A Brill Calendar: November 14

Robert Fruin and the Dutch Historical Pantheon

Few well-educated people embrace academic study of the historical past as preparation for a career in adult life after high-school.

To them, knowledge and insight concerning Clio, (Muse of professional historians), is usually little more than a hurdle to be taken in a race often associated with rats.

It is seldom that these young scholars are introduced to the notion that the authors of history-books on any level of sophistication and specialization were once children of historical processes and constellations themselves. Preciously little is written by professional historians – anywhere & anytime – that can be considered to be ‘timeless’ in the loftiest sense of that word.

In the Netherlands the towering figure of the historian Robert Jacobus Fruin is a typical example of this perspective on historiography. When he was born in Rotterdam, on November 14, 1823, the study of the documented past wasn’t yet formally entrenched in academic curricula. Young Fruin studied the time-honoured course of Linguistics & Literature at Leyden University in the early ‘forties and after 1848 taught at a ‘Gymnasium’ in The Hague, preparing youngsters for High Education. In 1860 however, he returned to his Alma Mater as the first Professor ever of ‘Vaderlandse Geschiedenis’.

The adjective preceding the noun involves something different than ‘national’; while the word ‘fatherland’ is one that has tenuous, often hostile connotations in English usage. During Fruin’s tenure of this Chair, lasting until 1895, a historical pantheon was created for a national state proclaimed in 1813, a state boasting a monarch ruling under a constitution.

The emergence of history as a pillar of Academia – establishing itself a little earlier in northern German lands – tallies chronologically with the first century of a brand-new Kingdom, one in need of a pedigree. For its indispensable history, Robert Fruin acted as Patriarch.