Victor Henri Rutgers
Victor Henri Rutgers (born December 16, 1877 in 's-Hertogenbosch , † February 5, 1945 in Bochum ) was a Dutch lawyer , university professor , politician and resister against the German occupation during World War II .
biography
Victor Henri Rutgers came from two educated families: his grandfather A. Rutgers was a professor of Hebrew and the Old Testament at the University of Leiden , his father a professor of church history and canon law at the Free University of Amsterdam . His grandfather Victor Henri Guye from Neuchâtel was a Walloon pastor in Maastricht , Groningen and Amsterdam . At a young age, Rutgers spent some time with his grandfather in Switzerland for health reasons and has since felt connected to the Reformed Protestantism of the French-speaking cantons there. In 1904 he married and had four daughters with his wife.
Rutgers studied law at the Free University, the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam and graduated in 1902 with his doctorate. From 1902 to 1925 he worked as a lawyer in Amsterdam and Hilversum , was a member of the City Council of Hilversum, the Provincial Council of North Holland and the Provinciale and Gedeputeerde states of South Holland . From 1912 to 1925 he sat as a member of the Anti-Revolutionaire Partij in the Dutch parliament, from 1919 to 1925 as parliamentary group leader . From 1915 to 1919 he was mayor of Boskoop . He also wrote numerous articles for magazines, but also reports for the government. In 1925, Prime Minister Hendrikus Colijn appointed Rutgers Minister for Education, Art and Science . However, his term of office only lasted 216 days because the government collapsed after a crisis.
Victor Henri Rutgers then ended his political career and concentrated on his activities as a professor of Roman and constitutional law and as a representative of the Netherlands at the League of Nations . In 1932 he was chairman of the Dutch delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference .
In 1933 Rutgers gave a rectorate speech in which he denounced the changes in criminal law in Germany by the National Socialists . At the International Congress for Criminal Law and Prison System in Berlin in 1935 , he gave a speech against the elimination of the principle in German criminal law that no act is punishable if it is not regarded as criminal in an existing law. In his lectures he warned against the Nazi state doctrine . As chairman of the Protestantsch Hulpcomité voor Uitgewekenen om Ras en Geloof , he helped refugees from Germany. After the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht , he became involved in the resistance, in which he tried, among other things, to unite the political parties of the Netherlands in the resistance. He complained that the Germans wanted to "destroy our culture". In August 1940 he gave a speech in front of 17,000 listeners in Amsterdam's Apollo Hall , in which he refused that “dat de denkbeelden die over de grens de toon aangeven nu ook de onze had been” (Eng. = “... that the views who set the tone across the border must now also become ours ”). He and other speakers were then arrested.
Rutgers was arrested by the Germans three times; from April 1 to September 3, 1943, he sat in the Oranjehotel in Scheveningen due to a mix-up of names . He also wrote articles for the underground newspaper Trouw, founded by his son-in-law Sieuwert Bruins Slot . In April 1944 it was decided that he should go to England to inform the Dutch government in exile about the situation in the Netherlands. Together with four other men, including the biologist Lourens Baas Becking , he boarded a boat in Dordrecht , but the engine failed 40 kilometers from the coast. For two and a half days, during which Rutgers tried to keep his companions happy with riddles and stories, the boat drifted at sea until it was finally driven back to the Dutch coast and picked up by a German patrol boat. Rutgers and his companions were arrested by the Germans. He was sentenced to two years in prison and taken to the Bochum prison. There he died on February 5, 1945 at the age of 67, probably as a result of exhaustion and abuse.
Honors
In 1922 Rutgers was made a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion , and in 1931 he was awarded the Order of Orange-Nassau . On May 9, 1946, he was posthumously honored with the Verzetskruis (German = resistance cross).
Today streets in five cities in the Netherlands are named after Victor Henri Rutgers. A species of rhododendron also bears his name: Dr. VH Rutgers Catawba Rhododendron .
Web links
- Mr. VH Rutgers. Parlement en Politiek, accessed November 28, 2014 (Dutch).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d W.F. de Gaay Fortman: Rutgers, Victor Henri (1877-1945). In : Biographical Woordenboek van Nederland . November 12, 2013, accessed November 26, 2014 (Dutch).
- ↑ a b c d e Victor Henri Rutgers. Instituut vor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- and Genocidestudies, accessed on November 27, 2014 (Dutch).
- ↑ Rutgers, Victor Henri. ww2awards.com, accessed November 29, 2014 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rutgers, Victor Henri |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch lawyer, university professor, politician and resistance activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 16, 1877 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | 's-Hertogenbosch |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 5, 1945 |
| Place of death | Bochum |