Johan Valckenaer

Johan Valckenaer (Franeker, 21 January 1759 - outside Bennebroek, 1821) was a Dutch lawyer, patriot and diplomat.

His father Lodewijk Caspar Valckenaer was Franeker university's professor of law and, in 1766, was appointed to succeed Tiberius Hemsterhuis at Leiden. Johan, in the meantime, had become deeply interested in classical and French writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. He graduated in 1781. His family was related to the Luzacs, publishers of the internationally renowned newspaper "Gazette de Leyde" - Emilie Luzac and her father Johan were Valckenaer's cousins.

In 1782, Valckenaer was appointed to the College of Franeker, but in May 1787 was discharged for his membership of an exercitiegenootschap. He got an appointment in Utrecht, then a democratic Patriot stronghold. At the beginning September Valckenaer tried in vain to organize a force to hold back Frisian state members under the leadership of Court Lambertus van Beyma, trying to create an alternative Provincial States at Franeker. A few weeks later, after the raid on the Netherlands by a Prussian army, many patriots fled in the first place to Amsterdam, then to Brussels and Saint-Omer in northern France. The most important Patriots, such as Wybo Fijnje, H. W. Daendels, Adam Gerard Mappa and Valckenaer lived temporarily in a castle in Watten and formed a kind of commune, that jointly bought a billiards set, restored the rooms and grew its own vegetables.

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