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Wilhelmina Elisabeth Drucker (1847-1925) had an extraordinary life. Her childhood, as the illegitimate daughter of Amsterdam seamstress Constantia Lensing and wealthy, German-born banker Louis Drucker who never acknowledged Wilhelmina or her sister Louise, wasn’t unheard-of at the time, although in similar cases children would have carried their mother’s surname. (Formally, Wilhelmina Drucker did in fact use the name Lensing, to the extent that she would sign official documents as ‘Wilhelmina Elisabeth Lensing, living and writing under the name of W. Drucker’). Equally ‘common’ practice – though rather crass in itself – was the fact that at his death in 1884, father Drucker left the bulk of his millions to the five living children whose mother, i.e. one of his other mistresses, he had eventually decided to take as his lawful wife, while virtually neglecting Wilhelmina and Louise. As an unexpected turn, however, Wilhelmina Drucker, at 26 years of age, decided not to put up with such discrimination and initiated a series of incriminating publications in order to force her eldest half-brother Hendrik Lodewijk Drucker, a politically aspiring jurist, to yield a fair share of the inheritance to his half-sisters Wilhelmina and Louise. Strikingly, the extortion scheme finally paid off: in 1888 a settlement was reached that would secure Drucker’s financial independence for the rest of her life.
A remarkable story indeed, but what made it truly extraordinary, was the way Drucker decided to spend the money. Together with her tremendous energy and willpower she used it to support Dutch radical feminism on her own terms. For, through her experiences with the socialist movement, she had come to realize that feminist politics should steer clear of party politics to achieve its goal – to liberate women from male domination altogether. Whether Drucker’s financial independence was in fact instrumental to taking on inequality remains to be seen, but it certainly enabled her to pursue her goals for the rest of her life.
Although Wilhelmina Drucker’s activities and publications were mainly directed at Dutch states of affairs, she certainly kept an eye on things abroad. But at present, we know scarcely anything about it.
Until now, only one of Drucker’s foreign adventures has been studied: her visit to the Internationaal Werkliedencongres (International Socialist Workers Congress) in Brussels in August 1891, which eventually deeply affected both Drucker and Belgium. Drucker had come to this second congress of the Second International as representative of the VVV. Straight away, at the entrance, she met such resistance by some of the Dutch socialists, who tried to exclude a feminist from the congress, that her international fame was established immediately. Moreover, her conduct worked as a catalyst in Belgium, where hitherto there had not been an organized women’s movement. Women from both socialist and liberal backgrounds approached her for advice, which she was happy to share with both.
Supported by Drucker and with Emilie Claeys at the helm, the rather servile Socialistische Propagandaclub voor Vrouwen (Socialist Propaganda Club for Women) within the Belgian Workers’ Party transformed into a feminist pressure group right after the 1891 congress. Next, in 1892, Drucker helped form the first independent political women’s organization in Belgium, the Ligue belge du droit des femmes (Belgian League for Women’s Rights), led by Belgian lawyer Marie Popelin. Upon the foundation of Evolutie, the Belgian connection was promptly envigorated. Drucker and Dora Schook-Haver recruited three Belgian feminists as members of the standing team of contributors: Emilie Claeys, Marie Popelin en Ligue member Louis Frank. In addition, Drucker and Schook-Haver translated Le grand catéchisme de la femme (1894) by Louis Frank, which appeared as De catechismus der vrouw (Women’s Catechism) at Versluys Publishers – the house co-run by feminist Annette Versluys-Poelman.
The transatlantic internationalization of the women’s movement, which had started with the foundation of the International Council of Women in Washington in 1888, differed in focus from the continental, socialist roots that were Drucker’s main connection. How and by which route she eventually did become involved , we cannot really tell yet. She certainly did attend international feminist congresses, but as to her function, or role, or the way these congresses shaped her beliefs and forged her international network, further research is needed.
