Mien van Wulfften Palthe

Mien van Wulfften Palthe (1 April 1875 – 11 November 1960) was a Dutch feminist and pacifist. As a member of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Society for Women's Suffrage) and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, she strove to secure enfranchisement for women and worked as an advocate peace.

Mien van Wulfften Palthe
Palthe-Broese by Floris Arntzenius (1896)
Born
Frederika Wilhelmina Broese van Groenou

(1875-04-01)1 April 1875
Djokjakarta, Dutch East Indies, Kingdom of the Netherlands
Died11 November 1960(1960-11-11) (aged 85)
The Hague, The Netherlands
NationalityDutch
Other namesFrederika Wilhelmina van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou, Mien Palthe-Broese, Mien van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou
Occupationactress, women's rights and peace activist
Years active1900–1940

Early years

Frederika Wilhelmina Broese van Groenou was born on 1 April 1875 in Djokjakarta, Dutch East Indies, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Jeannetta Emilia (née Wieseman) and Wolter Broese van Groenou. She was the oldest of the seven siblings and her father was serving in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army at the time of her birth. In 1878, he left the military and became director of a sugar company and managed the Tandjong Tirto factory. Broese and her next youngest sister, Miel were sent to live and attend school in The Hague in 1883. The rest of the family joined them there in 1890 and established a household. Wolter continued to manage the Javanese sugar plant from the Netherlands and as a liberal who believed in women's suffrage and world peace, he encouraged his daughters in attaining their education.[1]

In 1891, Broese was sent to Allenswood Boarding Academy, an exclusive girls' school in Wimbledon, London. Enrolling in the Haagsche Kookschool (Hague Cooking School) the following year, she took classes there before deciding to obtain her Lower Education Act Certificate in 1893. Though able to teach school with the certificate, Broese wanted to be an actress and though initially her parents did not approve they finally gave consent. Between 1898 and her graduation in 1900, she attended the Amsterdam Theater School.[1]

Career

Upon completing her schooling in 1900, Broese adopted the stage name Wilma and debuted in Friedrich Schiller's play Mary Stuart with the Rotterdam Theater Company. She performed with this theater troupe for two years and then switched to the Netherlands Theater Company, where she performed for an additional year. On 12 May 1903, Broese married Jan Richard van Wulfften Palthe, director of industrial textile firm specializing in dying and laundering. Settling in the Van Stolkweg neighborhood of The Hague, Palthe-Broese gave up theater and focused on raising the couple's three sons: "Wolter (1905), Richard (1907) and Joachim Adolf (1908)".[1]

Palthe-Broese's active involvement with women's suffrage began in 1908. Up to that point, she had been apathetic to the cause, but when the International Woman Suffrage Alliance scheduled their 4th conference to be held in Amsterdam, her family donated six hundred guilders (the equivalent of around €7,000 or $8,000 US in 2016 currency), to provide assistance for foreign attendants' travel expenses and lodging. During the conference, she and her sister Miel, hosted teas for the conventioners and Palthe-Broese met Aletta Jacobs, who would become a close friend for the remainder of her life.[1]

After the Conference, Palthe-Broese became dedicated to the cause of women's enfranchisement and joined the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Society for Women's Suffrage). From 1915, she served as chair of The Hague branch's chapter committee of promulgation and hosted a booth to disseminate information about women's suffrage each Monday in the market near the intersection of the Brouwersgracht and Prinsengracht canals. That same year, she participated in the Women's Conference at The Hague, which occurred between 28 April and 1 May,[1] to protest World War I and develop a plan to prevent war in the future.[2] Palthe-Broese chaired the committee to provide accommodations for those attending the conference and met influential foreign feminists like the Hungarian sisters, Franciska and Rosika Schwimmer. An organization was formed at the conference which would become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).[1]

When the congress ended two delegations of women were formed to meet with European heads state over the next several months. Jane Addams and Jacobs led one group of women while Rosika Schwimmer and Chrystal Macmillan led another.[3] The women who made up the delegations included Palthe-Broese, Emily Greene Balch, Rosa Genoni, Alice Hamilton, Lola Maverick Lloyd, Cornelia Ramondt-Hirschmann, and Julia Grace Wales[4] and were divided according to whether their countries were involved in the war. Those from countries who were active combatants visited neutral countries and those who were from countries which were neutral visited the governments of countries involved in the war.[3][5] The women secured agreement from reluctant Foreign Ministers, who overall felt that a mediating body would be ineffective. Nevertheless, they agreed to participate, or not impede creation of a neutral mediating body, if other nations agreed and if President Woodrow Wilson would initiate a body. In the midst of the war, Wilson refused.[6][7]

