Visser ’t Hooft, 1900-1985

Living for the Unity of the Church

Jurjen A. Zeilstra

Amsterdam University Press

Originally published as Visser ’t Hooft. Een leven voor de oecumene − Biografie 1900-1985, by Jurjen Zeilstra, Skandalon, Middelburg 2018.

Translated by Henry Jansen with the assistance of Lucy Jansen-Hofland.

Permission for reproduction of the photographs: the Visser ’t Hooft family and the World Council Of Churches.

Cover illustration: Visser ’t Hooft behind his desk in his office, 17 Route de Malagnou, with a reproduction of the Isenheimer Altar by Matthias Grünewald behind him

Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden

Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout

ISBN 978 94 6372 683 2

e-ISBN 978 90 4855 187 3 (pdf)

e-ISBN 978 90 4855 188 0 (e-pub)

DOI 10.5117/9789463726832

NUR 686

Creative Commons License CC BY NC ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0)

The author / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020

Some rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, any part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise).

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

For Adrienne

Le chrétien sait très bien que demain ça n’ira pas mieux.

Mais il continue à espérer.1

− Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Message paroisse Chêne-Bourg’, 1973

1 ‘The Christian knows very well that it won’t be better tomorrow. But he continues to hope.’

Table of Contents

Foreword and Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Importance and Limitations of a Biography

1 Subject and Background

2 Existing Biographies

3 Method

1 The World Opens Up, 1900-1924

1.1 Introduction

1.2 A Family with Status and Traditions

1.3 Gymnasium: A Little Philosopher

1.4 A Student in Leiden: Questions and Answers

1.5 The Marriage of Two ‘Children of the Sun’

1.6 An Enthusiastic Youth Worker is Formed

2 The School of International Encounter

Working with Youth and Students, 1924-1939

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Secretary of the YMCA in a Wounded Europe

2.3 Ambassador for the YMCA

2.4 A Bridge Builder between Europeans and Americans

2.5 Secretary of the WSCF in a Europe Once Again under Threat

2.6 Christian Realism instead of International Idealism

2.7 A ‘German Revolution’?

2.8 Not Called to Mission Work

2.9 Secretary of the Emerging World Council of Churches

2.10 The Charismatic Student Leader

3 Church Unity in Wartime, 1939-1945

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The First Year of the War in Geneva: Isolation or Hub?

3.3 Interpreting the War

3.4 Visser ’t Hooft, Karl Barth, and the Public Statements of the Church

3.5 Natural Theology: A Stumbling Block or a Common Base?

3.6 Ecumenical Work among Refugees and Prisoners of War

3.7 Church Unity in the Face of the Annihilation of the Jews

3.8 One Church, One Europe: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3.9 The Memorandum of Von Trott zu Solz

3.10 The Hesitant Voice of the Ecumenical Movement

4 From ‘Spiritual Contact’ to Political Involvement

The Swiss Road, 1942-1944

4.1 Introduction

4.2 ‘Holland outside Holland’

4.3 From Conduit to Government Advisor

4.4 Visit to London, 1942

4.5 Organising the Swiss Road

4.6 Visser ’t Hooft and the Dutch Resistance

4.7 Topics on the Swiss Road

4.8 In Defence of the Civil Resistance

4.9 The Liberation of the Netherlands and the Parliamentary Inquiry

4.10 Coach for the Government

5 Towards a World Council of Churches

Reconciliation and Reconstruction, 1945-1948

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Assisting Recovering Churches

5.3 Stuttgart 1945: ‘Help Us, So We Can Help You’

5.4 Dealing with the Past: Niemöller as Ecumenical Prophet

5.5 ‘We Do not Wish to Call Wrong Right’

5.6 Diplomacy Based on a ‘Genuine Meeting of Minds’

5.7 A Study Centre at Bossey: Towards a New Science of Ecumenism?

5.8 Amsterdam 1948: A ‘Responsible Society’

5.9 Two Rejections Become Two Challenges

5.10 The Firm Pragmatist

6 General Secretary of the World Council of Churches 1948-1966

6.1 Introduction

6.2 ‘Atta’ at Home and ‘Le Patron’ at the World Council

6.3 The Vision

6.4 Evanston 1954: Hoping … but for What?

6.5 The World Council as Watchman

I A Difficult Topic: Israel and the Palestinians

II A Moderate Approach: Apartheid in South Africa

III Through the Eye of a needle: The Cyprus Crisis

IV Procedural Problems: The Cuba Crisis

6.6 The Indispensability of Mission

6.7 ‘Angry Young Churchmen’

6.8 New Delhi 1961: A Crowning Success and an Estrangement

6.9 No Ecumenical Consensus on Ecclesiology

6.10 The Theologian as Diplomat

7 The Cold War, the Unity of the Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, 1948-1966

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Building on Old Contacts

7.3 Theology and Practical Reality

7.4 A Third Way between East and West

7.5 What Can the Churches Do for Peace?

7.6 A Strategic Thinker in Toronto

7.7 Searching for Saints in Russia

7.8 The World Council Enriched?

7.9 Debating Policy

7.10 The Controversial Bridge Builder

8 Roman Catholic Contacts

‘Nostra Res Agitur’, 1948-1969

8.1 Introduction

8.2 A Source of Irritation: The Roman Catholic Failure to Appreciate the Work of the World Council

8.3 Ecclesiological Explorations and the Looming Danger of the Super Church

8.4 Visser ’t Hooft and Willebrands: Two Agendas

8.5 Rhodes 1959: Rules of the Ecumenical Game Violated

8.6 Two Dutchmen in Strategic Positions

8.7 Vatican II: ‘Nostra Res Agitur’

8.8 The Continuous Efforts at Mutual Convincing

8.9 The Papal Visit 1969: ‘Mon nom est Pierre’

8.10 The Architect of Faltering Dialogue

9 Obsolete Institutionalism?

The Twilight Years, 1966-1985

9.1 Introduction

9.2 A Farewell that was not a Farewell

9.3 Uppsala 1968: The Turning Point

9.4 Utrecht 1972: Do Ecumenical Institutions Have a Future?

9.5 A Pilgrim Welcome among the Elite, but Lost in Mass Tourism

9.6 Nairobi 1975: Disappointed and Isolated

9.7 A Member of the Groupe de Bellerive

9.8 Eighty Years Old: An Angry Old Man?

9.9 Emancipation and the Fatherhood of God

9.10 The World Council and the Roman Catholic Church Once Again

9.11 ‘Not Afraid of Death’

9.12 The ‘Elder Statesman’ of the Ecumenical Movement

10 In the Mirror of Rembrandt and the Perspectives of Others

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Honouring ‘The Man of all Jobs and Odd Jobs’

10.3 The Mirror of Rembrandt

10.4 ‘Mein Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt’

10.5 Accolades and Critiques on the Occasion of his Death

Taking Stock

An Assessment of a Life Lived for the Unity of the Church

Sources and Literature Consulted

1 Archives and Unpublished Primary Sources

2 Oral Sources

3 Digital Sources

4 Published and Unpublished Works by W.A. Visser ’t Hooft

5 Published Sources and Secondary Literature

6 Newspapers and Magazines

6.a Persons Quoted

6.b Other References

Index

List of Figures

Figure 1 Wim (Visser) ’t Hooft, ca. 1916

Figure 2 Wim’s father: Hendrik Philip (Hans) (Visser) ’t Hooft, 1866-1930

Figure 3 Wim’s mother: Jacoba Clasina (Visser) ’t Hooft-Lieftinck, 1874-1928

Figure 4 Thalatta, house in the dunes, owned by Wim’s grandfather, W.A. ’t Hooft

Figure 5 House where Visser ’t Hooft was born, called Zonnebloem, Koninginneweg 107, Haarlem

Figure 6 The three ’t Hooft brothers (Frans, Hans, and Wim) with their father, ca. 1912

Figure 7 Wim as a schoolboy

Figure 8 On a bike trip from Breda to Brussels, November 1918; Wim is in the middle

Figure 9 Henriëtte Philipine Jacoba (Jetty) Boddaert, 1899-1968, ca. 1922

Figure 10 Wim and Jetty ‘reading’ after they were engaged. Wim is holding a book called De moderne staatsidee of H. Krabbe (1915), but is looking at her.

Figure 11 Wedding photo of Wim and Jetty, The Hague 16 September 1924

Figure 12 Wim and Jetty on their honeymoon, 1924

Figure 13 Wim in tennis clothes, Hans, Frans, and Jetty, ca. 1928

Figure 14 During a student exchange in the 1920s

Figure 15 Jetty with her daughter Anneke, ca. 1930

Figure 16 Wim, Jetty, and their three children, Anneke, Hans, and Kees, ca. 1933

Figure 17 Visser ’t Hooft and Pierre Maury as mountain climbers, Saas-Fee, 1934

Figure 18 Participants of the international meeting of the YMCA in Canada, in the fall of 1925. Visser ’t Hooft is holding the ‘Holland’ sign.

Figure 19 The leaders of the WSCF, 1935, with, among others in the first row: Philippe Maury, Wim Visser ’t Hooft, Robert Mackie, Pierre Maury, and Suzanne de Diétrich

Figure 20 Portrait: Jetty Visser ’t Hooft-Boddaert, ca. 1935

Figure 21 The Visser ’t Hooft family home in the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, 11A Chemin des Crèts de Champel, Geneva

Figure 22 Organising committee of the World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam, summer of 1939

Figure 23 Portrait, ca. 1940

Figure 24 Visser ’t Hooft addresses Engelandvaarders (travellers to England) stranded in Switzerland, at the Cossonay internment camp, probably 31 August 1942

Figure 25 On the stairs in Geneva

Figure 26 From 1945 until 1965 the offices of the World Council of Churches were located at17 Route de Malagnou, Geneva. Visser ’t Hooft’s office was on the right above the entrance.

Figure 27 Four successive secretaries of the WSCF: Robert Mackie, Wim Visser ’t Hooft, Henri-Louis Henriod, and John Mott, standing in front of the building that had just been acquired for the World Council, 17 Route de Malagnou, Geneva, 1946

Figure 28 With his friend Marc Boegner, one of the first presidents of the World Council and president of the Fédération Protestante de France, in front of the Château de Bossey in Geneva during the conference celebrating 450 years of Calvin, 1959

Figure 29 Leaders at the opening ceremony of the foundation meeting of the World Council of Churches in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, 22 August, 1948: S. Germanos, J.R. Mott, W.A. Visser ’t Hooft, E. Eidem, D.T. Niles, G.F. Fisher, and M. Boegner

Figure 30 Foundation meeting of the World Council of Churches in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, 23 August 1948

Figure 31 Visser ’t Hooft reports on the formation period 1938-1948, 23 August 1948

Figure 32 Wim and Jetty, ca. 1950

Figure 33 With his grandchildren Erica, Marcus, and Martina, ca. 1957

Figure 34 At the doctoral defence of his son Hans, Leiden, 11 December 1957

Figure 35 Wim Visser ’t Hooft, staff member Bob Bilheimer, and Eugene Carson Blake, who would succeed Visser ’t Hooft in 1966, ca. 1948

Figure 36 Visser ’t Hooft, the president of Northwestern University in Evanston, and the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

Figure 37 Wim and Jetty at Niagara Falls, 1954

Figure 38 Behind his desk in his office, 17 Route de Malagnou, with a reproduction of the Isenheimer Altar by Matthias Grünewald behind him

Figure 39 Organisation chart of the World Council of Churches, ca. 1962 (derived from ‘Geef ze de ruimte’, E. de Vries (director), IKOR Television, 18 February 1962)

Figure 40 Wim and Jetty on Patmos (Greece), travelling to the monastery by donkey, 1959

Figure 41 Behind his desk in his new office, the Ecumenical Centre, 150 Route de Ferney

Figure 42 Family home since the end of the 1950s, 13 Chemin des Voirons, Chêne-Bougeries, Geneva; photo taken February 2015

Figure 43 J. Zeilstra on the steps, 13 Chemin des Voirons, Chêne-Bougeries, Geneva

Figure 44 Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, visits the World Council assembly in New Delhi, 1961

Figure 45 On the cover of Time, 1961

Figure 46 With the secretary-general of the United Nations, U Thant, Ecumenical Centre, Geneva 1966

Figure 47 At Hong Kong Airport, ca. 1965

Figure 48 With the icon of St Oecumenius, bishop of Trikala (990 A.D.), ca. 1960

Figure 49 With Patriarch Pimen (Sergey Miharlovich Izvekov, 1910-1990) of Moscow and of Russia, 1969

Figure 50 Mixing with the leaders of the Romanian church, Geneva, ca. 1970

Figure 51 With the Roman Catholic Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger of Montreal, during the Faith and Order Conference of 1963

Figure 52 With Cardinal Augustin Bea, president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and Marc Boegner, president of the Fédération Protestante de France, Ecumenical Centre, Geneva, February 1965

Figure 53 Visser ’t Hooft was an enthusiastic swimmer

Figure 54 At the presentation of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, Frankfurt, September, 1966

Figure 55 During his retirement, ca. 1966

Figure 56 Visser ’t Hooft family picture, 1967

Figure 57 With Karl Barth, ca. 1966

Figure 58 Among the leaders of the Armenian church, Geneva, ca. 1970

Figure 59 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, with his dog, visiting the World Council of Churches in Geneva, at the beginning of the 1970s

Figure 60 A working visit by Princess Beatrix and Prins Claus to the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva, 1970

Figure 61 With his personal assistant, Aat Guittart and the first copies of the Dutch edition of his Memoirs, 1971

Figure 62 Having tea with Philip Potter in the cafeteria of the World Council, 1980

Figure 63 Visser ’t Hooft family photo 1980 on the occasion of Visser ’t Hooft’s 80th birthday

Figure 64 At the reception of Pope John Paul II, Ecumenical Centre, 1984, with, among others, Cardinal Jo Willebrands and general secretary Philip Potter

Figure 65 With John Paul II, Ecumenical Centre, 1984

Figure 66 During the meeting of the central committee in which Emilio Castro was chosen as general secretary, 18 July 1984

Figure 67 One of the last photos of Visser ’t Hooft, together with Margie Beguin, one of the members of the cooking group, in the living room of 13 Chemin des Voirons, April 1985

Figure 68 The Preaching Christ by Rembrandt, also called The Hundred Guilder Print, ca. 1647-1649

Foreword and Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the help and assistance of the Stichting Biografie Dr. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft (Foundation for the Biography Dr W.A. Visser ’t Hooft) founded in 2011. The directors of that foundation thus deserve my heartfelt thanks. It is thanks to their efforts that I was able to carry out the research necessary for writing this biography of Visser ’t Hooft. The chairman of the foundation was Prof. dr. Theo C. van Boven, former chairman of the Commission of the Churches for International Affairs of the World Council of Churches, the secretary was Drs Frans Bouwen, and the treasurer was Victor I. Goedvolk, Eng., who was succeeded after a few years by Carien Pluimers. The emeritus missiologist and church historian, Prof. dr. Pieter Nanne Holtrop, was willing to do the research and to write the biography. Holtrop went to work energetically, gathered sources and literature, and wrote some sample texts. He became seriously ill, however, and passed away on 3 August 2012 in Sweden, and the board of the foundation contacted me at the end of that year. In 1995, I had published my theological dissertation, European Unity in Ecumenical Thinking, 1937-1948, in which W.A. Visser ’t Hooft played a major role. In January 2013, I assumed the mantle of the research that Holtrop had begun. Thanks to Holtrop’s wife, Gunilla Gunner, and his daughters Froukje and Maria Holtrop, the books and sources on microfiche from Sweden were transferred to Hilversum in the spring of that year.