Further indications of Drucker’s international orientation can be found in Evolutie, which mainly focused on developments in the Netherlands and the Dutch women’s movement, but never lost track of matters abroad, to which it even devoted a special section, called ‘Uit den vreemde’ (From Abroad). Moreover, when Josephine Baerveldt-Haver succeeded her late sister Dora Haver as co-editor in 1912, the position of women in the Dutch Indies became an increasingly important subject as well. As a promising field of research the matter remains largely open.
Finally, Drucker’s translations of foreign literature, which have been discussed to some extent, provide another angle on her international outlook, as do the books she read. Of the latter we as yet know next to nothing.
We hope for further future research into these international aspects of Drucker’s feminism and enjoy the prospect of reporting it here.
[yt_modal yt_title="Further reading" header="Further reading" ]
- Julie Carlier, 'A Forgotten Instance of Women's International Organising: The Transnational Feminist Networks of the Women's Progressive Society (1890) and the International Women's Union (1893-1898)', in: Oliver Janz en Daniel Schönpflug (eds.), Gender History in a Transnational Perspective: Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders, New York etc. 2014, 77-100.
- Julie Carlier, ‘Entangled Feminisms. Rethinking the History of the Belgian Movement for Women’s Rights through Transnational Intersections’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 90 (2012), 1339-1361.
- Julie Carlier, ‘Forgotten Transnational Connections and National Contexts: an entangled history of the political transfers that shaped Belgian feminism, 1890-1914’, Women’s History Review 19 (2010), 503-522.
- Julie Carlier, Moving beyond boundaries. An entangled history of feminism in Belgium, 1890-1914 (unpublished dissertation, University of Gent, 2010).
- Mieke Aerts, ‘Feminism from Amsterdam to Brussels in 1891. Political transfer as transformation’, European Review of History 12 (2005), 367-382.
- Myriam Everard en Mieke Aerts, ‘Forgotten intersections. Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925), early feminism, and the Dutch-Belgian connection’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire /Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologie en geschiedenis 77 (1999), 440-472. [/yt_modal]
In the Netherlands several places remind of Wilhelmina Drucker. Most concretely, there is the Lensing family grave at Zorgvlied Cemetery in Amsterdam where Drucker’s mother Constantia Lensing and Wilhelmina and her sister Louise were buried and tombed. Then there is Drucker’s archive, which was scattered after her passing, but has in part been reconstructed recently from the stray material found in the IAV-collection at Atria and has now been published as an open digital source.
Furthermore, there is Drucker’s book collection, which she bequeathed to the University Library of the city of Amsterdam, but has long gone unnoticed. This important legacy will be digitally retrieved here. The apartment building for working women in The Hague, which was to be called ‘Wilhelmina Huis’ (Wilhelmina House) to honour Drucker’s advanced ideas on household cooperation, never materialized, but the surviving plans and blueprints (1925-1931) will enable us to resurrect this lieu de mémoire, if only virtually. The memorial statue by Gerrit Jan van der Veen called ‘Woman as a free human being’, unveiled in Amsterdam on the 50th anniversary of the VVV (1939) in remembrance of Wilhelmina Drucker, still stands today. It was at the foot of this statue that on January 23rd 1970 the notorious feminist action group that had decided to adopt Drucker’s presumed nickname ‘Dolle Mina’ (‘Mad Mina’) shortly before, made one of its first public statements by ritually burning a corset. Actually, both the nickname and Drucker’s supposed opposition to corsets were mere projections.
The renewed interest in a former generation of feminists sparked off further initiatives to commemorate Drucker specifically. Thus, in the year of Dolle Mina’s street protests, the mainstream women’s weekly Libelle initiated a Wilhelmina Drucker Prize to be awarded on a five-year basis to an individual or a group of outstanding significance for women’s emancipation. In 1973 the Nederlandse Vrouwen Raad (Dutch Council of Women) set up a travel fund to enable its affiliates to attend international congresses and named it the Wilhelmina Drucker Fonds. Also, Drucker’s name was often included whenever a newly built housing estate was in need of female celebrity street names and as a result we find ‘Wilhelmina (or Mina) Drucker’ streets, avenues, yards, lanes, squares and courts all across the Netherlands. Finally, as of 2009, we have the Wilhelmina Drucker Chair at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, dedicated to the Political History of Gender in the Netherlands and granted by the Wilhelmina Drucker Foundation since 2014.
