Piet Meertens

Vocation

Traits

Dutch scholar of literature, dialects and ethnology. His father Karel Meertens was a grocer, who became an insurance agent when Piet was young. His mother Adriana Jacomina Mak stimulated Piet to study. He studied Dutch languages and graduated on the literary life in Zeeland in the 16th and 17th centuries, under C.G.N. de Vooys. Meertens was a progressive Christian, and a member of the small Christian Democratic Union. In the 1920s, when in Utrecht, he was a member of the board of the Dutch Association of Vegetarians. He was sympathetic to the anti-militaristic strain in the Dutch Reformed Church, and visited prisoners as part of a missionary organization. Christian-Socialist friends of his were journalist Henk van Randwijk, preachers Willem Banning and Jan Buskes, and the poet Fedde Schurer. From 1938 on he was active in the Comité van Waakzaamheid, an association of artists and intellectuals inspired by Menno ter Braak which opposed the rise of fascism and nazism. P.J. Meertens stood model for A.P. Beerta in J. J. Voskuil's novel cycle Het Bureau, which resembles Meertens Institute. Meertens died 28 October 1985 in Amstelveen. Link to Wikipedia