To be assured of good academic supervision, the project was listed as doctoral research in history at the Faculty of Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I am very grateful to my supervisor, Prof. dr. Fred van Lieberg, professor of the history of religion, and my two co-supervisors Prof. dr. Martien Brinkman and Prof. dr. George Harinck, for their stimulating supervision and constant advice on structure. Moreover, I will always remain deeply grateful to Prof. dr. Anton Houtepen (d. 2010), who was one of the supervisors of my theological dissertation in 1995. He was the one who put me on the road of ecumenicity, and that was where I kept coming across Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft.

In the archives of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, I benefited a great deal from the assistance of the archivists Hans von Rütte and Anne-Emmanuelle Tankam. I would like to express my gratitude to them. The World Council of Churches houses not only its own archives, but the archives of Visser ’t Hooft himself are found there as well. My stay in Geneva was pleasant, also thanks to the use I could make of the apartment in Ferney-Voltaire that Carien Pluimers and Frans Roselaers made available. Various other archives were consulted. In particular, I should mention the Archives of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam, the Historical Documentation Centre for Dutch Protestantism at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and the archives of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum.

The Visser ’t Hooft family were very warmly disposed towards the project, and various family members contributed intensively to the research. I was given access to articles in the Visser ’t Hooft Family Archives, books of collections and cuttings, and photo albums. Almost all the photos in this book come from these albums. Fifteen come from the archives of the World Council of Churches, and there are some photos I took myself. I was warmly welcomed by Visser ’t Hooft’s daughter, Anneke Musacchio-Visser ’t Hooft at 13 Chemin des Voirons in Geneva, where Visser ’t Hooft lived from the end of the 1950s until his death in 1985. She provided me with a large number of books he had written.

A major problem in writing a biography of Visser ’t Hooft is the inconceivable amount of written sources, which can very quickly leave a researcher feeling overwhelmed. It was absolutely necessary to ask pointed questions that could be properly researched. To formulate such answers, it seemed for me extraordinarily valuable to speak to a number of people who had known Visser ’t Hooft well. I am especially grateful to Frans Bouwen, Albert van den Heuvel, the late Ruud van Hoogevest, the late Hebe Kohlbrugge, Anneke Musacchio-Visser ’t Hooft, Konrad Raiser, Boudewijn Sjollema and Jet Sjollema-van Sandick, Caspar Visser ’t Hooft, Clan Visser ’t Hooft, Pat Visser ’t Hooft-Jenkins, and Marcus Visser ’t Hooft.

For Visser ’t Hooft’s view of the painter Rembrandt and his work, I consulted the Rembrandt expert, Prof. dr. Ernst van de Wetering. The chapter on the relation between Visser ’t Hooft and the World Council of Churches on the one hand and the Russian Orthodox Church on the other was submitted to an expert on the Russian Church, Prof. dr. Wil P. van den Bercken, who gave me valuable advice on various points. I had fascinating conversations with Dr. Karim Schelkens, director of the Cardinal Willebrands Research Centre in Tilburg, on the relationship between Visser ’t Hooft and Willebrands.

With regard to the English edition I would like to express my gratitude, first to the translator Henry Jansen. With the assistance of Lucy Jansen-Hofland he delivered an English translation that is not only accurate, but also enjoyable to read. Illucidations were added where thought necessary for a non-Dutch English-reading public. Next, I want to address a warm word of thanks to the team of Amsterdam University Press: Jan-Peter Wissink, Inge van der Bijl, Julie Benschop-Plokker, Vicky Blud en Jaap Wagenaar. With great care and dedication they worked on the project and prepared the publishing of this book. Any mistakes the reader still finds are of course completely my own responsibility.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the Protestant Church in Hilversum, particularly the local congregation, Regenboogkerk. During the whole period of the project between 2013-2018, I was working full-time as a minister in Hilversum. The church council approved my taking study leave in a way that was advantageous for my research. Thanks to permission granted by the organisation responsible for study leave in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, I was able to devote all my study leave in this period to researching and writing this book. I would like to express in particular my heartfelt thanks to Rev. Heleen A. Weimar, my closest colleague. Her flexible attitude helped me find the time to complete the work.

Many people were enthusiastic about the project and came with their stories, stimulating questions, and suggestions. There is no room here to name them all. Two Dutch ministers, both of whom serve in the French church, do have a special place: Jan Albert Roetman and Caspar M.W. Visser ’t Hooft. They, along with Wim Vrijmoeth, are among my best friends and were constantly deeply interested in the work. My dear wife, Adrienne, and our children, Eva, Rebecca, Susanna, and finally Abel, could now almost be called experts on Visser ’t Hooft. They have been closely involved with this book and were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. I am very grateful to Adrienne, with whom I share my life, for the enormous support rooted in her great love.

Via the Foundation for the Biography of Dr. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft and the publisher Skandalon, this project, including the English translation that will hopefully appear in 2019, was supported by thirteen different funds. I am deeply grateful to the boards of these funds for the trust they have placed in me. They are:

Ad Pias Causas

Hans Visser ’t Hooft Fonds

Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds

Stichting Aanpakken

Stichting Dr. A. Kuyperfonds

Stichting Gilles Hondius Foundation

Stichting Interkerkelijk Oriëntatie Centrum

Stichting Meijers-van Meer

Stichting Nathan Söderblom Foundation

Stichting Woudsend 1816

Stichting Zonneweelde

Van Leeuwen Rietberg Stichting

World Council of Churches

Wichenstichting

I never met Wim Visser ’t Hooft myself. But I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to become acquainted with his fascinating life in this way. I share his love for the church as the living body of Christ in the world, infinitely various, changing shape again and again, and yet one.

Jurjen Zeilstra

Hilversum, January 2020

Introduction

The Importance and Limitations of a Biography

1 Subject and Background

Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985) was one of the founders of the World Council of Churches and was the first general secretary of the organisation from 1948 to 1966. The World Council was one of the most important manifestations of the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century, which aimed at and still aims at the unity of worldwide Christianity in the modern period. Someone whose active life was so interwoven with such an influential organisation had to have had wider impact – in this case not only on the institution of the World Council of Churches but also on the ecumenical movement in general. This gives us the basic idea behind this historical study, which is completely devoted to the life of Visser ’t Hooft, a life that, for the most part, was dedicated to serving the cause of church unity. This is by no means an overstatement: he lived his life for the unity of the church.

This book is a biography, not a history of the World Council nor of the ecumenical movement. Before exploring the problem of an academic biography, we should be clear on the historical framework. With respect to the ecumenical movement, there have been several movements that called themselves ecumenical, but not all of them ended in the World Council of Churches. The movement that this book discusses has been described by prominent practitioners of ‘ecumenicity’ themselves as ‘a positive but at the same time deeply concerned and critical reaction by Christian communities and individual Christians to the project of modernity.’1 Such a description leaves no or hardly any room for a positive assessment of secularisation. The question should also be raised as to whether modernity can be called a project. Is it really a strategically determined response that we are talking about here? A historical study of this nature needs a modified description of the ecumenical movement that refers explicitly to concrete relationships that have developed from the ecumenical idea into a specific organisation with a global variety of Christian ideas and forms of encounter. The definition of the ecumenical movement could then be as follows:

The ecumenical movement is a complex of challenges by and reactions to modernity involving the identity of Christianity in the whole of a developing world society, and that gives occasion for an international network of individuals, organisations, and churches that is capable of a supporting role in shaping institutions.2

The recognition of a worldwide pluriformity while speaking nevertheless of one religion plays an important role.3 When the historian James Kennedy looks at the World Council of Churches in this regard, he speaks of ‘a particular kind of religious international’ that originated with the globalisation of Protestantism. He sees the World Council of Churches as an ‘ecclesiastical international, a formal federation of churches focused, first and foremost, on worldwide Christianity.’4 In the context of a joint quest for unity, goals traditionally considered important in Protestantism were again presented as matters that united them: evangelisation, social justice, education, and humanitarian aid. What was needed was to act in union and energetically in the public domain in a way in which the institutional shape was not the only goal but certainly an important aspect. Those who worked on this were convinced that churches had unique, partly neglected, capacities for tackling world problems.

The task of Visser ’t Hooft’s biographer is to present his life in the context of this global development. The interaction between the microlevel of family contacts and friends and the macrolevel of global church and political events will be cited and analysed. Many around the world saw Visser ’t Hooft as a custodian of church unity. He was a man with insight and growing experience, through which he was viewed – right up until he was quite advanced in years – not incorrectly as a wise expert in the area of the relations between churches. As early as 1928, Visser ’t Hooft saw himself as a bridge-builder with respect to the transatlantic relationships in the world church. He viewed the basic contrast between America and Europe, or between practical Christianity and dogmatic-pietistic ways of belief, as the contrast between – to use the language current around 1970 – ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical.’ As far as he was concerned, neither could do without the other. Any biography of Visser ’t Hooft is thus not only a description of an individual but also a description of the response of Christians, Christianity, and the church in the modernity of the twentieth century.5

Striving for mutual recognition and unity had to serve the well-being of ‘civil society’ expressly in the broad sense of the term as a society of self-aware citizens able to organise themselves in the interest of specific values. An inspired and well-informed elite, primarily emerging from the international Christian student movement of the nineteenth century, saw this as a divine commission. From the perspective of the participating churches, national and cultural boundaries were fundamentally relativised if people believed in one God, one Jesus Christ, and thus also one world church, often referred to in ecumenical literature as the Una Sancta. Even more than in practical collaboration and institutional organisational forms, most pioneers of the ecumenical movement saw surplus value in the deepening of what Kennedy calls ‘a global spiritual fellowship’. Although the intellectual frameworks were initially strongly Protestant in nature, the ecumenical movement, of which the World Council of Churches was the most important exponent, was open to all churches, including the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic Church.

The ecumenical movement, as considered in this study, found its most elaborate, internationally oriented form in the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948. Visser ’t Hooft was an exponent of this council. He was a religious man who saw himself as being led by a commission from on high. He and many around him felt privileged by their descent, upbringing, education, and intellect. Thus, aside from being a portrait of an individual, this biography is also a group portrait, even though it focuses on only one person.6 The members of this group saw themselves as a vanguard, called to turn back the coarsening of society that had occurred as a result of materialism, fascism, and state communism and to help churches rediscover their task in response to that coarsening. One of the major questions here is what factors made it possible for Visser ’t Hooft to mobilise so many people and churches in the ecumenical movement in the midst of the secularisation of the twentieth century.

It is not my task as his biographer to describe the history of the ecumenical movement, but we will have to look at that regularly if we are to understand the life of the individual we are writing about here. This study has a descriptive, arranging, and clarifying objective in which Visser ’t Hooft’s life is central, but this book nevertheless goes beyond that life. After all, because he was such an iconic figure for the ecumenical movement, the story of his life gives access to the history of this movement.7 I am well aware that there are many participant perspectives and that the experience of an iconic figure cannot be taken without further ado as representative for all others involved in this movement. In fact, precisely in the years after Visser ’t Hooft retired in 1966, a variety in opinions and views emerged that confronted the whole striving of the ecumenical movement with a new challenge.

This study is not intended to confirm or illustrate what we already know about the World Council of Churches. Nor is it a question of confirming or denying the value of an institution like the World Council. It is not our intention either in this study to give a definition or assessment of the most important building block of the organisation, namely, ‘the church’. At most, Visser ’t Hooft’s view of the church will be illustrated and assessed, whereby it is also of interest to chart the emerging challenges and possibilities in continually changing circumstances in a candid way. The fundamental contingency of continually new moments in which choices had to be made, should not be underestimated. There is the aspect of coincidence. The life of the one whose story is being told could have taken a different course. Visser ’t Hooft almost became a teacher in Indonesia, and then later the director of the missionary centre in Oegstgeest and director of Radio Oranje. He was given various opportunities to be a university professor. For me, as a biographer who wants to look candidly at these defining moments, it is often more a disadvantage than an advantage to know the result of a process or the results of years of intense effort.

2 Existing Biographies

There are many other biographies, both longer and shorter, of W.A. Visser ’t Hooft. Most of these are not academic studies but so-called ‘commemorative writings’.8 They were often written in connection with an anniversary or birthday. There are many interviews, of quite differing character and quality.9 There are also various unabashed admiring works, ‘hagiographies’, usually by friends and (former) colleagues who wanted to pay tribute to Visser ’t Hooft at a memorable moment. The extent to which these accounts show a critical-academic tone varies.10 The media devoted a great deal of attention to his life on the occasion of his death on 4 July 1985. At that time, English, German, French, and Dutch newspapers and magazines and journals especially contained longer and shorter articles about him.11 Most obituarists kept it to a tribute, often illustrated by personal anecdotes. Usually, the writers also wanted to turn their view of Visser ’t Hooft into an opportunity to justify the right of the ecumenical movement or the World Council of Churches to exist. A remarkable tribute came from the journalist Gerhard Rein, a youth delegate during the World Council Assembly in New Delhi. He calls Visser ’t Hooft ‘the most significant unknown person in Germany’, who changed him from a naïve young man into a critical citizen and a critical Christian who discovered the world.12

A few authors who gave an academic treatment to Visser ’t Hooft’s life are the theologians H. Berkhof and the church historians A.J. Bronkhorst, A.J. van der Bent, and P.N. Holtrop, and myself.13 They usually provide more or less the same data. There are hardly any critical interpretations that make use of broad historical perspectives. A recent exception is the study by Jan Schubert, Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985). Ökumene und Europa,14 which was published in 2017. Schubert opts for the biographical perspective for discussing Visser ’t Hooft’s ideas about Europe and portrays him as an independently acting professional representative of various international ecumenical organisations. What Schubert does not offer, however, is a fundamental critical analysis of the development of Visser ’t Hooft’s thinking about Europe, including the great expectations of federalism in interaction with the expected renewal of the church. Because Schubert’s research does not go beyond 1966, it cannot claim to be a biography and does not pay enough attention to break points and disappointments.15 This biography deals with the final phase of Visser ’t Hooft’s life as well. I do not deal with the question of Europe in this study in any special way, however, because I looked at that precisely in my theological study published in 1995.16 The survey of Visser ’t Hooft’s theological thinking by Michael Kinnamon was not available to the present author at the time the Dutch manuscript of the biography was completed. Kinnamon’s appraisal is thorough and concentrated on both Visser ’t Hooft’s memoirs and other sources, but not very critical.17 As a former World Council staff member and theologian he is unable to distance himself enough in order to take the more objective view of the historian.

