Tobie Goedewaagen

Tobie Goedewaagen
File:Tobie Goedewaagen 1941 HGA001002654.jpg Tobie Goedewaagen, September 1941
Monarch	Wilhelmina
Personal details
Born	(1895-03-15)15 March 1895 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	The Hague, Netherlands
Political party	National Socialist Movement

Tobie Goedewaagen (15 March 1895 – 4 January 1980) was a Dutch civil servant, philosopher, professor and poet. During World War II, from 1940 to 1943, he was secretary general at the Department of Public Information and the Arts, which had been established by German forces occupying the Netherlands. Among other things, he introduced censorship of culture and forced artists and journalists to become members of the Kultuurkamer, but also stimulated Dutch art. The latter policy continued after the war, and for several years he was a leading member of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB).

Biography

Early life and education

Goedewaagen was born in Amsterdam,the eldest son of the banker and founder of the Incasso Bank, Cornelis Tobie Goedewaagen (son of Tobias Goedewaagen) and Anna Bakker. Goedewaagen began his intellectual life by publishing poems in the literary magazine De Gids in 1916. He studied philosophy at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht under Professor B.J.H. Ovink and received his doctorate with him cum laude in 1923 with the thesis The Logical Justification of Morality with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

In 1925 Goedewaagen became a private lecturer in the history of post-Cantian philosophy in Utrecht, and with others founded The Society for Critical Philosophy and General Society of Philosophy. From 1917 to 1928 he was married to the artist Anni de Roos (1890–1974), who had previously married John Rädecker. They had two children. Goedewaagen became an influential editor (1931–1937) of the Journal of Philosophy (since 1933 General Dutch Journal of Philosophy and Psychology (ANTWP). In philosophy, Goedewaagen initially belonged to the movement of neo-Kantians of the Marburg School, which was banned in Germany in 1933.

Career overview

Goedewaagen also studied classical languages in Utrecht and gave private lessons in Greek and Latin, including to P. H. Ritter Jr. who initiated him into politics. Goedewaagen was not appointed at the university to succeed professor B.J.H. Ovink, which he had hoped for. In politics, he found affiliation with General C.J. Snijders' Alliance for National Reconstruction. In 1935 he joined the ranks of National Socialism, partly after reading Count De Gobineau and German racial theorists. Consequently, he later resigned as editor of the ANTWP and as a board member of the Society for Critical Philosophy. In 1936 he met Anton Mussert and became a contributor to Nieuw-Nederland, the theoretical journal of the NSB. He made a study tour of Germany in 1938, where he admired the NSDAP training institutions. He became a collaborator and later editor-in-chief of the magazine De Waag.

In the summer of 1940, Goedewaagen went public as a member of the NSB, although he had already joined around 1936. His internment on May 12, 1940 after the German invasion would contribute to further radicalization. Mussert bypassed earlier party members and made Goedewaagen press chief (September 16, 1940–August 25, 1941), head of the Higher Education Department of the NSB's Educators Guild and proxy in special service (both from Aug. 22, 1941–July 1942). Goedewagen's organizational talent was evident when he helped the German occupying forces as chairman of the Dutch Press Information Council (June 15, 1940) and as founder of the Association of Dutch Journalists (August 24, 1940).

Imperial Commissioner Seyss-Inquart appointed Goedewaagen secretary general of the new Department of Public Information and the Arts on November 28, 1940. On November 22, 1941, the Dutch Chamber of Culture was established to coordinate cultural life, with Goedewaagen as its chairman since November 25. De Schouw became the magazine of the Chamber in 1942, financed by the German Propaganda Ministry and with Goedewaagen as editor-in-chief. He establishied the Nederlandsche Omroep radio station on March 12, 1941. His Journalist Decree of May 2, 1941 forced all journalists to become members of the Association of Dutch Journalists. Screening of propaganda films and film censorship were covered by the Film Decree of August 20, 1941. Goedewaagen did raise artists' wages, organized prizes and fairs, and his department took the initiative to establish the Amsterdam Municipal Theater Company in 1941. After the war, his policy of government interference in culture continued, albeit from different principles. Goedewaagen's censorship persecuted modern, Jewish and foreign art and artists.

