Willem Bilderdijk

Who was Willem Bilderdijk?

Willem Bilderdijk, Dutch poet, the son of an Amsterdam physician. When he was six years old an accident to his foot incapacitated him for ten years, and he developed habits of continuous and concentrated study. His parents were ardent partisans of the House of Orange-Nassau, and Bilderdijk grew up with strong monarchical and Calvinistic convictions.

After studying at Leiden University, Bilderdijk obtained his doctorate in law in 1782, and began to practise as an advocate at The Hague. Three years later he contracted an unhappy marriage with Rebecca Woesthoven. He refused in 1795 to take the oath to the administration of the new Batavian Republic, and was consequently obliged to leave the Netherlands. He went to Hamburg, and then to London, where his great learning procured him consideration.

There he had as a pupil Katharina Wilhelmina Schweickhardt, the daughter of the Dutch painter Heinrich Wilhelm Schweickhardt and herself a poet. When he left London in June 1797 for Braunschweig, this lady followed him, and after he had formally divorced his first wife they were married.

In 1806 he was persuaded by his friends to return to the Netherlands, where the Batavian Republic had been replaced by a monarchy, the first king being Louis Bonaparte, a brother of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon kindly received Bilderdijk and made him his librarian, and a member and eventually president of the Royal Institute. Bilderdijk also taught the king Dutch, although -on one occasion- he told his people that he was the "Konijn van 'Olland", rather than "Koning van Holland", because he had difficulty mastering the pronunciation.