A cardinal problem in the existing biographical publications on Visser ’t Hooft – aside from the fact that they often copy one another – is that they are often strongly based on the memoirs of the main character himself. There are different autobiographical documents, thus written by Visser ’t Hooft himself, whether or not he had the assistance of others, especially his assistant Aat Guittart. While he was still alive, she compiled, in collaboration with him, an overview of the facts of his life.18 The memoirs occupy a central place among the autobiographical documents. For Visser ’t Hooft, an earlier finger exercise in that respect was Leren leven met de Oecumene, a book based on twenty radio talks in 1968 for the NCRV (Dutch Christian Broadcasting Corporation).19 His 1982 book The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation is strongly autobiographical in nature.20 The minister C. Michael de Vries, who was in charge of broadcasting at the communications department of the World Council since 1963, played a major role in the writing of the memoirs and was also responsible for the authorised Dutch translation of the manuscript. The Dutch version was published in 1971 and the English in 1973.21 Translations in German and Swedish were published in 1972, and in French in 1975. Visser ’t Hooft did most of the research for the memoirs himself and reports in the foreword that he did not want to write an ‘I-book’; rather, his main purpose was to repay part of his debt to the ecumenical movement. His goal here was to give the ecumenical movement, and the World Council of Churches in particular, greater publicity. After his retirement, Visser ’t Hooft wanted to show a wide audience that he fundamentally believed that it was more than conferences and resolutions. He found the example he wanted to follow in the memoirs of his friend, Marc Boegner, president of the Eglise Réformée de France, for which he himself wrote the preface.22 As an individual with a great deal of experience, he felt called to offer information and inspiration to those both in and outside the church who were interested in ecumenicity.23 A number of handwritten notes were found stuck between the files in the archives of the World Council. They were written by Visser ’t Hooft himself, usually in his regular handwriting on the beloved square sheets of his scribbling pad, A5 format. These notes give years and details that are missing in the files themselves and make connections between the files. They are what is left of the notes Visser ’t Hooft made after his retirement in 1966.

Visser ’t Hooft’s memoirs are a typical example of those of someone who played an important role in a public position and who wants to justify his actions after having retired. Usually, the various existing studies that claim to be academic too easily use the memoirs as a ‘primary source’ for a development that Visser ’t Hooft himself describes.24 The memoirs were a period document from around 1970, and, while the reviews were primarily positive, it should be kept in mind that almost all were written by Visser ’t Hooft’s friends.25

Various colleagues with whom he had worked a great deal were critical, even though they did not express that openly.26 In his memoirs, Visser ’t Hooft analyses his own actions, while still in contact with many of those people described in the book who were still alive at that time. Albert van den Heuvel and Konrad Raiser related that they were part of a group of young employees who were expected to attend a monthly private tutorial given by Visser ’t Hooft in his closed porch at home on the ‘history of ecumenicity’. There Visser ’t Hooft shared his own research results with them and appreciated it when he was critically interrogated by well-prepared young people. At the same time, Van den Heuvel remembers having once called out: ‘But it wasn’t like that at all!’ Visser ’t Hooft reply was simply: ‘It should have been that way!’ We will look more critically at the memoirs in section 9.4.

It is obvious that information from the autobiographically coloured sources should be used carefully and critically in an academic biography. The questions of how these autobiographical texts fit into Visser ’t Hooft’s life and what we can deduce from them about his self-image at the time of writing and how they were received by his readers play a major role in the attention we will pay to them in this biography.

3 Method

Some biographies struggle with a scarcity of sources. That is not the case here: Visser ’t Hooft wrote more than 50,000 letters.27 Dealing with a plurality of written and printed sources is a problem in itself. Many of the archives of the World Council of Churches were available on microfiche for this work. In addition, there are many other documents apart from the letters – analyses, policy notes, as well as reflections, sermons, and lectures, many of the latter of which ended up being published.28 These publications resulted in five large and ten smaller books and many articles, of which a number have been collected into volumes.29

A prior critical question concerns the origin and history of these sources. Who collected them and to what end? The answer may be simple with respect to the sources in the archives of the World Council of Churches: Visser ’t Hooft himself as the general secretary, together with his secretaries, was behind the archives.30 This raises the impression that almost everything that seemed to be of any importance was saved. In addition to a comprehensive correspondence archive of the general secretary himself, in which business correspondence is difficult to separate from personal, there are a number of partial archives concerning sub-departments of the World Council and archives of projects. Some have been recently rearranged and opened. Much has been saved, but, despite the many sources, Visser ’t Hooft’s life is accessible only in fragments, impressions, and partial aspects. The guiding hand of Visser ’t Hooft himself played a great role in what was saved, and I will have to be reserved with respect to filling in the gaps. In consulting the sources, I have made choices that are connected to the purpose of this study as well as to special attention for Visser ’t Hooft’s Dutch contacts.

In addition to the written and printed sources, I also relied on a number of conversations that Visser ’t Hooft had with people he knew personally – as father, father-in-law, grandfather, uncle, supervisor, or friend. It is not difficult to get people to talk about Visser ’t Hooft, and a number of living impressions often emerge. That is certainly true for his daughter Anneke Musacchio-Visser ’t Hooft, his daughter-in-law Patricia Adams Visser ’t Hooft-Jenkins, his niece Clan Visser ’t Hooft, and grandson Caspar Visser ’t Hooft. Albert van den Heuvel, Konrad Raiser, and Boudewijn Sjollema were young colleagues in the 1960s. Ruud van Hoogevest, a staff member for refugee work, and intern Frans Bouwen cooked for the very old and vulnerable Visser ’t Hooft at his home and ate with him. Hebe Kohlbrugge met him as a courier during the war. The questions I asked of those I interviewed were primarily concerned with their own interaction with Visser ’t Hooft. As stated above, the goal here is not to write a ‘commemorative’ work, even though the standard anecdote is not out of place in a biography like this one. The basic approach was one in which primarily open questions were asked and the interviewee was given room to tell his or her own specific story. Certain statements were investigated further by comparison. In addition to the sources mentioned and the interviews, audiovisual material is digitally available.31

This study is intended to be a critical and interpretative biography,32 and we will pursue depth here by giving a great deal of room for a study of the sources for the theological content and religious experience. Religion is treated in this sense as an authentic guiding element, important for a person’s direction in life, for what they consider to be a ‘good life’, and an important motivation for devoting themselves to a certain task.33 Thus, important encounters that had a great influence on Visser ’t Hooft are discussed in their historical context. The works he read and wrote are also discussed in connection with concerns current to the period in question. I will apply them as needed in this work; doing this will provide a certain depth to his development, and the expressiveness of his thoughts and the effectiveness of his deeds can be weighed by the reader him- or herself.34

He himself saw primarily continuity in his life’s work, but there is a great difference between the effectiveness of his work in the different periods, a fact that he himself readily recognised for that matter. Objectively demonstrable moments in which, figuratively speaking, a new chapter began are the following: 1924, graduation, marriage, a new job, moving to Geneva; 1939, new job, moving; 1948, foundation of the World Council of Churches; and 1966, retirement. It speaks for itself that those years also largely determine the chapter divisions in this book: respectively chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9. But other gaps in content emerge from the sources. In 1918 Visser ’t Hooft embarked on a period of exploration in which he found his style and beliefs; in 1933 he saw his peace idealism fail; in 1938, he assumed a prominent role as general secretary of the World Council of Churches that was forming; in 1942, he had to accept the Allied rejection of the overture sought by the German resistance; in 1968, his wife died and in the same year, during the assembly in Uppsala, he noticed how problematic his message had become. These final breaking moments brought more change in content that we will explore in specific chapters. The second criterion for the chapter division is thus thematic, and chapters 4, 7, and 8 are to be read as special ‘excursuses’ on three major themes: the ‘Swiss road’; ecumenicity and Eastern Orthodoxy; the Roman Catholic contacts. These three chapters overlap temporally with the other chapters we listed above. In chapter 10, finally, we will provide an evaluative picture focused on his love for Rembrandt in which his own reflections on his life and others are juxtaposed.

The existence of a comprehensive amount of material that little or no use has been made of for critical research into Visser ’t Hooft’s life gives legitimacy to a primarily inductive approach, as opposed to a more deductive approach that connects the assessment of a career to some fundamental ideas formulated by the biographer that are not primarily derived from the career in question. This approach implies that cultural-historical, cultural-sociological, and cultural-philosophical aspects are discussed, but this discussion is deliberately restricted.

Against the background of both World Wars and the rise of totalitarian movements and of the Cold War, the sources show how Visser ’t Hooft continually found his point of orientation in ‘the church’, how Visser ’t Hooft chose the church and accepted the Bible as the Word of God and Jesus Christ as the embodiment of God’s love for people. Though he started in the ecumenical youth movement, in the 1930s he made a principled choice for the institution of church as a central building block for unity. In this study we will explore what form of church unity he sought and how his high expectations of – often quiet – diplomacy were connected with that. As stated, we will not go extensively into these questions of cultural history, cultural sociology, and cultural philosophy, given that they require a separate study. But they do of course figure in the background and are explicitly discussed at the appropriate moments. The cultural-historical question is: What role did the background of two World Wars, the Cold War, decolonisation and secularisation play? The cultural-sociological question is: How far did his expectation of a consensus between institutions such as institutional churches go? How did he see the relationship between a ‘movement’ and an ‘institution’? And the cultural-philosophical question is: What universal norms did he think he could build on? Were those norms derived directly from the Gospel?

A readable biography cannot simply be a detailed, chronological summary of the most important facts about someone’s life. No biographer would want to avoid arranging, weighing, interpreting and thus thematising certain elements. What is truly important? What has explanatory value? What are secondary matters or unimportant issues in light of the questions posed? Things that contemporaries found very important do not have to remain as such for a biographer writing several decades later. And the converse is true as well. Things that were then thought to be obvious and perhaps not worth the trouble arguing for then could today be viewed as very remarkable. In this biography, the themes that determine the chapter division have been chosen in accordance with the interpretation I give to Visser ’t Hooft’s life, to the material at hand, and to the gaps in Visser ’t Hooft’s life. The themes are thus derived directly from the sources that cohere with Visser ’t Hooft’s life and not from the description of that life on which I have superimposed my preconceived ideas.

No one can write a biography without a certain affinity for and fascination by his or her subject. The best place to write a readable, stimulating, and academic text on a human life is between distance and nearness. Visser ’t Hooft is fascinating because of his striving to act in a deliberate and well-informed way in the border area between church and society. I never met him personally. That is a disadvantage and calls for modesty because something happens in a personal encounter with someone that cannot be simulated anywhere else. It is also an advantage. There is a natural distance, and the author feels free and not bound by any pious approach. I am working primarily as a historian, but I also have to employ my background as a theologian in a bi-disciplinary approach in order to understand the heart of Visser ’t Hooft’s life. But this book is written as a critical and historical, academic study. Theology is an important part of this story and is therefore also an object of detailed and critical reflection from the historical perspective.

1 Hoedemaker, Houtepen and Witvliet, Oecumene als leerproces. Inleiding in de Oecumenica (1993), 33. Translator’s note: in Dutch ‘oecumene’ is a substantive based on the Greek ‘oikumène’ indicating both ecumenicity and ecumenical movement. The Dutch subtitle of the present biography is: ‘Een leven voor de oecumene’; literally ‘A Life for Oikumène’. The original meaning of the Greek New Testament word is more neutral and refers to the inhabited world, or civilisation.

2 This definition builds on an earlier attempt; see Zeilstra, ‘Oecumenische beweging’, 2005.

3 Koschorke, ‘Transcontinental Links, Enlarged Maps, and Polycentric Structures in the History of World Christianity’, 2016.

4 Kennedy, ‘Protestant Ecclesiastical Internationals’, 2012, quote on page 295.

5 Cf. Peltonen, ‘What is Micro in Microhistory?’ 2013.

6 Cf. Levi, ‘The Uses of Biography’, 2013, 89-112.

7 De Haan, Van kroon tot bastaard. Biografie en het individuele perspectief in de geschiedschrijving (2015), 298-302.

8 For example, Golterman and Hoekendijk, Oecumene in ’t vizier (1960). For a theoretical analysis of the genre ‘Life Writing’: De Haan, ‘The Eclipse of Biography in Life Writing’, 2013.

9 For example, the interview by Puchinger of Visser ’t Hooft in Geneva on 6 April 1966, in: Puchinger, Is de Gereformeerde wereld veranderd? (1966), and Murray ‘The Head Fisherman’, 1961. See also ‘The Chief Fisherman’ in: Time, 8 December 1961, 58-61.

10 For example, Freudenberg and Harms, ‘Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft “Unter dem einen Ruf”’, 1963. Cf. Brennecke, ‘Der Generalsekretär Dr. Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft’, 1963; Istina vol. 48 no. 1, Deux pionniers de l’unité: Yves Congar et Willem Visser ’t Hooft (2003); Thomas et al., ‘Tribute to Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft’, 1966; Fries, ‘Ein Friedenspreis für ökumenischen Arbeit’, 1966; Hampe, ‘Augustin Kardinal Bea und Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft, Friedenpreisträger 1966’, 1966; Blake, ‘Visser ’t Hooft: A Tribute’, 1966; Van den Heuvel, ‘Eerbewijs aan een tachtigjarige’, 1980; Newbigin, ‘The Legacy of W.A. Visser ’t Hooft’, 1992; Garrett, ‘Remembering Wim’, 2000; Sjollema, ‘Portrait of the WCC’s first General Secretary’, 2015. Non-critical: Von der Kloeden, ‘Visser ’t Hooft, Willem Adolf’, 1997.

11 See file in Visser ’t Hooft Family Archives.

12 Rein, ‘Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft. The Future of Peace’, 2018, 99.

13 Berkhof, ‘Visser ’t Hooft as Ecumenical Theologian’, 1986; idem, ‘Herdenking van Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft’, 1986; Bronkhorst, Dr. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft vertelt over Evanston (1954); Van der Bent, ‘Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985) Une présentation biographique’, 2001; idem, ‘Visser ’t Hooft, Willem Adolf’, 1991; idem, W.A. Visser ’t Hooft, 1900-1985 (2000); Holtrop, ‘Hooft, Willem Adolph ’t’, 1994; idem, ‘De Kerk, de kerken en de Wereldraad van Kerken’, 1987; Zeilstra, ‘Visser ’t Hooft, Willem Adolph’, 2001.

14 Schubert, Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985). Ökumene und Europa (2017).

15 Zeilstra, review of Schubert, Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985), in: Church History and Religious Culture (2018), vol. 98, no. 2, 310-312.

16 Zeilstra, European Unity in Ecumenical Thinking (1995).

17 Kinnamon, M., Unity as Prophetic Wittness. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft and the Shaping of Ecumenical Theology (2018).

18 Guittart, ‘Biographical documents on Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft’, no date. WCC 994.1.31.

19 Visser ’t Hooft, Leren leven met de oecumene (1968).

20 Visser ’t Hooft, The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation (1982); Dutch version: Gods vaderschap in een eeuw van emancipatie (1983).

