Carel Gerretson

Vocation

Dutch writer, essayist, historian, and politician. Gerretson was a professor of colonial history at the University of Utrecht. He published a number of books on the petroleum industry, with works such as Geschiedenis der "Koninklijke" and a history of Royal Dutch, before branching out into other areas. Using the pseudonym Geerten Gossaert, Gerretson also became noted as a poet with his work De moeder receiving regular reprints. He also published works under the name Arthur Lawick. Gerretson's nationalist principles led him to politics and he initially was associated with the conservative Calvinist Christian Historical Union (CHU) before moving to the fascist politics of the National Union, of which he was one of the founders in 1925. He was elected to the Senate of the States-General of the Netherlands in 1951 for the CHU as a representative for South Holland and served in the first parliamentary commission for foreign policy, where he was in disagreement with the spirit of decolonisation that pervaded in the commission. He died in Utrecht on 27 October 1958, aged 74. Link to Wikipedia biography