Little of substance was written about the person Wilhelmina Drucker during her life. Two interviews were published – one in the social liberal weekly De Amsterdammer (1896), presumably by its editor Johannes van Loenen Martinet, and another in the liberal newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (1925) by feminist Wilhelmina van Itallie-van Embden – and two written portraits, in the independent daily De Telegraaf (1904-1905) and in the cultural monthly De Hollandsche Revue (1914). In contrast, the amount of public recollections and retrospectives on the occasion of both Drucker’s personal jubilees and those of the VVV has accumulated considerably over the years, and the number of commemorative writings after her death is abundant. The mere diversity of those who paid tribute in writing already provides strong indications of Drucker’s tremendous influence and charisma.
After decades of silence – briefly interrupted by the publicity around the unveiling of the statue in her memory in 1939 – Wilhelmina Drucker gained attention once more in 1968, when archivist Deanna te Winkel-van Hall published Wilhelmina Drucker. De eerste vrije vrouw (Wilhelmina Drucker: The first free woman), which initiated a new phase in the literature on the subject. The year before, in 1967, leading literary journal De Gids had put out the article ‘Het onbehagen van de vrouw’ (Women’s discontent) by feminist Joke Kool-Smit, which had provided the spark to ignite the second feminist wave in the Netherlands, so now Te Winkel-van Hall’s book offered the activist (i.e. feminist-socialist) wing of the movement both a point of reference and a name: Dolle Mina (Mad Mina). In the years that followed, an additional handful of publications on Drucker appeared, either by feminists who embraced her as the ultimate ‘free woman’, or by anti-feminists who scapegoated her, sixty years after.
Meanwhile, in the course of the 1970s, at universities various women’s history groups had emerged. As the feminist-socialist domination of the women’s movement clearly reverberated in the academic feminist milieu, the field of research initially remained rather limited to women workers and feminist socialists instead of ‘bourgeois’ feminists. The 1985 Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis (Yearbook of Women’s History), devoted to the first feminist wave, became the turning point. It included Fia Dieteren’s article on Wilhelmina Drucker, which heralded the serious research into Drucker’s life and work that continues to this very day.
Wilhelmina Drucker evoked both vilification and admiration in the course of her life and after. The vilification came first. Right after she had set up the Vrije Vrouwenvereeniging (Free Women’s Association, VVV) in 1889, her former political kin – the socialist movement – unleashed a hate campaign of momentous proportions. Initially, it was harmless caricature, but soon a toxic mix of malign slander, base libel, and vulgar brawls began to affect relationships. It would last for years to come. Soon other currents joined in: from militant catholics to respectable housewives (in the moderate weekly De Huisvrouw [The Housewife]) to wry performers. As a matter of course, the term ‘free woman’ soon became a pejorative for ‘feminist’.
Drucker and her companions, however, didn’t give in. And although there had been reservations toward the elusive feminist Drucker in different sectors of the women’s movement for quite some time – because of her broad Amsterdam accent, her outspokenness, and her ‘common’ way of confronting her opponents (the fishwife) on the one hand, and her royal appearance and obvious financial independence (the bourgeoise) on the other – her steadfast feminism and loyalty to the cause did come to command respect and admiration no less. Many feminists from different backgrounds have attested to the fact in letters, articles, salutes, and recollections.
We intend to construct an in-depth picture of this very ambiguity. It may shed a light on Drucker herself, but, more importantly, it will provide an impression of her day and age, and of the gradual introduction of her feminist principles in society in the face of persistent resistance.
Mies Wiener was among the many who wrote an in memoriam after Drucker’s death. Besides praising Drucker’s charisma, she singles out her significance as a feminist describing her as ‘the founding mother of organized women’s movement’. Wiener hesitates to attempt any in-depth characterization, if such were even conceivable, for it would require ‘covering the entire history of the Dutch women’s movement’.