21 Page references in this study refer to the original English version of the memoirs: Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973). In giving quotes in Dutch, use is made of the translation by C. Michael de Vries. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires. Een leven in de oecumene (1971).

22 Boegner, L’exigence oecuménique des Eglises. Souvenirs et perspectives (1968).

23 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs, ix.

24 Cf. Giordano, and Dell’Aqua (eds.), ‘Die Welt war meine Gemeinde’ Willem A. Visser ’t Hooft. A Theologian for Europe between Ecumenism and Federalism (2014).

25 For example, Mertens, ‘Portrait de W.A. Visser ’t Hooft’, and Courvoisier, ‘Le temps du rassemblement. Mémoires’, 1976.

26 Zeilstra, interviews with A.H. van den Heuvel, 13 April 2013 and B.C. Sjollema, 20 August 2013.

27 Van der Bent, ‘Visser ’t Hooft, Willem Adolf’, 1991.

28 For example, see also Visser ’t Hooft, Heel de kerk voor heel de wereld (1968).

29 Nelson, No Man is Alien. Essays on the Unity of Mankind (1971), 264-330, offers a quite complete overview of the writings of Visser ’t Hooft’s writings up to and including 1970.

30 See especially the deposited archives of Visser ’t Hooft, WCC 994.1 and 994.2.

31 Sound and Vision, Hilversum, digital productions of radio and television recordings since 1939.

32 Renders, De zeven hoofdzonden van de biografie (2008), 6. Cf. Teunissen, Voor ’t gewone leven ongeschikt (2017), 10-11.

33 Borgman, ‘Biografie, publieke inzet & religie’, 2011, 264.

34 Cf. Renders, De zeven hoofdzonden van de biografie (2008), 45.

1 The World Opens Up, 1900-1924

Abstract

This chapter traces Wim Visser ’t Hooft’s life from his birth at the beginning of the twentieth century in Haarlem in the Netherlands to his move to Geneva as international secretary for the YMCA in 1924. The chapter stresses his patrician and Remonstrant background, pointing out how this background shaped his worldview and taught him to think and act independently and on his own initiative. The chapter also traces important early influences on his thinking and theology, such as the NCSV (Dutch Christian Student Society) and Karl Barth. His work in student relief after the war showcased his networking and problem-solving capabilities. The qualities he developed were decisive for his career in the World Council of Churches.

Keywords: patrician elite background, Haarlem, the Netherlands, remonstrant protestants, grammar school, Dutch Student Christian Movement (NCSV), Jetty Boddaert

1.1 Introduction

Wim Visser ’t Hooft spent his youth in Haarlem in the first decades of the twentieth century. He grew up in a close family that belonged to the social upper crust of the city. The family were Remonstrants, and his parents were broad-minded for that time and gave their three sons a great deal of freedom. Nevertheless, the adult Visser ’t Hooft later remembered his youth as having been spent in a very quiet city, a safe ‘bubble’ far from world events. That feeling was probably nurtured by the fact that the trips abroad that the family made in the years before the Great War suddenly became impossible in the summer of 1914: ‘We were stuck inside our borders, but we were also spiritually and intellectually cut off from the rest of the world.’35 Against this background, the vacations spent in the youth camps of the Nederlandse Christen Studenten Vereniging (NCSV = Dutch Student Christian Movement, i.e. Dutch branch of the World Student Christian Federation) played a major role for Visser ’t Hooft. The end of the war in 1918 meant that the world opened up and that Visser ’t Hooft found himself confronted by new challenges coming at him at great speed. In this chapter we will look at the values that he received and how he personally developed them (1.2). During his time in secondary school, which proceeded without any major incidents, Visser ’t Hooft spent a great deal of time reading (1.3). His personal development at this time took a surprising turn as he chose theology and enjoyed the life of a student for a few years. What role did his belief in God play, and what task for his life did he derive from it? (1.4) In 1924 he married Jetty, a young woman from The Hague. What did she mean for him in this period? (1.5)

Figure 1 Wim (Visser) ’t Hooft, ca. 1916

1.2 A Family with Status and Traditions

Willem Visser ’t Hooft grew up in a patrician milieu. His parents, Hendrik Philip ’t Hooft and Jacoba Clasina Lieftinck, were educated liberal people with a broad interest in culture. Their self-awareness was accompanied by a certain natural feeling for style and no need to show off their status, not to mention claiming positions that accompanied that status. In actual fact, they were genteel patricians, not nobility but ‘regents’ whose forefathers had filled leadership positions in Dutch society for generations simply as a matter of course. That boys learned to step forward and speak up while growing up went without saying. But it was not very formal in the Visser ’t Hooft household. The sons Frans, Wim, and Hans were almost always challenging each other and formed a lively threesome. Frans was the oldest; he initially showed an interest in academia and later primarily in business. The youngest son, Hans was the athlete of the three and went on to study medicine. Wim was primarily interested in the world of literature, and already as a child, he read a great deal. But no one suspected during his school years that he would choose to study theology.

Like his father, Wim liked family traditions and developed a feeling for history already at a young age. He was interested in his family background. Countless portraits, objects, and diaries had been preserved in the family from various ancestors and their country residences. He was fascinated by the stories and anecdotes he was told about them.

Later, he loved being able to tell his children and grandchildren the old family stories, in which he liked to make connections with Dutch and world history. After his retirement in 1966, he carefully unravelled the family history himself.36 He found it quite extraordinary that his oldest known ancestor he learned something about, a certain Iman ’t Hooft, was born in 1584, the year in which William of Orange was murdered. Iman ’t Hooft was a rope-maker in Sint-Maartensdijk, and his descendants became well-to-do owners in the rope industry in Dordrecht.37 In 1886, the family business had to close because shipping began to use steel cables at that time. There were men on the Visser side of the family who were active seamen. Visser ’t Hooft was proud that a number of his ancestors had been involved in the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie).

Figure 2 Wim’s father: Hendrik Philip (Hans) (Visser) ’t Hooft, 1866-1930

Figure 3 Wim’s mother: Jacoba Clasina (Visser) ‘t Hooft-Lieftinck, 1874-1928

When Visser ’t Hooft and his brothers were children, one of the important places for family gatherings was the beautiful house of Bellevue in a park by a pond in Dordrecht, where two unmarried aunts of his father lived.38 Visser ’t Hooft would never forget how his aunt Marie, a very energetic individual, could turn the stately Bellevue into such a warm place for the family to meet. For him and his brothers, the summer vacations there formed the high point of the year in their childhood. They went on boat trips and on outings by horse and carriage to the country residences of other rich family members. He was completely at a loss when, after Aunt Marie ’s death in 1913, Bellevue had to be sold and was torn down. To keep the memory of this aunt alive and to keep the Visser name from disappearing from the family, his father, Hendrik Philip ’t Hooft, decided to add it to the family name by Royal Decree. Thus, the name Visser ’t Hooft came into being.39

They were a Remonstrant family, but they had not been for very long. The choice for the Remonstrant Brotherhood was made by Wim’s paternal grandfather, the lawyer Willem Adolph ’t Hooft (1833-1922). His father and Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876), court historian and one of the leaders of the Réveil, champion of Christian education and the founder of the Anti-Revolutionary political movement, were cousins. This grandfather, after whom Wim was named, was the 14th of 15 children and the only one allowed to stay in school. His father saw a minister in him and had him study Hebrew, but he chose to study law in Utrecht. There he attended the lectures by the empiricist philosopher C.W. Opzoomer who influenced him to become a liberal. He thus began to distance himself from the orthodox milieu in which he grew up in Dordrecht. In 1858, he opened a law office in The Hague where he, helped by good family relations in high circles, quickly became successful. In 1862, he became the secretary of the court in ’s-Gravendeel and in 1865 he married Jacoba Visser (1840-1901), from a rich family in Dordrecht, with whom he shared a love for music. He left the Reformed Church, probably in the 1880s, because of the conflicts that continued to flare up in that church. He was a Liberal Party member on the Haarlem city council for 15 years and also sat on the Provincial Council of North Holland. He was decorated as a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw). His grandson Wim admired him for his practical wisdom and humorous interventions in political debates.

In 1880, Wim’s grandfather ’t Hooft built a large house in Haarlem, Florapark 10.40 This house was an important gathering place for his three children Hans, Sophie Cornelia and Henriëtte Petronella, their spouses and children, and cousins. There was always a large party on 19 December, Grandfather ’t Hooft’s birthday, with a dinner for about thirty guests. His 75th birthday was also celebrated in this way. To mark the occasion, six grandsons, including Wim, dressed up as small chefs. His grandfather loved music and had a pianola with a large repertoire of classics. In addition to his house in Haarlem, ’t Hooft also had a wooden house built high in the dunes at Overveen, called Thalatta, with a beautiful view from the roof. Wim Visser ’t Hooft had wonderful memories of this place. The family went there in his grandfather’s carriage driven by his driver Christian. On 25 September 1914, Queen Wilhelmina stayed at Thalatta so that she could observe the exercises of the mobilised Dutch army from the roof. Wilhelmina asked: ‘This is, after all, the highest point in the area?’ Wim’s grandfather did not want to contradict her and said: ‘Indeed, Your Majesty, if we do not count the top of the dune over there.’ Wim was allowed to take pictures with his own camera of the troop movements in the dunes.41 The whole family was proud of this royal visit.

Figure 4 Thalatta, house in the dunes, owned by Wim’s grandfather, W.A. ’t Hooft

Wim’s mother, Jacoba Clasina Lieftinck, was originally from Bergambacht, and her family owned various properties in that area. She inherited a farm with the land belonging to it. The three brothers enjoyed the visits to this farm. Every year the farmer brought a large round cheese with him when he came to pay his rent. Wim’s maternal grandfather was Franciscus Lieftink (1835-1917), who was born in Odoorn in Drenthe and went to Groningen to study theology in 1853. There he came under the influence of the professor in practical theology, W. Muurling, a representative of the Groningen school, who was open to new insights and turned against Calvinistic confessionalism. He was married to his first wife, Sijtske Zijlstra (1843-1866) for only one year before she died. In 1869 he married Cornelia Nicolaine Johanna Smits van der Goes (1837-1883). For some time, he was a preacher in various villages in the northern part of the Netherlands. In 1874, the year in which his daughter Jacoba was born, he joined the Freemasons. During this period, gradually and just like W.A. ’t Hooft, Wim’s paternal grandfather, he turned away more and more from the Reformed Church. In the end, he gave up being a preacher. That happened when he was elected in 1879 to the House of Representatives as the liberal representative for Leeuwarden. He would continue to serve in the House of Representatives until his death in 1917, thus for 38 years. In 1905, he represented the Zutphen district. As a Freemason, Lieftinck very quickly became Grand Speaker of the order among the Grand Orients of the Netherlands. That is how he met Prince Frederick, son of King William I, and Prince Alexander, son of King William III, with whom he became friends. When Prince Alexander died in 1884 at the age of 33, Lieftinck gave the eulogy for him for the Freemasons. He himself moved to Haarlem with his family in 1883, where his wife died that same year. In Haarlem he became the ‘Emperor’ of the rhetorical society ‘Trou moet Blijcken’, at that time actually a gentlemen’s club. As a Member of Parliament, his areas were fishing and education, and he was an outspoken opponent of Christian school education. In 1917, he was the only Member of Parliament to vote against the Private Education Act that settled the school dispute. He was a pacifist and also regularly got into disputes with Roman Catholic representatives. Lieftinck dressed in an old-fashioned way for that time, had a huge nose, a forked beard, and was an easy target of satire. Because of his verbal skills, for instance, he was called ‘the Mouth on Legs’ (de Bek op Pooten). Wim Visser ’t Hooft and his brothers were very much in awe of him but did not see him very often. He was a busy man. It was a particularly impressive experience for the boys when, during the summer in the Haarlemmerhout, they could attend the concert in the open door pavilion of ‘Trou moet Blijcken’ and sit at the centre table with ‘the Emperor’ himself while the citizenry of Haarlem stood listening at a distance.

Wim’s father, Hendrik Philip ’t Hooft (1866-1930), was born in ’s-Gravendeel and was called Hans, which was a tradition in the family for those whose first name was Hendrik. He attended the Stedelijk Gymnasium (Municipal Gymnasium) in Haarlem and studied law in Leiden. He established himself as a lawyer and prosecutor in Haarlem in 1890. He served regularly as a curator in bankruptcies and divorce cases.42 He was also a correspondent in Haarlem for the bank association and member of the board of the Nutspaarbank, and, in collaboration with the bank association, he rented out strongboxes. After some time, he assumed other roles as well, such as commissioner of the N.V. Hollandse Voorschotbank, deputy judge in the Haarlem district court, and member of the supervisory board of the bar. In 1892 he took a pleasure cruise from Algiers to Athens, Istanbul, and Smyrna.43 In 1895 he married Jacoba Lieftinck and they moved into the house called Zonnebloem, Koninginneweg 107, in the stately Haarlem district of Wilhelminapark.44 Hans ’t Hooft was a well-known Haarlemmer and was known to be a cheerful man with a zest for life.45 His work led to many contacts, which in turn led to various additional jobs to which he devoted himself faithfully. For example, he was treasurer of the Haarlem Bach Society for 25 years and cofounder of the ‘Queen’s Day’ Society. He was also a member of the College of Regents of the St. Elisabeth Hospital, board member of the Remonstrant Church, treasurer of the Haarlem Art Club (Haarlemsche Kunstclub), treasurer of the Tourism Society, and president-curator of the Stedelijk Gymnasium.

Figure 5 House where Visser ’t Hooft was born, called Zonnebloem, Koninginneweg 107, Haarlem

Hans ’t Hooft was, just like his own father, quite musical and gifted literarily. He played the cello – music was important at home. Wim took violin lessons as a child and seems to have been a good player, but he did not continue with the lessons. His father regularly wrote occasional verse, such as a comforting poem about Wim’s dog, called Freddie, when it was hit by a truck in 1911. Hans ’t Hooft became ‘Factor’ of the same Haarlem rhetorical society ‘Trou moet Blijcken’ of which Wim’s grandfather Franciscus Lieftinck was ‘Emperor’. In the tradition of this gentlemen’s society, it was a custom for the Factor to present a long, self-composed poem annually, the so-called year-song in which current events near and far were cited.46 On the occasion of the British military activity against the Boers in the South African War of 1880-1881, Hans ’t Hooft, under the pseudonym ‘Antibull’ wrote a satirical poem about the English called De inval in Transvaal, of De ware grieven der Uitlanders: ’n waarachtig verhaal. (The Invasion of Transvaal, or the True Grievances of the Foreigners: A True Story).47 He contributed to the local history with a study on the Courthouse in Haarlem. He was also a lover of 19th century literature and published a small book on Jan van Walré, a poet famous in Haarlem who lived around 1800.48 Hans ’t Hooft was a great admirer of Hildebrand, a pseudonym for the Protestant minister-poet Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903). He also wrote a book on this famous Haarlemmer and worked on having a Beets monument erected.49 During the city council elections in 1919, Hans ’t Hooft ran as a candidate for the Vrij-Liberale (Free-Liberal) Party, argued for the limitation of government interference in the lives of its citizens, and said he despised ‘bureaucracy’. The party also promised to back private initiative robustly. He was not elected.

