Jan Woltjer

Who was Jan Woltjer?

Jan Woltjer was a professor of Classical languages and literature at the VU University in Amsterdam.

Woltjer, the son of a baker, started his career as an assistant teacher at a high school in his hometown of Groningen in 1867. He taught himself Latin and managed to enter the University of Groningen in 1871. While teaching classical languages at a local gymnasium, he wrote his dissertation on Lucretius and was promoted in 1877. On September 28 that year he married Marchien Janssonius. In 1881 he moved to Amsterdam to become professor at the Free University, which position he would keep until his death in 1917. He was involved in many educational organizations and was a member of the Senate for the Anti Revolutionaire Partij from 1902 to 1917. His oldest son, Robert H. Woltjer, would follow him teaching classical studies at the Free University. His son Jan Woltjer Jr would become a well-known astronomer.

Along his many other students, including Herman Dooyeweerd, Woltjer had a formidable influence on future professor of philosophy, D. H. Th. Vollenhoven, who used his training in Greek and Latin to make first of all a minutely detailed study of the Fragments of the Presocratics.