Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (21 August 1801 – 19 May 1876), Dutch politician and historian, was born at Voorburg, near the Hague.

Groen is a Dutch historical icon. He was an educated and devout man of the Dutch middle class (his father, Petrus Jacobus Groen van Prinsterer, was a physician). Being a devout Christian, he never left the Dutch Reformed Church, the state church of the Netherlands and of its Royal Family, in spite of its sorry state, in his view. Being a gentleman, he mingled in , while also coming under the influence and then leading the evangelical renewal movement thriving at the time (the European Continental counterpart to the Second Great Awakening), known in the Netherlands as the Réveil.

He studied at Leiden University, and graduated in 1823 both as doctor of literature and LLD. From 1829 to 1833 he acted as secretary to William II of the Netherlands and during this time attended Brussels Protestant Church under pastor Merle d'Aubigne. Afterwards he took a prominent part in Dutch home politics, and gradually became the leader of the Anti Revolutionary Party, both in the Second Chamber of parliament, of which he was a member for many years, and as a political writer.

In Groen the doctrines of Guizot and Stahl found an eloquent exponent. They permeate his controversial and political writings and historical studies, of which his Handbook of Dutch History (in Dutch) and Maurice et Barnevelt (in French, 1875, a criticism of Motley's Life of Van Olden-Barnevelt) are the main works. Groen was ardently opposed to Thorbecke, whose principles he denounced as ungodly and revolutionary, i.e. inspired by the French Revolution. Although Groen lived to see these principles triumph in the constitutional reforms implemented by Thorbecke, he never ceased to oppose them until his death in 1876.

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