Partner Wally van
Lanschot
Queer Places:
Wageningen General Cemetery
Wageningen, Wageningen Municipality, Gelderland, Netherlands
Anna
de Waal (November 25, 1906,
Culemborg - March 22, 1981,
Arnhem)
was a politician and secretary of state.
In 1951 De Waal went to live
in Utrecht with Wally van
Lanschot, the founder of the Roman
Catholic Women's Dispute. She had deliberately taken in a relatively
unknown woman, because 'good friends in one house are in danger of falling in
love with each other'. The nature of De Waal and Van Lanschot's relationship
is unclear, but rumors of a lesbian relationship have been persistent. The two
kept it hidden from the environment.
De Waal was the daughter
of Jacobus Wilhelmus de Waal, pharmacist, later a pharmaceutical inspector,
and Geertje Sterkenburg. Anna de Waal grew up together with her two
brothers in a non-religious family. Still, after six years of public primary
school, her parents sent their daughter to a Roman Catholic MULO in 1918 in
their hometown of Culemborg. When father De Waal became a pharmaceutical
inspector in the north of the country in 1921, the family settled in
Leeuwarden. Anna again followed denominational education at the Christian HBS.
Not the mind of the school, but the quality of the education offered was
paramount for her parents.
Anna's parents thought she was too
young to leave home after the final exam in 1924 and therefore had their
daughter visit the household school in Leeuwarden to bridge the gap. In 1926
she - twenty years old - started to study social geography at the University
of Utrecht. On March 26, 1932, she passed her master's degree with honors.
After a year of geography teaching
at the Christian MMS in Nijmegen, De Waal left for the Dutch East Indies in
1932. There she became a geography teacher at the Government Secondary
Education, first in Bandoeng and then in Surabaya. She would later call this
period a 'wonderful time' (
De Nieuwe Linie , ,
14-1-1967).
After the death of her oldest
brother, a year after her graduation from HBS, De Waal started looking for
meaning. In India she started to focus on this even more emphatically. After
an orientation on theosophy, Buddhism, Islam, Christian science, Protestantism
and Spiritualism, she eventually converted to Roman Catholicism. On Easter
Saturday 1935, De Waal was baptized in Bandoeng. From now on she would sign
with 'AM de Waal': Anna Maria. She would never become dogmatic. Her parents
saw no objection to their daughter's transition to Catholicism. "If only you
are happy and a good person," was their response.
Anna de Waal returned to the
Netherlands for leave in 1939, where she moved in with her parents in
Wageningen. She was still here when the Germans invaded. In July 1940, she was
interned, along with several hundred other people on leave, in retaliation for
the arrest of German residents in the Dutch East Indies. She was detained for
six months in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Mecklenburg, where the
so-called 'Indian hostages' received better treatment than the 'normal'
prisoners. After she was released, De Waal took care of her mother on her sick
bed in Wageningen. At the same time, she was working on a dissertation. On 28
May 1943 she obtained her doctorate - a few months before the declaration of
loyalty was also made compulsory for doctoral students - with Professor L. van
Vuuren. Her dissertation
Social geography breathes
the belief in progress that would determine its later actions. De Waal
believed in the makeability of society and also saw a role for geography in
clearing up archaic ideas and prejudices. After the liberation, De Waal - her
mother had died in November 1943 - moved from Wageningen to Utrecht. There she
got a job in November 1945 as a scientific civil servant at the Geographic
Institute of the University. She worked as the right hand of successively the
professors J. Broek and A. de Vooys and gave lectures on geography and an
introduction to didactics.
Despite her calm nature - her
hobbies were walking, music and poetry - De Waal gradually started to manifest
herself outside her work. She joined the Roman Catholic Women's Dispute, which
was founded at the end of September 1946, which advocated a more prominent
place for women in society. She pleaded that case during many lectures in the
country. In February 1951, De Waal became a board member of the Women's
Association, a position she would perform for ten years; in 1951-1952 she held
the chair. In a speech when she took office as a board member, she immediately
made it clear that she saw this organization as a vanguard. font>
De Waal was also active in the
Catholic People's Party (KVP). From September 6, 1949 to February 1, 1953, she
was a member of the Utrecht city council on behalf of that party. Two years
later she was a member of the Dutch delegation to the General Assembly of the
United Nations as a representative of women's interests. She liked it
moderately. In terms of content she was in her place there,but the constant
networking and the sharp political positions taken by several countries
bothered her.
