Willem de Clercq


Willem de Clercq was a poet and leader of the Réveil, the Protestant Church Revival in the Netherlands. He is known for his diary entries, which contain extensive reports of the events he witnessed. He was also a secretary and later a director of the Netherlands Trading Society.

Personal life

Willem de Clercq was born in Amsterdam to a wealthy Amsterdam Mennonite family of grain merchants. His father was Gerrit de Clercq and his mother was Maria de Vos. In 1801, he began to write notes about various events he encountered in his life, which later formed a diary, Dagboek, with a total of 36,000 pages that he kept from the year 1811 until his death. Planning to be a preacher in the Netherlands, he learned German, French, and Greek. However, due to Napoleon's invasion of 1813, he was displaced - events which are described in Dagboek.
In 1816, De Clercq traveled to Saint Petersburg to report on the landscape and the social and cultural life in the northern German and Baltic ports. After the death of his father 1817, he returned home to manage the family business. De Clercq married Caroline Boissevain in 1817, and they had several children, including Gerrit de Clercq, who later became the editor of De Gids. Around 1820, the business suffered from a grain shortage crisis from which it never fully recovered.
Around that time, De Clercq met Jewish convert Isaäc da Costa, and there began a deep friendship. De Clercq converted to Orthodox Calvinism under Da Costa's influence. Together with Willem Bilderdijk, Abraham Capadose, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Samuel Iperusz Wiselius, and others, they became the leaders of the Réveil.
De Clercq left the failing family business and traveled to The Hague to become secretary of the Netherlands Trading Society in 1824. There he began attending the Reformed-Walloon churches. As a manager of the NHM, he had a large influence on the growing textile industry in Twente. Influenced by Thomas Ainsworth, he became involved in establishing industries in the town of Nijverdal. He wanted his work to reflect his beliefs such as employing small-scale industries rather than large factories as the latter caused harm to the workers. De Clercq was a supporter of the NHM, dividing organisational orders evenly across as many producers as possible in order to accomplish the work at a low price.
In the last years of his life, De Clercq's views diverged from those of Da Costa and were increasingly influenced by Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrugge. As a result, he withdrew more and more from social and cultural life, as opposed to Da Costa's active involvement in city life.
De Clercq died suddenly after months of severe depression. Some historians blame Kohlbrugge's dominating views for De Clercq's death, whilst others blame De Clercq's own idealistic and emotional character.
As a poet, De Clercq was especially well known for improvising. He was able to recite a poem without preparation at a moment's notice.
In both Amsterdam and Twente, there are streets named after him. His grandson Daniel de Clercq became an advocate of labor and educational reform.

Works