Pieter Geyl

Pieter Geyl (* December 15, 1887 in Dordrecht, † December 31, 1966 in Utrecht ) was a Dutch historian.

Scientific career

Geyl began his professional career after graduating as a journalist, as a foreign correspondent of the major Dutch newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant ' in 1913 in London. This activity ended when he was appointed in 1919 to the London University as a professor of the Dutch culture. He remained there until he one appointment to the Chair for Dutch History at the University of Utrecht received. Until his retirement in 1958, he remained on this chair. However, his teaching career was interrupted during the German occupation of the Netherlands because of his negative attitude towards National Socialism, as was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, from which only freed him the war. Geyl was a historian, who represented the unity of the Dutch and Flemish, which belong to the Belgian State since 1831 and called for a large Dutch state as a whole. For this purpose, typical is his programmatic book, Eenheid s Tweeheid in de Nederlanden '. On 9 June 1959 he was admitted as a foreign member of the Prussian Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

One of his students was Hermann W. of the Dunk, a Dutch cultural theorist of German origin.

Major works

• De Groot- Nederlandsche Thought, 1925,
• Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche stam, 2 volumes, 1930-34,
• Eenheid s Tweeheid in de Nederlanden, 1946
• Oranje en Stuart 1641-72, 1939, 2nd edition 1963.