HANS DE VALK Distance and Attraction: Dutch Aristocracy and the Political Right Wing in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 73–88 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 5 Distance and Attraction: Dutch Aristocracy and the Political Right Wing HANS DE VALK To take as a topic the attitude of the Dutch nobility towards the extreme political right in the interwar period presupposes that this can be treated as a case in its own right. Some preliminary ques- tions, therefore, have to be answered. What was the status of the Dutch nobility in the early twentieth century? Did it possess any special social and political influence? Can it be treated as a sepa- rate part of the country's upper class? Thereafter, a brief survey of the confusing political landscape of the Dutch extreme right will be necessary to provide the background against which to place aristocratic commitment. Aristocratic political engagement with the extreme right wing will then be looked at from a political and social point of view, in general and in three individual cases. As a result of the anomalous pattern of Dutch history, in 1900 the Dutch nobility differed from the nobilities of neighbouring countries with regard to its history, composition, and status. 1 In the sixteenth century, after a revolt against the King of Spain, the country had constituted itself as a republic. This has been described as a 'conservative revolution': ties with the past were not completely severed. In the Republic of the United Provinces, members of the princely House of Orange-Nassau acted as Stadholder (governor), thus keeping alive the notion of a 'virtual' king. The concept of nobility continued to exist and noble fami- lies had certain political privileges. No new ennoblements, 1 For the history of the Dutch nobility seeJ. Aalbers and M. Prak (eds.), De bloem der natie: Adel en patriciaat in de Noordelijke Nederlanden (Amsterdam, 1987); Y. Kuiper, 'Adel in Nederland', in E. A. Ketelaar-de Vries Reilingh and Y. Kuiper (eds.), Edel voor Adel (fhe Hague, 2000), 7,98. A study group on the history of Dutch nobility has been publishing the yearbook Vzrtus since 1993. Most publications focus on the period before 1800. 74 HANS DE VALK however, could take place because of the lack of a sovereign to grant them. This situation came to an end with the Batavian revolution of 1796. After almost two decades of indirect and direct French rule, in 1814 a monarchy was set up under the House of Orange. The nobility was now given constitutional status, while the king received the power to ennoble. In 1815, when the present Netherlands and Belgium temporarily merged into one kingdom, King William I felt that the number of high- ranking nobles in the southern (ex-Austrian) Netherlands needed to be balanced. He therefore promoted to hereditary noble status many of the families whose members had served as magistrates in the former influential northern city governments, granting them knighthoods or baronetcies. The existing noble families were raised to the peerage. In practice, there was little social difference between these two ranks. During the nineteenth century, other Dutch and foreign families were incorporated into the nobility. The political privileges exercised by the Provincial Nobility Councils (Ridderschappen) lasted until the middle of the century. In 1848, a new liberal constitution abolished these councils, but the special status of the nobility was maintained. From the beginning of the twentieth century, appointments to the nobility took place very rarely, thus raising the social value of existing titles. Just before the Second World War, in a population of 8 million, there were about 250 noble families totalling some 7,000 members. In the nineteenth century, a noble title was a sure sign of social distinction. With the Patriciaat of non-noble, distinguished fami- lies, 2 they made up the Dutch upper class. Since the early years of the twentieth century, their names could be found in the Red Book (for nobles) or the Blue Book (for the gentry). 3 Taken together, the political influence of these two groups was considerable. Up to 1913 they provided more than half the members of parliament and an even greater proportion of cabinet ministers. Nobles were well represented in the liberal and Protestant parties, and espe- cially in the Catholic party, among army and navy officers, and in the upper echelons of the civil service, in particular, the diplo- matic service. In the period between the wars, however, the aris- 2 The Dutch Patriciaat is not identical to the English 'patriciate', which implies noble status; 'gentry' is the nearest equivalent. 3 Thus called after the colour of their bindings; Nederland's Adelshoek (the Red Book) has been published since 1903, Nederland's Patriciaat (the Blue Book) since 1910. To be mentioned in the Bfue Book a family had to meet certain conditions of social standing. The Dutch Aristocracy 75 tocracy suffered a marked decline in political power. Of one hundred members of the lower house of parliament in 1917, thir- teen were nobles and twenty-two members of the Patriciaat, by 1937 these figures had been reduced to six in each case.4 This can be linked to a change in the electoral law in 1917, when the constituency system was replaced by proportional representation. Since then, party allegiance counted for more than status or networks of local and regional notables. It is tempting to think that the social status and influence of the Dutch nobility declined correspondingly. This is certainly what the government thought in 1947. After the Second World War, special tribunals were set up in the Netherlands to 'cleanse' insti- tutions and professional groups of those who had collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. A committee for the nobility, however, was regarded as unnecessary because of its lack of social significance.5 This may well be the case as far as members of the Patriciaat were concerned, but recent publications by Jaap Dronkers have shown that, surprisingly, the aristocracy has maintained a privileged position in Dutch society right up to the present day. 6 It has succeeded in doing so by using what he calls its socio-cultural capital and networks, and by cleverly adapting to changing circumstances. It reminds us of the advice given by the Prince of Salina's nephew Tancredi in Lampedusa's famous novel Il Gattopardo: everything has to change, so that everything can remain the same. When changes in the voting system reduced the effectiveness of existing political networks, members of the aristocracy shifted their attention to other fields, such as banking and industry. Distinguishing themselves in subtle ways from the bourgeoisie was one of the means used to keep themselves recognizable as a separate social group. 7 To be called 'middle class' is still one of 4 J. T. J. van den Berg, De toegang tot het Binnenhef: De maatschappelijke herkomst van de Tweede Kamer/,eden tussen 1849 en 1970 (Weesp, 1983), eh. 2, esp. 48-g. 5 L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, 14 vols. (The Hague, 1969-g1), xii. 464. 6 J. Dronkers, 'Is Nederlandse adel gedurende de twintigste eeuw maatschappelijk relevant gebleven?', Amsterdams sociologisch tijdschri.ft, 27 (2000), 233-68. Cf. id. and Huibert Schijf, 'The Transmission of Elite Positions among the Dutch Nobility During the Twentieth Century', in Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (eds.), Adel und Moderne: Deutsch/and im europiiischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 2004), 65-82. 7 Many interesting details about aristocratic lifestyle in the first half of the twentieth century, presented from a personal point of view, can be found in two recent books: HANS DE VALK the worst insults in noble circles. Intermarriage between noble families was another way of holding the titled elite together, and this included many foreign families. We may conclude that during the interwar years the Dutch aristocracy had more reason to be satisfied with its social status and influence than a superfi- cial appraisal of its diminishing political power might suggest. When we turn to the political background for a brief survey of the radical right in Dutch politics between the wars, we are reminded of a Dutch expression: two Dutchmen are enough to found a new denomination and three a political party. This applies to a large extent to the extreme right. It is impossible to outline here the history of all the different parties and move- ments, the many changing alliances between them, and the conflicts and schisms among them.8 Following the example of one of the best and most detailed monographs on the history of right-wing politics in the Netherlands,9 we can distinguish between two periods: before and after 1930. The period of 'normal fascism' from 1920 could be called 'the small crisis of democracy'. Many parties and movements arose, whose programmes ranged from ultra-conservative to straight, Italian-style fascist.