Wim’s mother, Jacoba Clasina Lieftinck (1874-1928), played an important role in the family. She herself did not have an easy youth. As a Member of Parliament, her father was almost always in The Hague. In 1883, the family moved to Haarlem, but her mother died that same year. Her father then married Hermine Marie Elisabeth Holtzman, the daughter of the liberal Member of Parliament Petrus Hendrik Holtzman. Franciscus Lieftinck’s third wife could not cope with Jacoba’s brother Jan Lieftinck, and he was told to leave the house. In 1888 Jacoba’s stepsister Francisca Hermine was born. Jacoba was sent to boarding school in Aachen in 1891, and she married Hendrik Philip ’t Hooft in 1895 when she was 21 years old. In 1897 their first son Franciscus (Frans) was born, in 1900 Willem Adolph (Wim) and in 1905 Hendrik Philip (Hans). Wim saw his mother as the linchpin of the family, an energetic woman who called the shots. He typified the atmosphere at home as a special mixture of discipline and freedom that included a great deal of mutual teasing.50 The many contacts meant that teatime in the Zonnebloem house regularly had many visitors, and Jacoba played the role of hostess with verve.

Wim Visser ’t Hooft had a twin brother who died in birth in Haarlem on 20 September 1900. Wim became the ‘sandwich child’ between the older Frans, born in 1897 and the younger Hans, born on 20 September 1905. Hans was a great comfort to his parents because that date was not only Wim’s birthdate but also the day Wim’s twin brother died. Visser ’t Hooft took various aspects of the family bonds he enjoyed in his youth and projected them onto the international ecumenical movement, which he often called ‘family’. He treated young people in a fatherly way and composed limericks and other poems on events that he presented to his co-workers at the end of the year, just as his father had done in ‘Trou moet Blijcken’ in Haarlem. In his own eyes, he could experience happiness at the centre of a movement just when the crisis was the most intense. Visser ’t Hooft was able to flourish when exciting things happened.51 He was often in the forefront at his tennis club, Tidas in Haarlem. When the airplane manufacturer Anton Fokker demonstrated his plane ‘de Spin’ (the Spider) in his hometown of Haarlem on 31 August 1911, Wim Visser ’t Hooft was present, together with his friend, a neighbour boy of the Fokkers. Together, the boys helped pump up the airplane’s tyres. This was the kind of thing that typified his enterprising character.

1.3 Gymnasium: A Little Philosopher

The summer vacations of his childhood were usually spent in Dordrecht, but in the years preceding the war, the family was also able to take trips abroad. Wim thus made his first trip abroad along the Rhine to the Siebengebirge in 1912. He spent his summer vacation in 1913 in the Jugendheim Bergstrasse in Frankfurt. In 1914 he went hiking with his father first in the Netherlands with the ANWB (Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijdersbond, Royal Dutch Touring Club), but the summer vacation with the family in Sauerland was cut short prematurely by the outbreak of war on 1 August. Wim and his brothers watched the German army mobilising in Düsseldorf. There were no trains from Germany to the Netherlands, so the brothers and their parents had to cross the border on foot.52

Figure 6 The three ’t Hooft brothers (Frans, Hans, and Wim) with their father, ca. 1912

At this time, Wim became an enthusiastic participant in the youth summer camps organised by the Nederlandse Christen Studenten Vereniging (NCSV), the Dutch chapter of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). His parents had possibly stimulated him after Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik had visited the NCSV summer camp in the summer of 1913, which resulted in a great deal of publicity for these camps. Students volunteered as camp counsellors not only to have teenage boys enjoy camaraderie, sports, and games in a natural setting but also to share their faith with them. The mood was characterised by social involvement, and there were lots of sports and a great deal of attention paid to personal development. Since trips abroad had become impossible because of the war, from that time on Wim went camping annually with the NCSV somewhere in the Netherlands, usually at De Waskolk near Nunspeet. What he experienced at the NCSV youth summer camps was very different from what he was used to at home. The students who volunteered as camp counsellors often had a pietistic bent and challenged the boys to read the Bible themselves, as if it had been written for them personally. The Bible was not seen here as a book of cultural and historical interest that contained contextually determined and dated texts. At the NCSV camps, the Bible was the Word of God with a contemporary message for young people, and the message was presented in a direct, modern way. Faith in Jesus Christ was central here. The counsellors worked hard to appeal to the boys to come to a personal commitment. Individual and communal prayer with concrete questions about life in mind was stimulated. Visser ’t Hooft experienced his faith here as a power to unite, and he never forgot that.

The NCSV led me to faith in Jesus. The message about Him was not passed on by august ministers but by students a few years older than we were, who used the simplest language and often had a very primitive faith. When, at the end of a raucous meal in the main tent of De Waskolk camp, it suddenly became quiet, and a student we knew as an athlete or as a joker tried, by the light of a kerosene lamp, to say what prayer actually meant or why you had to live with the Bible, then we listened like we never listened before.53

Figure 7 Wim as a schoolboy

In 1912 Wim was admitted to the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Haarlem, where, he himself states, he was not a brilliant student.54 But already at a young age, he read everything he could get his hands on, mature or not, usually from his father’s large library. In comparison to most children, he came to the school very well read and describes himself in his memoirs as a smart aleck who was teased a bit by girlfriends about his philosophising. His family also saw him as a little philosopher in this period. Whatever he could not find among his father’s books he attempted to buy second hand. He himself states in his memoirs that there was no one line in his reading. He read writers like Heinrich Heine, Oscar Wilde, Romain Rolland, Leo Tolstoy, and especially Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He also tried to read philosophers like Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Schleiermacher, but they were too much for him. When the worldly-wise Wim once tried to discuss Schleiermacher with his grandfather Lieftinck, the latter responded scornfully: ‘Soon ripe, soon rotten’. Wim did not pay much heed. With respect to poetry, he was mostly interested in the Tachtigers (the Eighties Movement). He himself wrote poems, and together with a friend he composed a musical comedy called ‘Andromeda’, which was performed during a party in Leeuwarden. In 1917, he sent some of his poems to Willem Kloos, but this was a disappointment: the famous poet responded with nothing more than a standard rejection letter. He had more success in the Rostra Gymnasiorum, the journal of the Dutch gymnasium students, which published three of his poems.55

1.4 A Student in Leiden: Questions and Answers

In the last phase of his life, probably without being aware of it, his grandfather Lieftinck played an important role in Visser ’t Hooft’s life. Wim had a great deal of respect for him, but seldom had the chance to speak to him privately. Lieftinck defended the Freemasons enthusiastically, which he presented as a big-hearted, undogmatic form of religion. But Visser ’t Hooft was shocked when he discovered that his grandfather rejected any possibility of a personal encounter with God. The fact that Lieftinck, who had once been a minister himself, had left the office of minister and the church behind him gave Wim a lot of food for thought.

It was not that he had lost all faith in God. But he had come to the conclusion that God was so great and so unknowable that poor human beings had no right to talk about him. Intercessory prayer, asking God to intervene in human affairs, was wrong. All we could do was listen to the voice of our conscience.56

Lieftinck died in Haarlem in 1917. With his beliefs, he left a spiritual legacy for his grandson Wim that was viewed by the latter as both a challenge and a directive. Curiosity was combined in this phase with the rise of all kinds of personal life issues. During the 1917/1918 school year, he studied Hebrew with the Haarlem rabbi and took confirmation classes with Rev. Dr. A.H. Haentjens (1876-1968). The minister was unable, Visser ’t Hooft felt, to give him real answers, but that did not prevent Wim from being fascinated by the material. Haentjens followed Hegelian philosophy of religion in his understanding of faith and was an original thinker. Wim’s father liked him and once wrote a long occasional poem for him.57 But this minister, whom some found difficult to understand, was accused of being secretly orthodox. On Easter morning 1905, he summarised the Easter message in the words: ‘The Lord is truly risen!’58 This led to a conflict with the board, which accused him of abandoning the modernist standpoint of the Remonstrants and of secretly being orthodox rather than liberal. Haentjens resigned but was called again by the congregation and remained in Haarlem until his retirement in 1939. He attached objective value to baptism as a moment of sanctification by God and held that the kingdom of God also took form in the church. Not everyone in his congregation shared this view. He was a fascinating man with his own views, and he influenced Visser ’t Hooft’s personal development at a crucial time. On an intellectual level, the latter felt truly challenged by Haentjens but did not subscribe to his views.59

Later on, when, as an old man in 1980, he looked back at this time, he found that he had been on the way to becoming what he called a ‘syncretist’. For Visser ’t Hooft, this was a negatively charged term: it referred to someone who pasted together all kinds of insights from various philosophical and religious traditions without accounting for their mutual contradictions and was no longer able to distinguish between the degrees of truthfulness of the various religions.

[T]he most dangerous part … was that this could easily lead to quite abstract views of religion in general, instead of connecting me with the Jesus of the New Testament. I randomly read all kinds of religious books, including those by pantheists, mystics, and agnostics. Because of that, I was on the way to becoming a syncretist who viewed all varieties of religious experiences to be both true and untrue.60

Visser ’t Hooft described his internal restlessness in the diary that he kept in 1917.61 It was usual in the Remonstrant Brotherhood for catechists to confess their faith in words they chose themselves. Unfortunately, Visser ’t Hooft’s text has been lost. We know only that he was not at all happy later with the text he used at his confirmation. According to how he felt later, he had tried frenetically to combine all kinds of ideas about God and human beings. He attempted, he recalled, to find room for both the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, just as the philosopher Pascal had done. Later on, he felt that he had thus reduced Christ to an idea and denied him the honour he was due in his concrete incarnation as the Son of God, ‘as God entering into human history.’62 But although he thought differently about this during his student years and had his membership transferred to the Dutch Reformed Church in 1923, Visser ’t Hooft could still, after many years, look back gratefully at his contact with the Remonstrant Haentjens. Most of all, he appreciated the fact that the minister had given him food for thought.63 It is a shame that neither the diary nor his self-composed confession can be found, for they could have perhaps shed light on Visser ’t Hooft’s personal development in this period of his life.

When he had to choose in 1918 which subject he would like to study, theology seemed to Wim to be an attractive possibility for going further on his personal quest. He did not have much to do with the church at this time and did not at all intend to become a minister. He was primarily interested in finding answers to his own questions and saw theology as ‘a wonderful subject of study’.64 He did not feel called in any way. His goal in studying theology was first of all to gain more ‘clarity’ in spiritual matters. His parents had always stimulated him to participate in the Christian youth camps, but his desire to study theology led to surprise and hesitation on their part. One grandfather had left the ministry. What was a gifted young man, who did not want to become a minister, to do with an education in theology in the 1920s? That was not a field that offered many careers. Did Wim understand that this choice could cost him a bright future? His father warned him, but in the end he approved of Wim’s studying theology if he added law. Perhaps the choice for theology would turn out to be nothing more than a passing fancy.

In the summer of 1918, he graduated from the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Haarlem, and, at 17 years of age, he was quite young for that time to go to university. The war was in its last months: the Allies had repelled the German and Austrian troops with the Hundred Days Offensive. The Spanish flu that ravaged the world and did not spare the Netherlands led to the cancellation of the NCSV summer camp. On 20 September 1918, Wim Visser ’t Hooft turned 18. He followed his father’s wishes and began to study both law and theology, in turns, in the autumn of 1918 at Leiden University. But, although law did not capture his imagination at all right from the start and he continued with it only out of duty, theology began to fascinate him more and more. Much more than he himself had expected, the problem of the church also quickly played a major role in this. During his time at secondary school, he had been influenced by Tolstoy’s objections to the church as institution:65 the New Testament condemned violence, while the church had supported violent states throughout the centuries, just as it also had in the war that tore Europe apart. Because of that, churches – to their shame – had essentially become anti-Christian institutions.66 Visser ’t Hooft now began to modify his view.

In Leiden he underwent the usual freshman initiation and hazing so that he could become a member of the Leids Studenten Corps. The address of the student house he moved into was 129 Rapenburg. It was customary for them to give each other nicknames, and Wim’s stayed with him throughout his life. Because of his somewhat pointed face, his brothers and parents had called him ‘Muis’ (Mouse) when he was a child. He did not mind. His student friends and his wife Jetty continued to call him that.67 Some friends, like Frederik M. van Asbeck, Herman Rutgers, Nico Stufkens, and Conny Patijn, continued to call him that for the rest of his life.

Figure 8 On a bike trip from Breda to Brussels, November 1918; Wim is in the middle

Initially, Visser ’t Hooft had difficulty concentrating on his studies at this intense time. On 11 November, the Germans capitulated and the armistice was announced. Together with three friends of the Leids Studenten Corps, he decided ‘at the bar in Leiden’ to go to Brussels to see the entry of the Belgian king, Albert. To gain access to the ceremonies, the boys applied for press cards from local papers in the cities they came from. They travelled to Breda by train and from there they could easily bike to Brussels. They went through an area that the German army had just left, and the Belgian army had not yet arrived. Visser ’t Hooft’s first report on the entry of the Belgian royal couple into Brussels was published in the foreign news section of the city edition of the Haarlem’s Dagblad.

On Friday, amid the indescribable jubilation of the Belgian people, King Albert, the much-loved ruler of the Belgians, made his entrance into the Belgian capital. It was beautiful weather. It was very busy in the vicinity the Parliament buildings. A great many Belgian and Allied troops were there, drawn up for a parade. The guilds had gathered in front of the Parliament buildings with their banners. Many people watched the spectacle and the military activity from their windows and balconies. There were many foreign soldiers and Red Cross nurses. In the meantime, the cars of ministers and other dignitaries rolled in, as well as those of the diplomatic corps. A whole squadron of Belgian planes came flying in in V-formation and circled over the park, the Parliament buildings, and the palace. The public is ecstatic. The people feel they are free again, redeemed from the oppressive times of foreign domination and foreign violence. The people are enjoying their freedom.68

Wim was inspired, and in 1919 he made a trip to northern France and Paris. He was deeply impressed by the trenches near Reims, which looked as though the soldiers had just left the day before. The heavily damaged cathedral in the city formed the background in a landscape full of destruction. He wrote: ‘If you have any spark of militarism left in your mind, you will notice in this place that you have got rid of it.’69 Despite all distractions, Wim obtained his propaedeutic certificate in theology in 1919, with a research paper on Satan for the professor of Semitic Languages, A.J. Wensinck. He also took his first year foundation course in law in 1920, but that was the end of his law studies. He had proved that he could do it, but the subject did not interest him.70

The student he was now was still fascinated by the NCSV camps, which he had attended since 1915. Wim spent every summer until 1924 camping somewhere in the Netherlands; he graduated quickly from participant to adjutant, then to tent officer and one of the youngest ‘camp commanders’, in charge of a camp of a hundred secondary school boys. There were no boys from the lower classes at these camps, but the elitist atmosphere in which he grew up that was directed so much at individual development was broken open to a certain degree. The boys had to work together, and they had adventures in the world of nature. At these camps, he enjoyed an entirely different atmosphere than what he experienced in Leiden during his classes, at the Leids Studenten Corps, or at home in Haarlem.

