation of its own Prime Minister Jo Cals in October 1966 when it rejected the state budget together with the opposition, de Bruijn advised the workers of the KVP to leave their party and join newly formed parties such as the B. to convert the PPR (merged into GroenLinks in 1990 ). De Bruijn had already threatened to found a Catholic workers' party, as the disputes over the direction had already become clear before the end of the Cal cabinet.

Web links

Commons : Adrianus Cornelis de Bruijn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography in the "Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbewegung in Nederland" (BWSA) (Dutch)