Wiener was absolutely right in an almost prophetic way. Writing Drucker’s biography would require a gargantuan effort, in part because the historiography of the Dutch women’s movement as a whole is still patchy.
When we consider the vast network of those who belonged to Drucker’s inner circle, who stood by her side, simply appreciated her, or were in absolute awe of her, or those instead with whom she debated, polemized, or battled wholeheartedly, we find that it covers the entire women’s movement of her days.
We intend to map out the network in a series of biographical portraits in order to develop a gradually expanding picture of the Dutch women’s movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Wilhelmina Drucker’s first publication was the roman à clef George David, which she wrote together with her sister Louise and which was destined to serve a particular purpose: to set straight the injustice of being virtually excluded, as illegitimate children of a wealthy father – Louis Drucker, who had died in 1884 – from an inheritance that would bring millions to their natural half brothers and sisters. The novel implicitly suggested that Hendrik Lodewijk Drucker, the eldest half-brother, had a murder on his hands, and thus it became an instrument of blackmail to make him give up part of his share and restore justice. G. and E. Prezcier, the aliases the sisters used, ominously echoed the name Drucker: to Dutch ears the quasi Eastern-European surname Prezcier sounds like ‘someone who is pressing’, a synonym of ‘drucker’, but with the extra connotation of ‘extorter’. The way they eventually managed to pull off the scheme and successfully claim their share, and in doing so vanquish double gender standards vis-à-vis illegitimate children, has been addressed before, but this triumph of feminist action, together with its well-played extortion, bears some aspects that have hitherto remained unmentioned.
The novel marked the beginning of a long writing career. Her next steps would include reviews, comments and polemic articles in a range of radical-democratic and socialist periodicals. In 1888, in addition, she founded the weekly De Vrouw (Woman) of which only eight issues were published and only three seem to have survived, but which nevertheless deserves further scrutiny.
Judging from the reviews she wrote during those years, Drucker appears to have been remarkably well read in contemporary French literature with a special interest in naturalistic novels, one of which she even translated in 1890 (Yves Guyot, Scènes de l’enfer social, Paris 1882). Preliminary attempts have been made to track the literary development that shows in Drucker’s stories as well as in the authors who became her intellectual benchmarks and whom she invited to contribute to her periodicals, but the subject remains largely open to exploration.
In 1893 Drucker started her second feminist periodical, Evolutie (Evolution) of which she would remain editor-in-chief until her death in 1925. She closely collaborated with VVV associate Dora Schook-Haver (later: Haver) up until the latter’s death in 1912, and continued with her sister Josephine Baerveldt-Haver until 1919. Finally, she ran Evolutie by herself. The periodical provided the feminist Drucker with a platform to propound her political ideas, to comment on current issues, to keep track of individuals both inside and outside women’s movements, and to repeatedly urge those movements to reflect and act. This makes Evolutie a true treasure-trove: it documents, within the context of actuality, Drucker’s ideas and initiatives as well as the development of the women’s movement for over thirty years.
Drucker further published a host of surveys, pamphlets, articles, and lectures that testify to her radical, secular feminism; especially the articles about the history and development of the VVV and the necrologies of contemporary feminist pioneers she published both in Evolutie and elsewhere, bring out her perceptiveness, knowledge, and appreciation of the life and strife of her subjects.
To promote and test her ideas, Wilhelmina Drucker throughout her life contributed to the current political discourse in various ways: through lectures, by interpellations at meetings, by engaging in polemics, and by launching her own periodicals. She would form alliances with existing movements if such would facilitate progress; otherwise she would either start her own initiatives, committees, and associations, or encourage others to do so.
In the same vein, around the mid-1880s, Drucker joined the socialist movement, only to find that gender equality would be better served by an independent body – the Vrije Vrouwenvereeniging (Free Women’s Association, VVV, 1889) – and an independent periodical – Evolutie (Evolution, 1893). In between, she even managed to export the concept of feminist autonomy to Belgium. At the 1891 International Socialist Congress in Brussels, Drucker and the VVV which she represented there, caught the eye of the socialist women present as well as the Belgian press. Shortly after, the Socialistische Propagandaclub voor Vrouwen (Socialist Propaganda Club for Women) within the Belgian Workers Party followed the VVV’s example and, with the aid of Drucker, set on a more independent course. And in 1892, actively endorsed by Drucker, the first independent Belgian women’s organization, the Ligue belge du droit des femmes, was formed.