Visser ’t Hooft later looked back on his two years in Leiden as a student as a period of superficial student life. In the evenings, he spent a considerable amount of time at the Minerva society. It was pleasant, but he wanted something more. The great change came in 1920 when he and his friend Herman Hoogendijk decided to spend three months at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Selly Oak in Birmingham. Leiden University had had connections with this institute since 1903 when the New Testament scholar J.R. Harris declined a chair in Leiden but indicated that Leiden theology students were welcome at Woodbrooke.71 For Wim Visser ’t Hooft, these were very enriching months spiritually. There was an ecumenical spirit in Woodbrooke, and open discussions on belief were stimulated. The Quakers also included many adherents of the social gospel movement, which laid a great deal of emphasis on putting faith into practice in everyday life. Here Visser ’t Hooft had the opportunity to hear well-known speakers such as the New Testament scholar H.G. Wood. He later referred to this time at Woodbrooke as an important time of reflection in which he found direction for his life.72

Visser ’t Hooft and Hoogendijk also visited other British cities. In Cambridge they heard the writer George Bernard Shaw and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Shaw was a sensation. In an article in the newsletter of the Leids Studenten Corps, Visser ’t Hooft wrote of his admiration for the famous writer, who effortlessly captivated everyone in his audience as a speaker, whether they were capitalists or socialists.

The grey-haired teacher of pure reason at Leiden College would dubiously shake his thought-infused head. What will come of the polarised nature of reality if someone in the world is right? And nonetheless: perhaps he has never yet discovered a kindred spirit as Shaw appeared to be. Only Shaw does it in a more psychological way. That is the unsolvable secret of this popular reasoner, which we can label by the nice term ‘mass psychology’ but cannot explain it.73

This was the engagement that he missed in Leiden.

In January 1921, as part of the NCSV delegation, he attended a conference in Glasgow of the Student Christian Movement (SCM), the British-Irish chapter of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and thus a sister organisation of the NCSV. This was his first major international meeting, and it made a deep impression on him. Around two thousand students from 38 countries gathered and were addressed by celebrities like Edward Grey, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs when the First World War broke out. He told the young people that the decline of civilisation could be prevented only by the restoration of the spiritual values of Christianity. Visser ’t Hooft’s eyes were opened in Glasgow to the opportunities international encounters offered to do something about the problems of the world. Here the relational character of the language of faith became concrete for Visser ’t Hooft. He heard speakers like William Temple (1881-1944), at that time the Anglican bishop of Manchester, and the Scot Joseph H. Oldham (1874-1969), missionary in India and member of the United Free Church, who spoke about God as the highest reality. It struck him that these people did not speak of God as an idea or an impersonal power, but as the living God who takes the initiative and speaks to people personally. Visser ’t Hooft would later be closely associated with both Temple and Oldham. In 1938 they were the ones who nominated him to be the general secretary of the World Council of Churches when it was still in the process of formation.

Soon after, it was the Calvinist Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) who started him thinking. It was his friend Nico Stufkens (1892-1964), study secretary of the NCSV, who introduced him to Barth, specifically the second edition of his study of Paul’s epistle to the Romans that was published in 1922.74 Visser ’t Hooft was not immediately convinced and found it a difficult book. What appealed to him was that Barth took the struggle with the historical-critical method and the questions of modern philosophy seriously. Barth had read Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky and wrestled with the penetrating questions that they posed. At the same time, Barth continued to respect the Bible as the Word of God, which made Visser ’t Hooft respect him. According to Barth, the voice of God can be heard both on a personal level and on the level of society as a whole and it was possible to proclaim salvation to the world, based on the message of the Bible. Visser ’t Hooft suspected that Barth’s approach contained the heart of the answer he was seeking, a reasonable counterweight to the scepticism of his grandfather Lieftinck. Nevertheless, it was some years before he felt he truly understood Barth’s intentions.75

In 1921, Wim Visser ’t Hooft became president of the NCSV student aid committee that sought funds to give assistance to students, especially food and clothing, in countries which had been hit by the First World War and the Spanish flu. He was very quickly asked to be president of the relief committee of the Nationale Studenten Organisatie (NSO; National Students’ Association), which included not only Protestant Christian student organisations but all Dutch student organisations. Visser ’t Hooft saw his chance and quickly understood that he had been given a complex combination of positions. The NCSV work fell under European Student Relief, the greatest project of the WSCF, which was led by Americans and was supported by the multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller. Visser ’t Hooft thus wore two different hats and, in addition to his studies, spent considerable time raising funds and in mutual co-ordination of his two roles.

An international discussion on the work of the European Student Relief organisation in Turnov, Czechoslovakia in 1922, with eighty students from 29 countries was organised by Conrad Hoffman (1884-1958), the American secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Hoffman did pastoral work among prisoners of war, refugees, and students in Europe. He asked Visser ’t Hooft to serve as secretary of the conference, which took place under great tension and threatened to fail because of mutual disagreements. But it went well.

Mr. Visser ’t Hooft declared that he could not conceive that anyone who had taken part in the conference during the past few days could fail to understand the conference spirit. For him personally it had been a deep experience, and he knew it was so for many others.76

Visser ’t Hooft was starting to be noticed. His approach and personal style were experienced as energetic and polite. He went to work enthusiastically and managed to raise good sums of money for student aid, begging people and organisations to contribute. The Dutch committee contributed the most, relatively speaking.77 The general secretary of the NCSV, Herman Rutgers, took Visser ’t Hooft with him later that year on a major trip for the student society to Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. Galloping inflation made life especially difficult for students in Central Europe in 1922 and 1923. One of the hotels where Rutgers and Visser ’t Hooft stayed was plundered during their stay. But Visser ’t Hooft again appeared to be extraordinarily well-suited for this work. He enjoyed the contacts and developed an understanding of the youth in Germany and the countries that had emerged from the former Danube Monarchy. He was annoyed by – in his eyes – the all too easy caricatures and judgmental attitude about the losers of the First World War that he sometimes encountered in other countries. His interest in Germany and Central Europe obviously increased considerably at this time. He opposed prejudices, and his empathic attitude was again noticeable in his responses, an attitude that can be called deutschfreundlich (Germanophilic), whereas his critical view with respect to England had already possibly been nurtured by conversations with his father. The latter had, after all, strongly opposed the actions of the English against the Boers in South Africa.

In 1923, during a meeting of the European Student Relief organisation in Parád in Hungary, he was asked to be chairman of the programme committee. Despite a great deal of political tension internationally, such as the French occupation of the Ruhr and increasing anti-Semitism, the mood remained good during the conference. In Visser ’t Hooft’s eyes, this was due to the Christian faith to which every participant felt accountable. It is very telling that he also became chairman of the Dutch aid committee ‘Duitsche Universiteiten’ in 1923, which organised special aid to German universities. In 1924, it was concluded that the worst needs had been alleviated, and the aid committee of the NSO was disbanded. In the following year, European Student Relief became the International Student Service (ISS) and concerned itself with student conferences and study trips. In the second half of the 1930s, however, it also offered help to refugees. In 1950, this organisation shed its Christian identity and became the World University Service.

The headquarters of the NCSV was the beautifully situated Hardenbroek Castle, close to Driebergen-Rijsenburg. When Herman Rutgers, the general secretary, travelled to Peking in 1922 to attend an international meeting of the WSCF, Visser ’t Hooft was asked to replace him temporarily as acting secretary. He was the host of the castle for four months in the first half of 1922. This was quite something for him. During the week it was dead quiet and he had any amount of time to simply enjoy nature. But at weekends Hardenbroek became the centre of bustling activity. Large groups of students, who could have intense discussions, were present in the building and the gardens. There were special speakers on a regular basis. For example, Visser ’t Hooft played host to Dr. Georg Michaelis, Chancellor of Germany for a short time in 1917 and now chairman of the German chapter of the WSCF. Michaelis had a pietistic outlook on faith and touched a sensitive chord in Visser ’t Hooft. At the same time, this encounter led him to understand that, to unite people on the basis of their Christian faith into a movement that could influence the world, more than an intense personal faith was necessary. It was not only Christians but the churches themselves that needed to be organised. They were standing with their backs to the world, and that had to change.

In post-war Europe, Christian youth work was held by many to be important, and American and British leaders especially in the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations (YMCA, founded in London in 1844 by George Williams) saw new opportunities. The intention was to prevent young men who were now growing up in countries that had suffered from the violence of war or revolution or had disintegrated from falling prey to cynicism. The pleasure with which Visser ’t Hooft attended the NSCV summer camps, first as participant and later as student and leader, shifted smoothly and seamlessly into this enthusiasm for international conferences. In the summer of 1923, he and his fiancée Jetty were part of the Dutch delegation at a YMCA conference in Pörtschach in Austria to promote the new initiatives of the YMCA. He hoped to get new ideas there that he could apply to the work of the NSCV.78 There he heard John R. Mott (1865-1955) speak, the famous American missionary and leader of the YMCA and the WSCF, whom he had also heard speak in England and had once met in the Netherlands.79 Visser ’t Hooft was critical of what he saw as the naively optimistic approach of Americans who wanted to convert European youth with an emotionally charged call. But in John Mott, who spoke about ‘Boyhood – the Greatest Asset of Any Nation’, he saw a man of deep faith with a broad vision that touched him.80

Herman Rutgers of the NSCV saw special qualities in Visser ’t Hooft and wanted him to set up a Christian publishing company connected with the NCSV, similar to the British SCM Press. What Rutgers did not know was that Conrad Hoffmann, who had chaired the conference in Turnov in 1922, had not forgotten about Visser ’t Hooft and wanted him for a position with the social department of the WSCF that was to be set up.81 Following a management crisis in 1923, which led to the resignation of a number of secretaries, they were seeking young people in this organisation to give leadership to a new structure for European work. Visser ’t Hooft initially saw more in Rutger’s idea of setting up a publishing company. But love had now entered his life in the person of Jetty, and this weighed very heavily in his decision. In a letter to Rutgers he clearly indicated his motives:

The reason why I chose to continue to study theology and did not, as people thought I would, switch to law is simply this: that I believe only in doing work in which I feel that I am doing what God asks me to do. You don’t need to be afraid that I will end up being a civil servant in disguise – I think I need to watch out that I do not go in an entirely different direction. That is, I run the risk of putting the content of my work so far above my social status that I would be a danger to myself socially. Before I became engaged, that didn’t matter, but now that I am engaged and want nothing more than to get married as soon as possible, I have to watch out for that. And if I therefore talk about that aspect in our further collaboration, I ask you then to remember that [this] is happening despite myself. Jetty is prepared to support this work; I will therefore never ask for anything else than that we can live in such a way, financially speaking, that Jetty will never have to suffer. As you will have noticed, Jetty’s strength is not unlimited – and this is the only point that I have questions about. But I want to accept, without restriction, all work that I am able to do and is actually useful in the larger whole of the work that serves God’s kingdom indirectly or directly.82

Visser ’t Hooft soon encountered a host of difficulties, however. The greatest one here was that the publisher’s association refused to admit the new publishing company to be set up by Visser ’t Hooft as a member because the association was exclusively interested in purely commercial enterprises. It was a difficult time economically, and he also found it hard to raise funds for the NCSV in this period. At times, however, he had a major success, as in June 1924, when he managed to get a pledge for 1000 guilders from the Van Schaardenburg company in Rotterdam: ‘You realise of course that I danced in public on the Maasbrug.’83

In the meantime, in 1924 Hoffmann had passed Visser ’t Hooft’s name onto the Canadian Edgar M. Robinson, organiser of the Pörtschach conference and the secretary in Geneva for the youth work of the YMCA International Committee for the United States and Canada. He was the one who asked Visser ’t Hooft in the spring of 1924 to come to Geneva for a few years as the international secretary for the new European youth work of the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations. Rutgers, who had told Robinson about Visser ’t Hooft, advised against it. Not only was Visser ’t Hooft not available because of the publishing plans, but, at 23, he was too young.84 But Robinson was not to be put off. He felt that experience working in a position in the Netherlands would make Visser ’t Hooft less suited for international work. With mottos like ‘catch them young, and train them in the type of work they are expected to do’ and ‘youth is an asset’, he invited Visser ’t Hooft to come to Geneva from 25 to 28 April 1924 for some interviews.85 He accepted his first paid job. During a meeting in 1923 in the Netherlands with John R. Mott, then head of the YMCA, Visser ’t Hooft’s mother said these prophetic words to Mott: ‘You’re just like a big spider: first you catch him in your web, and now you’re going to swallow him.’ Mott is said to have answered: ‘But, madam, you underestimate the great gift that God has made to us in your son.’86

1.5 The Marriage of Two ‘Children of the Sun’

When Visser ’t Hooft visited Woodbrooke again in the summer of 1922 for a reunion, he met a young woman from The Hague there and fell in love with her immediately. He had probably heard of her before – she was, after all, a cousin of his friend Steven van Randwijck. After their stay in Woodbrooke, he was able to meet her that summer in Oxford and London. Her name was Henriette Philippine Jacoba Boddaert, Jetty for short. She was a beauty. She had not attended university but immediately made an impression on him through her independent spirit. He found her a fascinating woman with a rich spiritual life. In that same summer, shortly after their return to the Netherlands, Wim and Jetty were engaged. After he graduated in 1923 as a theologian and opportunities for paid work came along, they made plans to marry. Jetty was the daughter of Jacob Eduard Boddaert, secretary of the Board of Trustees of Leiden University, and Anna Johanna Boddaert, née Lady de Jonge. Jetty had grown up in a quite formal Hague environment. Her parents did not think it important to send Jetty to university,87 but that did not bother Visser ’t Hooft at that time – he was in love.

Figure 9 Henriëtte Philipine Jacoba (Jetty) Boddaert, 1899-1968, ca. 1922

Figure 10 Wim and Jetty ‘reading’ after they were engaged. Wim is holding a book called De moderne staatsidee of H. Krabbe (1915), but is looking at her.

Wim and Jetty were married on 16 September 1924 in The Hague. The church ceremony took place in the Duinoordkerk. The study secretary of the NSCV, Rev. Maarten van Rhijn, a Reformed minister in Groesbeek, led the service.88 The marriage was at the same time a farewell, for after their honeymoon, the bridal couple moved immediately to Geneva, the home of the new international secretary for the youth work of the YMCA. It was a big party. The festivities began already on 26 August with a dinner for 22 family members in the Zonnebloem house on the Koninginneweg in Haarlem, adorned with green and flowers. Those who were present sang a welcome song:

Welcome, Welcome, radiant bride and groom

In the old Zonnebloem!

Every heart beats warm for you

Oh children of the sun!89

Together you will live your lives,

Together you will travel far,

May your path in those far lands

Be filled with sun beyond compare!

Welcome, welcome, children of the sun,

In the old Zonnebloem!

Go with great cheer to Geneva

Which I call a place of peace!