Goedewaagen's views on the role of the artist are evident in his speeches, for example:

The folk idea is a consequence of the idea of the unity and organic coherence of Life. It appeals to all artists and to all poets and prose artists, of whatever kind, without exception, to reflect on the connection with the folk lifestyle. The point is not that this sense of belonging should or could only be expressed in activist poetry or propaganda tactics. But an appeal is made to every writer, that in his attitude to life he directs himself to what unites all.

Goedewaagen moved toward the Greater German SS and thus came into conflict with the NSB's Dietary views. When Goedewaagen had to dismiss an incompetent NSB officer in his department, he was summoned by the Supreme Council of Discipline of the NSB, where he refused to appear. Mussert suspended Goedewaagen as an NSB member. On January 28, 1943, Goedewaagen was dismissed as secretary general and also appointed ordinary professor of theoretical philosophy, the history of philosophy and psychology except empirical psychology at the University of Utrecht. There students, who had signed the declaration of loyalty to the Germans, attended his lectures. Since July 8, 1941, he was formally an extraordinary professor of newer philosophy at Leiden University because of the Netherlands Foundation for the Promotion of the Study of National Socialism, but the closure of that university prevented him from teaching. In September 1944, he fled to Germany (Dolle Dinsdag). The German Minister of Education and Training, Bernhard Rust, supported Goedewaagen financially. At the time of the German surrender to the Allies, he was in Löhne (Westphalia).

The British Army arrested Goedewaagen in Germany on May 29, 1946, and extradited him to the Netherlands. The Special Court in The Hague sentenced him to 12 years in prison on December 15, 1948 (the demand was 15 years). He was also never allowed to hold public office again. Until May 1965, the Press Purification Commission did not allow him to develop any journalistic activities. But Goedewaagen was granted amnesty on April 17, 1952.

Later life

After that he gave private lessons and was a teacher at the Institute Vermazen in The Hague, for state exams HBS and gymnasium, where Kees van Kooten was one of his students. Under the pseudonym Theodor Meursen, he published in Germany in 1956 the volume Holland in the series Geistige Länderkunde. In its historical part, the Second World War was hardly mentioned and the German occupation not at all. In 1980 he published Aufruf der Religion. Grundriß der Religion.

Works

• "Verzen," De Gids, No. 80 (1916)
• De logische rechtvaardiging der zedelijkheid bij Fichte, Schelling en Hegel (1923)
• Philosophie en wereldbeschouwing. Haar wezen en verhouding (1925)
• Idee en historie (1926)
• Criticisme en godsdienst (1931)
• Summa contra metaphysicos. Einführung zum System der Philosophie (1931)
• Nietzsche (1933)
• Het spectrum der philosophie in de twintigste eeuw (1933)
• Wat is een volk? (1935)
• "Dialectische wetenschapsleer," Algemeen Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie (ANTW), No. 29 (1935/ 1936), pp 235–50.
• "De mythe in de cultuur," ANTW, No. 30 (1936/1937), pp. 221–38.
• "Van het Humanisme naar het Klassiek Nationalisme," Nieuw Nederland, No. 3 (1936/1937), pp. 414–33.
• "De beweging der gemeenschap," De Gids, No. 104 (1940)
• Nationale Opvoeding (1940)
• Passer en Speer. Cultuurpolitieke redevoeringen. Eerste reeks (1941)
• De kunst der volksvoorlichting (1941; with Willem Goedhuys)
• Keurjaarboek 1932-1942 : met een keur van werkstukken van vele auteurs in ons fonds (1942; with Cornelis Bonnes Hylkema et al.)
• De organisatorische opbouw der Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer (1942)
• Passer en Speer. Cultuurpolitieke redevoeringen. Tweede reeks (1943)
• Holland (1956; editor, under the pen name Theodor Meursen)
• Aufruf der Religion. Grundriß der Religion (1980)

References

• Berkel, Benien van (2012). Dr. Tobie Goedewaagen (1895-1980). Een leven lang nationaal-socialist. Amsterdam: Proefschrift.
• Berkel, Benien van (2013). Tobie Goedewaagen (1895-1980): een onverbeterlijke nationaalsocialist. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij.
• Gerritse, Theo (2007). Collaboreren voor een betere wereld. De memoires van vier Nederlandse nationaal-socialisten. Soesterberg: Aspekt monografie.
• Lewin, Lisette (1983). Het clandestiene boek 1940-1945. Amsterdam: Van Gennep.

External links

• Works by Tobie Goedewaagen at Digital Library for Dutch Literature