OnOn July 15, 1952, De Waal became a
member of the House of Representatives for the KVP. Her specialties here
became Social Affairs and Foreign Affairs. After her own insistence,
Education, Arts and Sciences was added to this. She would only perform this
function for six months. On February 2, 1953, De Waal took office as Secretary
of State for Education, Arts and Sciences under Minister JMLTh. Cals in the
second Drees cabinet (1952-1956). This made her the first minister in the
Netherlands.
As secretary of state, De Waal was
responsible for preparatory higher and secondary education and industrial
education. In 1955, primary education, social-pedagogical training and
training for compulsory youth were added. These were poor times: although the
department's budget grew, it fell short to meet the demand for new school
buildings and the salary requirements of the teaching staff. In the meantime,
De Waal was working on a number of education laws and outlined the contours of
the later 'Mammoetwet' (Law on Secondary Education of 1963) in the Second
Education Note, which was made together with Cals and which was published in
1955. font>
The Walloon past as a champion of
women's interests did not play a major role during her state secretariat. In
speeches at industrial schools, she always pointed out in speeches that these
institutions should not only teach girls household chores, but also prepare
them to stand on their own two feet if necessary. Moreover, De Waal's view
that it was up to a couple to determine whether the woman would continue to
work within her party after her marriage was not shared by everyone.
EvEven before the elections to the
House of Representatives in 1956, education specialists within the KVP urged
that De Waal be replaced. In the Labor Party (PvdA), some shared this view.
According to the education specialist of that party in the House, a secretary
of state required more than someone who "to say the least ... can always be
called a friendly lady". Cals was aware of these objections and also saw De
Waal's weaknesses, such as lack of decisiveness and a lack of political
feeling. Nevertheless, the minister wanted to maintain his secretary of state,
because in unified cooperation they could guide the major education laws
through parliament.
Cals' intention to appoint two state
secretaries to his department met with resistance from Prime Minister W.
Drees. This, as well as a joint statement by senior officials in the
department that their minister should have at least education in his
portfolio, proved fatal to De Waal. At the end of October 1956, Cals appointed
RGA Höppener as Secretary of State. He was responsible for the arts, the media
and youth work, subjects that the minister had previously dealt with himself.
De Waal stayed on until March 16, 1957 to familiarize Cals with the subtleties
of her policy area. After that, she worked as adviser-honorary in the
department until 1 November 1963, but it did not amount to much. She combined
this civil service with leading positions in the women's movement.For example,
from 1958 to 1962 she chaired the Catholic Women's Association for the second
time and from 1959 to 1966 chaired the Dutch Association for Women's
Interests, Women's Labor and Equal Citizenship. font>
As early as 1960, during an audience
with Cardinal BJ Alfrink, De Waal argued for a larger share of women in the
Roman Catholic Church. She had great hopes for the Second Vatican Council
(1962-1965), and as president of the Catholic Women's Dispute she tried to
initiate a lobby for a greater role for women. However, other Catholic women's
groups were not very enthusiastic about this. Later, her views drifted further
and further away from official ecclesiastical doctrine and even believed that
women should be allowed to talk about female priests.
After her state secretariat, De Waal
remained active for the KVP as a member of the Provincial Council of Utrecht
from 1 July 1958 to 3 July 1962. In the latter year she left the party because
of the policy with regard to New Guinea. The fact that the KVP held on to the
last colony in the East for a long time and even wanted to defend it by force
was indigestible for her. She did not join another party. In elections in the
1960s, she voted for the Pacific-Socialist Party (PSP) out of a sense of
commitment to the Third World and an aversion to the Vietnam War.
After her state secretariat, De Waal
saw a return to education as a step back, but eventually she ended up back in
it. She held national board positions in library work and was a co-founder of
the Library Academy in Amsterdam, where she worked as a staff teacher from
September 1, 1965 to August 1, 1970.
Soon after her retirement, dementia
started to affect De Waals mental faculties. She could not expect much from
housemate Van Lanschot, who spent a lot of time working as a student counselor
at Utrecht University. A friend of De Waal took care of her first in Nijmegen
and then in Arnhem. In 1981 she died in a nursing home in the capital of
Gelderland at the age of 74.
Although Anna de Waal was the first
woman to join a cabinet, her name was not written in large letters in the
history books. The news of De Waal's appointment as secretary of state was
pushed aside in early February 1953 by the flood disaster in the south-west of
the Netherlands. Moreover, the first female minister, Marga Klompé, would
attract much more attention more than three and a half years later. This
controlled the political game much better. De Waal had difficulty with that.
She mainly had her significance as a pioneer of a number of educational laws,
in particular the 'Mammoth Act' for secondary education. In addition, she
played an important role in the emancipation of women within the Catholic
pillar.
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