But don’t forget your friends here

Who bind you to this land,

Come back sometime to all these friends

In this old Fatherland!90

Figure 11 Wedding photo of Wim and Jetty, The Hague 16 September 1924

Wim and Jetty could both point to a distant relationship with the legendary Groen van Prinsterer, who was a great-uncle of the father of Wim’s grandfather Willem Adolph ’t Hooft and of Elisabeth de Jonge-Philipse, Jetty’s grandmother. This fact led to jokes and allusions about her fate. Everything was set down in a commemorative book, and the table was wonderfully decorated with the symbol of this hospitable home, Zonnebloem, that had a beautiful effect in between the old blue of the dinner service. There were many warm speeches. First, the bridegroom’s brother who spoke on behalf of his father welcomed everyone warmly. Then the father of the bride spoke, commenting on the relationship of the bridal couple in great detail. Then Wim’s father spoke as if he were the ghost of Groen van Prinsterer:

The ghost of Mr. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer speaks:

Though unbelief and revolution still celebrate their heyday in the world,

It’s time again in the Netherlands that soundness and piety be unfurled.

Because those virtues already adorned of yore our old Netherlandic race

So I have brought together two scions of Groen van Prinsterer’s race.

In Joy and Peace both bride and groom came and there together met

They quickly sensed that it was good and thus their course was set.

Grandchild of my cousin Philipse, and grandson of my cousin ’t Hooft

These young people, one in mind, have pledged each other troth.

Like old wine in new bottles, may this young loving couple never cease

To be filled with that old spirit – that is my wish at this their wedding feast!91

Two cousins later performed a special sketch in which they came in as the professors Karl Barth and Ernst Troeltsch to congratulate the couple. But they ended up arguing fiercely in half articulate but incomprehensible theological German in an attempt to stump each other. Brother Frans stole the show with a very apt song and dared to mock his brother Wim’s international enthusiasm.

Internationalism on the brain,

Every new flag drives me near insane.

When I go to bed,

The map turns round my head.

England, France and China

Are old friends of mine,

And the people living along the Rhine.

But the only people that are real OK,

That’s the crowd that lives in dear old USA.

My own country makes me weep,

When I’m in Holland I’m asleep.

Sure, I’ve internationalism on the brain.92

It was a fun song, but Frans was mistaken. It was not the ideal of internationalism itself that drove Wim but how he could live out the Christian faith with young people from various countries.

In the week that followed there were various dinners in honour of the bridal couple, at, among other places, the Patijn family. There were outings – to Marken on 28 August and on 7 September to his grandfather’s house Thalatta in the dunes near Bloemendaal. Wim and Jetty spent their honeymoon in Lugano and Venice, after which they moved to Geneva in October 1924.

Figure 12 Wim and Jetty on their honeymoon, 1924

1.6 An Enthusiastic Youth Worker is Formed

This chapter relates how Wim Visser ’t Hooft, who was born on the threshold of the twentieth century, grew up with his two brothers in Haarlem in an elitist environment. His father and mother were members of the upper class of the population. The family belonged to the Remonstrant Brotherhood, and his parents saw an important element of and guarantee of a civilised life and society in the Christian faith. Visser ’t Hooft grew up with a good dose of rivalry with his brothers, but when he wanted to start something, there was little that stood in his way.93 He heard all kinds of opinions proclaimed in his immediate circles, but these differences did not lead to serious conflict. Already at a young age, he could think and work independently. He grew up in times of crises, and when certain paths were blocked, he turned out to be very resourceful.

The young Visser ’t Hooft was curious and eager to learn. He read a great deal and got through secondary school without incident and had a preference for languages, literature, and philosophy. He spoke reasonable French, German, and English at a young age already, albeit with a heavy Dutch accent that he never lost. There were no foreign trips, which the family could easily afford, during the war. That was precisely why he had so much time to attend the NCSV youth camps that he went to every summer. There he learned the values of camaraderie and adventure, which he experienced as an important supplement to his somewhat protected life at home. At these camps he also became acquainted with a personal way of reading the Bible and of believing that appealed to him.

The discrepancy between the way in which faith was dealt with at home and in the Remonstrant Brotherhood and the way in which it was treated at the youth camps raised many questions for Visser ’t Hooft. All in all, it was a formational and stimulating background. He hoped to find answers to his questions by studying theology. His father was astounded by this choice and laid down the condition that he could study theology only if he also studied law at the same time. But although law did not interest him and he gave it up rather quickly, theology became his passion. That was reinforced when he discovered a more committed form of faith during an ecumenical students’ conference in the Quaker centre of Woodbrooke that allowed him to connect both the experiences he had at the NCSV camps and his intellectual interests. The international context of the encounter between young people from various backgrounds played a major role in this. At Woodbrooke, the atmosphere was one of a personal faith combined with attention for the great questions that were being raised in society. In the Swiss Karl Barth he found a theologian with a similar concern. Barth not only asked questions but also gave answers that Visser ’t Hooft valued. This seemed to him to be a theology that, if simplified, could appeal to people in church and society. With his work for the financial support of students in countries that had been affected by the war, Visser ’t Hooft also showed that he did not back down from difficult tasks and could relate easily to people, including those of other languages and cultures. He sought solutions. At the international conferences he attended for student aid work, it appeared that he could deal with disagreements well and could connect and motivate people from very different backgrounds. He appealed candidly in his contacts with people to – precisely as Christians – relativise national disagreements and truly listen to each other. These qualities led to his being noticed by leaders who saw potential in him as a youth worker. In 1924 he was asked to be the international secretary of the youth work of the YMCA, located in Geneva. That is how Visser ’t Hooft ended up in one of the great international Christian organisations that was connected – via all kinds of personal contacts – with the ecumenical movement that was slowly developing but had not yet taken shape completely.

He immediately felt a strong spiritual affinity with Jetty Boddaert from The Hague, whom he met in 1922 at a reunion at Woodbrooke, because of her independent attitude. This led in a short time to their engagement, and they were married in 1924 and moved to Geneva.

35 Visser ’t Hooft, Leren leven met de oecumene (1986), 11.

36 Visser ’t Hooft, Notes on the Ancestors (1976). See also: Nederland’s Patriciaat 32 (1946), 88ff., and over the family Visser ’t Hooft-Boddaert, ibid., 100-101.

37 Nederland’s Patriciaat (1923), Vol. 13, 110-111.

38 The house was located at Singel 272 in Dordrecht. No longer standing, it was close to the railway and was surrounded by verdure and water. Cf. Caspar Visser ’t Hooft, Een hof tot ons gerief. Zeven buitenplaatsen en hun bewoners (2019).

39 Royal Decree, 3 September 1917. Visser ’t Hooft, Notes on the Ancestors (1976), 21-22.

40 This building was built together with no. 11 and was designed by architect A.J. van Beek. It is still standing.

41 Cf. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 4. A copper commemoration plaque of this event is in the possession of P.A. Visser ’t Hooft-Jenkins, Heiloo.

42 Haarlem’s Dagblad, classified ads between 1895 and 1920.

43 [Visser] ’t Hooft, H.P., ‘Reisbeschrijving van de reis naar de Levant en Algiers’, no date, Visser ’t Hooft Family Archives.

44 This property, Koninginneweg 107 in Haarlem, still exists and still bears the name ‘Zonnebloem’.

45 Trou moet Blijcken, jaarboek, 1931, 16.

46 J.C. Visser ’t Hooft, ‘De Leeuwenhoek. Een familiegeschiedenis’, 2014, 7 and 9. H.P. ’t Hooft’s year-songs have been transferred to the municipal archives in Haarlem. W.A. Visser ’t Hooft would later introduce the performance of a ‘year-song’ at the Christmas party of the World Council staff. His father wrote these ‘year-songs’ for the years 1906-1921 and 1924.

47 [Visser] ’t Hooft, (under the pseudonym Antibull), De inval in Transvaal, of De ware grieven der Uitlanders: ’n waarachtig verhaal, (1896).

48 [Visser] ’t Hooft, De dichter Jan van Walré (1920). Van Walré was the writer of the booklet Afrekenmaal (1819).

49 [Visser] ’t Hooft, De student Beets. Met een inleiding over humor […] uitgegeven ten bate van het Hildebrandgedenkteeken (1914). The monument, for which the first initiative was taken in 1914, has not had a happy history. The group of statues by J. Bronner in Haarlemmerhout could not be unveiled until 1962 and has been plagued by vandalism time and again.

50 Notes on the Ancestors (1976), 30.

51 Cf. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 342.

52 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 3.

53 F. Groeneveld, interview with Visser ’t Hooft, 1980. De Waskolk is a nature area near Nunspeet: ‘De NSCV heeft mij tot het geloof in Jezus gebracht. De boodschap over Hem werd niet door plechtige predikers doorgegeven, maar door studenten die ee paar jaar ouder waren dan wij, die de meest eenvoudige taal gebruikten en vaak een oer-primitief geloof hadden. Als het aan het eind van een luidruchtige maaltijd in de grote tent van het Waskolkamp plosteling heel stil werd en een student die wij als sportsman of als moppentrapper kenden, bij het licht van een petroleumlamp probeerde te zeggen wat bidden eigenlijk betekende of waarom je met de Bijbel moest leven, dan luisterden we zoals we nog nooit geluisterd hadden.’

54 H. van Run, interview with Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Markant: Visser ’t Hooft’, NOS Television, 8 December 1977, Sound and Vision Archives.

55 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 4. The poems cannot be found; they were possibly published under a pseudonym.

56 Ibid., 5.

57 [Visser] ’t Hooft, H.P., ‘Feestgedicht voor A.H. Haentjens, 29 June 1903, Visser ’t Hooft Family Archives.

58 Barnard, Van verstoten kind tot belijdende kerk. De Remonstrantse Broederschap tussen 1850 en 1940 (2006), 178-183.

59 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 3.

60 F. Groeneveld, interview with Visser ’t Hooft, 1980: ‘[D]e gevaarlijkste kant […] was dat dit makkelijk kon leiden tot nogal abstracte beschouwingen over godsdienst in het algemeen., in plaats van mij te binden aan de Jezus van het Nieuwe Testament. Ik las in het wilde weg allerlei godsdienstige boeken, ook van de hand van pantheïsten, mystici en agnostici. Daardoor was ik op weg een syncretist te worden, die allerlei variëteiten van godsdienstige ervaringen als even waar en onwaar beschouwde.’

61 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 5. I did not have access to this diary.

62 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 6.

63 Visser ’t Hooft to A.H. Haentjens, 26 January, 1944. YDS-12, 61: Vooral nu mijn dochter enkele maanden voor haar bevestiging is, komen de herinneringen aan catechisatie en bevestiging in Haarlem bij mij op en denk ik met dankbaarheid aan wat U mij in die jaren gegeven hebt. Ook al vloog de vogel eenigszins ver van huis, zoo blijft dat verband met het verleden toch levend.’ (‘Especially now that my daughter will be confirmed in a few months, the memories of catechism and confirmation in Haarlem are returning to me, and I look back with gratitude on what you gave me in those years. Even though the bird has flown somewhat far from home, that connection with the past is still alive.’)

64 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 6.

65 Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893).

66 Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Is the Ecumenical Movement Suffering from Institutional Paralysis?’ 1973, reference on 296.

67 Cf. Stoop, interview with Visser ’t Hooft, 1960. Interview by R. Foppen with C.S., Count van Randwijck, De Kerk Vandaag, NCRV Radio, 1 May 1982, Sound and Vision Archives.

68 Visser ’t Hooft (anonymous), ‘Van onzen reizenden redacteur. Op weg naar Brussel’, Haarlem’s Dagblad, 25 November 1918: ‘Onder onbeschrijfelijk gejubel van de Brusselsche bevolking heeft Vrijdag Koning Albert, de veel geliefde vorst der Belgen, zijn intocht in de Belgische hoofdstad gedaan. ’t Was prachtig weer. In de nabijheid van het parlement was het vooral een groote drukte. Daar stonden vele Belgische en geallieerde troepen opgesteld voor het defilé. Daar ter plaatse waren de vereenigingen met hun vaandels voor de Kamergebouwen geschaard. Van de vensters en de balcons kijken velen naar het schouwspel en de militaire bedrijvigheid. Veel vreemde militairen zag men en ook Roode Kruis-zusters. Intusschen rollen de auto’s aan van ministers en andere hoogwaardigheidsbekleeders alsmede van het corps diplomatique. Een heel eskader Belgische vliegtuigen komt in V-formatie aanvliegen en cirkelt over het park, het Kamergebouw en het Paleis. Het publiek is verrukt. Het volk voelt, dat het weer vrij is, verlost uit de benauwende dagen van vreemde heerschappij en vreemd geweld. Het volk geniet van de vrijheid.’

69 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 8.

70 He would later often state that he knew nothing at all any more about law.

71 Kennedy, British Quakerism (Oxford 2001), 184.

72 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 9-10.

73 Visser ’t Hooft, ‘Engelsche Brieven. Bernard Shaw’, 1920: ‘De grijze leermeester der zuivere rede aan de Leidsche Hoogeschool zou zijn gedachte-doorploegd hoofd bedenkelijk schudden. Wat komt er van de gepolariseerdheid der realiteit terecht, als er iemand in de wereld gelijk heeft? En toch: hij heeft misschien nog nooit zoo’n geestverwant ontdekt als Shaw blijkt te zijn. Alleen Shaw doet het psychologischer. Hoe? Dat is het onoplosbaar geheim van den volksredenaar, dat we met de mooie naam van massapsychologie kunnen etiketteeren maar niet verklaren.’

74 Barth, K., Der Römerbrief. Neue Bearbeitung (1922).

75 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 16.

76 ‘Minutes of the Turnov Conference. Held under the auspices of the European Student Relief. April 8th-16th 1922’. HDC-PE, NCSV 524-826.

77 Van den Berg, De Nederlandse Christen-Studenten Vereniging, 1896-1985 (1991), 73. Cf. H.C. Rutgers to Visser ’t Hooft, 17 December 1922, HDC-PE, 524 NCSV, 711. Rutgers speaks of 20,000 guilders’ worth and 100,000 guilders’ worth of goods.

78 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 14.

79 J.R. Mott held a number of positions in these organisations. From 1895 until 1920 he was general secretary of the WSCF, and president from 1920 to 1928. From 1926 to 1937, he was the president of the YMCA World Alliance.

80 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 15.