To promote women’s suffrage, according to Drucker, an association of all currents was required (instead of a limited radical feminist body of kindred spirits) and eventually, in 1894, the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Association for Women’s Suffrage, VVK) came into being. But as soon as, to Drucker’s taste, the association began to identify itself with one predominant political (i.e. the liberal) movement, she parted with the VVK to found the Neutrale Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Neutral Association for Women’s Suffrage) in 1916.
To improve women’s economic security on the labour market, Drucker supported the formation of women’s unions. Also, she came up with a plan for a Dutch contribution to the women’s section of the 1897 Brussels World Fair, which would eventually materialize as the Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid (National Exhibition of Women’s Labour) in The Hague, in 1898. Opposed to any protective labour legislation that would single out women, she established, together with Marie Rutgers-Hoitsema, the Nationaal Comité inzake Wettelijke Regeling van Vrouwenarbeid (National Committee on Women’s Labour Legislation) and inspired international coalitions in the same field within the International Correspondence (International Women’s Labour Association).
It is typical of Wilhelmina Drucker that, while being a pivotal force in many of her own initiatives, she remained a highly esteemed committee member of a great number of other women’s organizations as well.
[yt_modal yt_title="Further reading" header="Further reading" ] - Myriam Everard en Mieke Aerts, ‘Forgotten intersections. Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925), early feminism, and the Dutch-Belgian connection’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire /Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologie en geschiedenis 77 (1999), 440-472. [/yt_modal]
Wilhelmina Drucker’s feminism was radical in its pertinently egalitarian outlook. She not only advocated equal suffrage for men and women, but rather equal rights in every conceivable social domain: the labour market, education, sexuality, marriage, housekeeping, legislation, and all else. In doing so, she didn’t limit herself to legislation alone, but took on every social convention that sanctioned or codified gender inequality. Unmistakably inspired by the renowned nineteenth-century Dutch freethinker, writer and social critic Multatuli (nom de plume of Eduard Douwes Dekker), she further chose to speak freely about women’s sexual behaviour and desires as being equally real as men’s. These libertarian beliefs, added to the import of Drucker’s radical approach to feminism within the Protestant culture that defined the Netherlands at the time.
To Drucker, economic autonomy for women was paramount, regardless of their marital status or motherhood. Many contemporaries would dismiss as ‘man-hate’ or ‘ultra-feminism’ what was in fact her pertinent battle against gender inequality in every field. As her campaign would necessarily entail an attack on the privileges of men – both individuals and men in general – in what she would openly coin the ‘sex struggle’, analogous to socialist ‘class struggle’, her reputation as ‘man-hater’ became firmly established.
There are few known portraits of Wilhelmina Drucker. As for the ones we do possess, we often don’t know when they were taken, by whom, or at which occasion. This applies equally to the portraits that were published in Drucker’s own days and the original prints that have survived. Posthumous publications often fail to provide complete or accurate descriptions up to the point of curious cases of mistaken identity, such as the one involving Annette Versluys-Poelman in 1919. In addition, curators of those public collections that contain the portraits have often resorted to wild guesses in their descriptions.
The same goes for group portraits where Drucker is (supposedly) present. Usually we remain in the dark about the occasion, or the maker, or even whom we should identify as Drucker or those present. Again, errors and omissions abound – strangers are mistaken for Drucker; her presence is assumed while she is absent, like in a 1913 photograph of the board of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Association for Women’s Suffrage, VVK); or her presence simply goes unnoticed.
Photographs are invaluable sources to find out more about Drucker as a person and her life-story, as long as we take a serious look and interpret what we are looking at. We therefore intend to collect every traceable (group) portrait of Drucker for further close-examination.