A Brill Calendar: October 10

Two Brill Brothers

Few personal affiliations exceed the strength of the bond between brothers.

'Affiliation' is akin to Latin 'filius', son. In domains of literature, science and technology examples abound. See surnames like Grimm, Wright, Lumière, Philips. Two Brill brothers also demonstrate this archetypal bond, already considered sacred in Classical Antiquity, given the myths of Castor & Pollux.

Evert Jan Brill, the typographer, bibliophile and entrepreneur who transformed the legacy of the then ailing Luchtmans publishing dynasty in Leyden, was the younger of the two, born in successive years, 1811 and 1812. Willem Gerard (Leiden, October 10th , 1811 - Utrecht, January 29th, 1896), scholar and historian, survived his brother by an quarter of a century.

While Evert started as a boy to cater for the range of needs innate to an illustrious printing & publishing establishment, Willem was allowed to study at the University of their hometown; first reading theology, later literature and history. His dissertation, written in 1837, concerned linguistics. The academician saw to it that fruits of his study were published by his younger brother’s enterprise. They included two learned descriptions of their native tongue: ‘Hollandsche spraakleer’ (1849) and ‘Nederlandsche spraakleer’ (1863). The shift from the adjective preceding the noun ‘spraakleer’ (literally ‘doctrine of speech’) is characteristic for an age in which the Kingdom of the Netherlands was young; just fifty years.

It is seldom that two brothers embodied love for scholarship and learning so differently, yet sharing the same devotion to the pursuit of cultural ideals: Willem as a Professor at Utrecht University – mirabile dictu – and Evert as the embodiment of a Publishing House in Leyden, second to none in the mid-nineteenth century. The last two decades of his life must have been lonely for the old scholar and gentleman that was Willem.