81 Visser ’t Hooft to H.C. Rutgers, 28 November 1923, HDC-PE, NCSV 524, 711.

82 Visser ’t Hooft to H.C. Rutgers, no date, December 1923, HDC-PE, NCSV 524, 711: ‘De reden, waarom ik theologie ben blijven studeren en niet zooals de menschen dachten, dat ik zou doen, omgezwaaid ben naar de rechten, is alleen deze, dat ik geloof alleen in zulk werk het gevoel te zullen hebben, dat ik het doe, wat God van me vraagt. Je behoeft dan ook in zoover niet bang te zijn dat ik een gecamoufleerde ambtenaar zou zijn – ik geloof dat ik juist in een heel andere richting op moet passen. Ik heb n.l. het gevaar, dat ik het gehalte van mijn werk zoo boven mijn maatschappelijke situatie zal stellen, dat ik aan de maatschappelijke kant in het gedrang kom. Voordat ik geengageerd was, deed dat er niets toe – nu ik dat wel ben en niets liever wil dan zoo spoedig mogelijk trouwen, moet ik daarvoor oppassen. En als ik daarom in onze verdere samenwerking het wel eens over die kant zal hebben, dan vraag ik je te bedenken, dat [dit] als het ware ondanks mezelf gebeurt. Jetty is bereid mede achter dit werk te staan; ik zal daarom nooit meer vragen, dan dat we, financieel gesproken, zoo kunnen leven, dat Jetty er door niet in de knel komt. Zooals je wel gemerkt zult hebben, zijn Jetty’s krachten niet ongelimiteerd – en dit is het eenige punt, waarop ik wel eens een vraagteeken zet. Maar verder wil ik dan ook zonder restrictie elk werk accepteeren, dat ik bij machte ben te doen en dat daadwerkelijk nuttig is in het groote geheel van het werk, dat indirect of direct Gods Koninkrijk dient.’

83 The bridge on the river Maas. Visser ’t Hooft to H.C. Rutgers, 13 June 1924, HDC-PE, NCSV 524, 711.

84 H.C. Rutgers to E.M. Robinson, 5 March 1924, HDC-PE, NCSV 524, 711.

85 E.M. Robinson to H.C. Rutgers, 21 March1924, HDC-PE, NCSV 524, 711.

86 Hopkins, John R. Mott (1979), 636. See also: Stoop, interview with Visser ’t Hooft, 1960.

87 Visser ’t Hooft, The Fatherhood of God in an Age of Emancipation (1982), 57-58. Jetty’s father J.E. Boddaert had been involved as a student in the Utrecht Munster Cemetery scandal of 31 May 1883, where someone died. The mild punishments led to the court being accused of class justice. Montijn, Hoog geboren (2015), 313-315.

88 M. van Rhijn to Visser ’t Hooft, 4 March 1939. YDS-12, 67. M. van Rhijn (1888-1966) was a professor in Utrecht in 1926. The Duinoordkerk was torn down in 1942 at the behest of the occupying forces. M. van Rhijn to Visser ’t Hooft, 4 March 1939. YDS-12, 67.

89 Translator’s note. The Dutch term for ‘sun’ is Zon’. The translation of ‘zonnebloem’ is ‘sunflower’. The song, in calling the bridal couple ‘Zonnekinderen’ (children of the sun) is playing on the name of the house.

90 Welkomstlied 26 augustus 1924. Feestbundel 26 augustus – 16 september 1924, Visser ’t Hooft Family Archives. ‘Welkom, welcome, stralend Bruidspaar / In de oude Zonnebloem / Ieder hart klopt warm U tegen / Als ’k U Zonnekindereren noem! Samen gaat g’uw leven leven, / Samen trekt ge verre heen, / Moge in die verre streken / Zonnig zijn uw pad als geen ! / Welkom, welkom, Zonnekinderen, / In de oude Zonnebloem! / Trek straks fleurig naar Genève / Dat ’k een oord vol vrede noem! / Maar vergeet niet d’oude banden / Die U binden aan dit land, / Keer soms weer tot alle vrienden / In het oude Vaderland.

91 Nu ongeloof en revolutie nog in de wereld hoogtij viert / Wordt het tijd dat degelijkheid en vroomheid de Nederlanders weder siert / Die deugden sierden reeds van oudsher ons oud en Nederlandsch geslacht / Op Vreugd en Rust daar kwamen beiden de Bruid en Bruigom toen bijeen / En spoedig was de zaak beklonken en liepen zij gelukkig heen / Zij kleinkind van mijn nicht Philipse, hij, kleinzoon van my neef ’t Hooft / De jongelieden, één van denken, zij hebben trouw elkaar beloofd / Moog ’t jonge paar in liefde samen steeds zijn vervuld van d’ouden geest / Als oude wijn in nieuwe vaten, dat is mijn wensch op ’t Huwelijksfeest!

92 Visser ’t Hooft, Memoirs (1973), 16.

93 Zeilstra, interview with C.M.W. Visser ’t Hooft, 25 October 2014.

2 The School of International Encounter

Working with Youth and Students, 1924-1939

Abstract

Chapter 2 discusses Visser ‘t Hooft’s work over the next decade and a half. It looks at his work as the YMCA international secretary for youth work and later for the WSCF and traces his development as a thinker and as an increasingly influential voice in the ecumenical movement, against the background of the theology of Karl Barth, and questions of mission and ecumenicity, and of the rising threat of totalitarian movements and the challenges this posed for youth work. The chapter shows how his developments in this period made him the logical choice, given his vision and character, for the position of general secretary of the planned World Council of Churches.

Keywords: Theology at Leiden University, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Rise of German Fascism, Karl Barth, World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), peace talks at Geneva

2.1 Introduction

The wounds left by the First World War were deep – millions of young men had met their death in the trenches. The Spanish flu claimed even more victims. The catastrophic events caused severe damage to the European view of itself as an example of civilisation and progress for the world. The expansion of the Western, more or less Christian, civilisation that had been taken for granted was no longer accepted as inevitable. In 1919, it had not even been ten years – though it seemed much longer – since the World Mission Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 when John Mott spoke of ‘the evangelisation of the world in this generation’.94 The alleged source of civilisation for the world was infected with death and decay. Churches had played a reprehensible role in legitimising the war, with the clergy in all countries at war praying for a national victory and blessing their weapons without hesitation.

A new sense of urgency arose in the 1920s in the ecumenical organisations that had already existed before the war. Various movements were started to attempt to bring church leaders together, not only on a bilateral basis, i.e., between two churches seeking rapprochement, but for the church as a whole. In this search for contemporary forms of Christian unity, however, the organised churches hardly played any role whatsoever; rather, it was inspired personalities who took the lead. The most well-known examples were two movements. The one started in Stockholm at the initiative of the Swedish bishop, Nathan Söderblom, in 1925, i.e., Life and Work, and the one started by the Canadian episcopal bishop, Charles H. Brent, for faith and church order, i.e., Faith and Order. Questions were being raised about the raison-d’être of existing movements, such as the International Missionary Council, Christian youth movements like the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations/Young Women’s Christian Associations (YMCA/YWCA) and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches was founded at the outbreak of the Great War. This was a movement replete with good intentions but extremely vulnerable, for it was completely dependent on individuals: there were no official ties to institutional churches. But since, for the most part, the same individuals popped up in these different movements, informal networks of ecumenical contacts slowly developed. These networks became more and more important through the 1920s. An old ecumenical movement, which continued to exist outside these developments, was the Evangelical Alliance. This organisation had been founded in 1846 in London as a Protestant reaction to the European revival of Roman Catholicism at that time.

This was the emerging field in which Visser ’t Hooft ended up in 1924. His appointment as secretary for youth work in Europe for the World Alliance of YMCAs in Geneva was a pioneering position that had to be built up from scratch; he had no predecessor whose work he could simply take over. His modest salary was initially paid by the Dutch chapter of the YMCA. The energetic and creative way in which he carried out his duties was striking. What were his insights here? How did he deal with international idealism and the rising fascism of the 1920s? (2.2). The YMCA sent the young secretary to a series of large ecumenical conferences. The first was the founding conference for the ecumenical organisation for practical Christianity, ‘Life and Work’ in Stockholm in 1925, under the leadership of the Swedish archbishop Nathan Söderblom. He learned a great deal at these international gatherings (2.3). His work also brought him to the United States, where preparations were being carried out for a world conference of the YMCA in Helsinki in 1926. The developments in American Christianity fascinated him to such an extent that he decided to write his doctoral dissertation on that subject, and he earned his doctorate in 1928 (2.4). His move to the World Student Christian Federation around 1930 proceeded slowly, and for a couple of years he worked for both the YMCA and the WSCF. His principal tasks for the latter organisation were editing and speaking. He took clear standpoints and managed to engage his audience through his ability to simplify the content while at the same time hinting at depth in his words (2.5). At the beginning of the 1930s, all of Europe was focused on the disarmament talks that had been organised by the League of Nations in Geneva. How did Visser ’t Hooft present the connection between what was happening there and their engagement as Christian students to the members of his movement? (2.6). Visser ’t Hooft initially underestimated the significance of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany at about the same time, (2.7). He had great expectations of missions with respect to colonies and countries outside Europe and followed the development of independence movements with interest. In the end, however, he decided not to go into missions (2.8). His roots lay in the youth movement, but he gradually began to pay more attention to the role of the church and to believe that it was through the renewal of the churches that the great social issues could best be tackled. He was the most obvious candidate in 1938 for the difficult position of secretary of the World Council of Churches which was being formed at that time. Just before the Second World War broke out, in the summer of 1939, 1500 Protestant young people from many countries gathered in Amsterdam. This meeting would make a deep impression on Visser ’t Hooft (2.9).

2.2 Secretary of the YMCA in a Wounded Europe

All three brothers, Frans, Wim, and Hans, graduated from the Stedelijk Gymnasium (Municipal Gymnasium) in Haarlem without incident, and after that, they each went in very different directions. The oldest brother Frans (1897-1982) studied in Delft, earned his doctorate in pharmaceutics, and married the American Martha Hamlin (1906-1994), the daughter of fabulously rich parents. She started studying at the Académie Julien in Paris in 1922 and then at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art in 1925 and became an expressionist and surrealist artist. After getting married in 1928, Frans and Martha moved to Buffalo, New York, where Frans became vice-president of the Novadel-Agene Corporation and later president of Wallace and Tiernan’s Lucidol Division. He retired in 1961. He was also an honorary consul for the Netherlands in Buffalo. They had three children: Martje, Frans Jr., and Emily. It was not a happy marriage, however. While Frans concentrated on his career and social position, Martha was primarily occupied with her art and her artistic friends – and the family got in the way of both of them.95 Because they lived in completely different worlds, Wim had little contact with his brother Frans. They would visit once in a while but did not see each other much. Wim got along better with Hans (1905-1977), the youngest of the three. He was the most athletic of the brothers, became a hockey player of some merit, and was selected for the Dutch national team, which won silver at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928. Hans studied medicine in Leiden and became a general practitioner in Velp. In 1932 he married Wilhelmina Scheurleer (1911-1974), and they had six children: Willem, Clan, Annemarth, Hans, Sander, and Willemijn. There was regular contact between Velp and Geneva, especially when the children were still young.

After their honeymoon, Wim and Jetty moved in the autumn of 1924 into a temporary home on the Boulevard de la Tour in Geneva. This house was quickly traded in for a pleasant small villa in Petit-Saconnex. They found a church community to join in Ferney-Voltaire, just across the French border northwest of Geneva. The preaching of the Protestant preacher, Pierre Maury (1890-1956), who had been general secretary of the French chapter of the WSCF, appealed to him immediately, and Wim and Jetty attended services weekly after that. Maury was not only their pastor but very soon became one of Visser ’t Hooft’s best friends.

Figure 13 Wim in tennis clothes, Hans, Frans, and Jetty, ca. 1928

In the autumn of 1924, Visser ’t Hooft went to work enthusiastically for the YMCA. His supervisor, Edgar M. Robinson, who directed the work in Europe, gave him a great deal of freedom and allowed him a great deal of latitude. The only arrangement they had was that Visser ’t Hooft was to be responsible for the youth work of the YMCA in Germany and Scandinavia and would concentrate on work among boys in secondary schools. The first thing he did was to organise an international conference. He had closely observed what did and did not work at the international meetings he had attended. The working model of the conference suited him, and Visser ’t Hooft would organise many of them in the various positions he held. The YMCA, for which he now worked, had been founded in 1844 in London by the industrialist and philanthropist George Williams. It was initially focused on Bible study and prayer groups led by volunteers. Under the leadership of Henri Dunant, the founder of the International Red Cross, it became a world organisation in Paris in 1855. This is where the so-called Paris Basis was accepted, the formulation ‘Jesus Christ as God and Saviour’. This formulation later appeared in the basis document for Faith and Order and, in 1938 – also through Visser ’t Hooft’s doing – these words would be taken over as the basic formula for the World Council of Churches in formation.

The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom amongst young men.96

Figure 14 During a student exchange in the 1920s

Halfway through the 1920s, the World Alliance of YMCAs was a collection of diverse national and local organisations of youth work among young people of all ages. It sometimes primarily concerned school-age children, sometimes students, and the clubs were often ‘melting pots’ of children from all strata of society. There were clubs led by laypeople and clubs that had been organised by churches. Keeping all these different clubs together and having them contribute in a way that enriched the YMCA as a whole was a problem it itself. Activities ranged from Bible study to campaigns for swimming lessons, education programmes for ‘the masses’, evangelisation, and holiday camps. In 1926, there were almost 10,000 associated local clubs with an estimated membership of 1,700,000, 30% of whom were younger than 18, in 36 different countries, territories, and colonies.97 They were financed in continental Europe largely by American philanthropists who were worried at the time about the effects of war violence and revolutions on young people. During the years 1924-1929, Europe was recovering and was relatively prosperous, but the YMCA leadership was afraid that war and revolution would lead young people to succumb to a spirit of scepticism, materialism, and secularisation. A new generation had to be prevented from becoming susceptible to influence by radical movements.98

As secretary for the YMCA, Visser ’t Hooft was primarily successful in organising a number of large international gatherings. He organised a conference twice in Dassel in Lower Saxony for those who worked with secondary school students. The first was in 1927, with delegates from about fifty movements. The second Dassel conference took place in 1932.99 A special international committee was formed that stimulated a psychology of religion approach to the issue of the youth. Visser ’t Hooft managed to enlist the services of the Dutch professor Philip A. Kohnstamm (1875-1951) here as an expert. Kohnstamm was not only an educator but also a philosopher and a physicist. As the father of scientific pedagogy and didactics in the Netherlands, he argued for an open and realistic approach with emphasis on the developmental phase of the growing child.100

The YMCA watched with great concern as the youth groups of communist and fascist youth organisations flourished and continued to hold great attraction for boys and young men. Visser ’t Hooft came from a milieu that was both religious and politically liberal, but, as a young man, he had been receptive to socialism’s power to attract.101 He himself viewed this later as a youthful flirtation that had to do with utopian dreams, and later had no further interest in it. Universal suffrage for men was introduced in 1917 in the Netherlands, and in 1922 women were allowed to vote for the first time. Many wondered at that time what the influence of what were called ‘the masses’ would be on politics and culture. Visser ’t Hooft was interested in that question, but even more in the question of how the masses could be reached with a proclamation of the Christian faith that spoke to them. Visser ’t Hooft himself had never joined a specific political party or movement. He had never voted in the Netherlands, and when he could vote in Geneva as an honorary citizen, he himself said that his vote, when it concerned one of the many referendums, was never motivated by party ideology. He had no confidence whatsoever in a violent revolution, and he detested communists, especially when they were in power. If socialists worked with them, he had nothing good to say about them – then or later.