Johan Herman Carp

Vocation

Notable

Traits

Family

Dutch Spinozist and jurist who became a civil Nazi employee. He was the son of Eugène Antoine Désiré Emile Carp (1868-1926), a lieutenant-general of artillery. His mother was Jeanne Henriette Bezoet de Bie (1869-1926). Because of the job of their father, he and his after his younger brother Eugène moved a lot. His talented brother Eugène Carp jr. studied medicine in Leiden and became a noted psychiatrist and writer. Johan studied Law in Leiden and after his dissertation in 1921 would become a prominent Spinozist . But he never showed any interest in ethics, but used elements of Spinoza’s philosophy for his public law theory which he based on principles of Authority and Community derived from Spinoza’s writings. In the thirties and forties, the jurist Carp even more became a philosopher of the praxis, who drafted a political programme of NSB and a concept treaty for a federation of Nordic fascist states. Before WW2, Carp was head of department at the provincial Registry of South Holland. Gradually he became the main theorist of the fascist National Socialist Movement (NSB). As a personal friend and adviser of NSB leader Anton Mussert, he had much influence. He married their shared lover Maria Kerkhoven. He last met Mussert on the night of 5 to 6 May 1946, where he said goodbye to his friend Mussert before his execution. Both Carp and Mussert were politically seen fascists, strongly believing in law and order, who opposed anarchy and Bolshevism. This they had with the German Naz's in common. But they also became political (words only) opponents of the rough SS state terror methods that the state commissioner Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart introduced in 1943. The Austrian jurist Seyss-Inquart introduced the revenge method "represaille" as a legitimate method to combat the Dutch resistance (anarchists and communists in his eyes ). For any in combat killed German soldier or murdered Nazi sympathizer, many more preventively kept hostage innocent but not Nazi Dutch civilians would be executed (Operation Silbertanne). Of course this method of revenge could not stop the cat and mouse actions on both sides. Carp's civil protest in the NSB party paper "Volk en Vaderland" (People and Fatherland) of 7 May 1943 "the judgment of history "- about Schimmelpenninck and the French Revolution, erupted a a long smoldering conflict between the NSB and the Dutch SS. On 14 May Waffen-SS politician Henk Feldmeijer accused the Kant and Hegel philosopher Carp of anti-German sympathies in De Storm. And Carp was denied the right to publish. Feldmeijer was appointed by Rauter as the head of the death squad "Sonderkommando Feldmeijer" , a special unit consisting of 15 SS-members. The killings started autumn 1943 in Meppel and Staphorst and ended September 1944, partly thanks to public protests of NSB politicians like Mussert and Carp. Carp was sentenced on 9 March 1946 to 12 years prison for being the president of the "Vredegerechtshof" (Peace Court) during WW2. He never published anything more after his trial.. He died on 18 November 1979 in Den Haag. Link to Dutch Wikipedia