In 1918, Palthe-Broese used her theatrical talents to present a performance for the Hague chapter of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht, parodying Parliamentary actions concerning women's suffrage. The following year at the Women's Peace Congress held between 12 and 17 May in Zurich, she was one of the featured speakers,[1] just four months before Queen Wilhelmina signed into law women's right to vote.[8] Shortly thereafter, she and her husband helped Aletta Jacobs move to The Hague and provided her with financial support, as she had lost her earnings due to poor investments. For the remainder of her life, Jacobs was financially supported by Palthe-Broese and her family.[9]

Once the suffrage fight was won, Palthe-Broese turned her energies toward the peace movement. She became treasurer of the national branch of the WILPF in 1924. That same year, she helped organize the festivities to celebrate Jacob's 70th birthday. When Jacobs died in 1929, Palthe-Broese was designated as her sole heir. She provided a burial space in her family's mausoleum in Loenen op de Veluwe for Jacobs and worked to create a monument in Driehuis to join Jacobs' remains with her husband, Carel Victor Gerritsen's remains. Gerritsen and Jacobs' remains were reinterred at this monument in Westerveld Cemetery in 1931.[1] She continued as treasurer of the Dutch branch of the WILPF until 1940.[10]

Death and legacy

Palthe-Broese died on 11 November 1960 from leukemia and was buried in the Broese family estate of Groenouwe.[1] As Jacobs' heir, Palthe-Broese donated the papers of Aletta Jacobs to Rosa Manus one of the founders of the International Archives for the Women's Movement.[11] The majority of the papers were looted by the Nazis in 1940[12] and not returned to the Netherlands until a decade after they were rediscovered in a secret archive in Russia in 1992.[13] Jacobs' papers now are housed at the Atria Institute in Amsterdam,[14] as are Palthe-Broese's archival records.[10]

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References

Citations
  1. de Wilde 2016.
  2. Kay 2013, p. 21.
  3. Wiltsher 1985, p. 105.
  4. Wiltsher 1985, pp. 105–106.
  5. Everard & de Haan 2016, pp. 68–69.
  6. Wiltsher 1985, pp. 110–125.
  7. Caravantes 2004, p. 101–103.
  8. Nwanazia 2018.
  9. de Wilde 2018.
  10. Kloosterman & Mevis 2013.
  11. Everard & de Haan 2016, pp. 231–232.
  12. de Haan 2004, p. 156.
  13. de Haan 2004, pp. 160–161.
  14. Feinberg 2009.

Bibliography
  • Caravantes, Peggy (2004). Waging Peace: The story of Jane Addams (1st ed.). Greensboro, North Carolina: Morgan Reynolds. ISBN 978-1-931798-40-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • de Haan, Francisca (Winter 2004). "Getting to the Source: A "Truly International" Archive for the Women's Movement(IAV, now IIAV): From its Foundation in Amsterdam in 1935 to the Return of its Looted Archives in 2003" (PDF). Journal of Women's History. Johns Hopkins University Press. 16 (4): 148–172. doi:10.1353/jowh.2004.0082. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 April 2017.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • de Wilde, Inge (15 November 2016). "Broese van Groenou, Frederika Wilhelmina (1875–1960)" (in Dutch). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 13 January 2019. Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • de Wilde, Inge (25 June 2018). "Jacobs, Aletta Henriëtte". socialhistory.org (in Dutch). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis. Archived from the original on 4 January 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2019. Originally published in the Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging, volume 3 (1988), pp. 83–88.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Everard, Myriam; de Haan, Francisca (2016). Rosa Manus (1881–1942): The International Life and Legacy of a Jewish Dutch Feminist. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-33318-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Feinberg, Harriet (1 March 2009). "Aletta Henriette Jacobs". jwa.org. Brookline, Massachusetts: Jewish Women's Archive. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2019.Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kay, Helen (December 2013). "Suffragists Who Tried to Stop the Carnage". The World Today. Vol. 69 no. 6. p. 21. ISSN 0043-9134. JSTOR 43857506.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kloosterman, Annemarie; Mevis, Annette (translator) (2013). "Papers Frederika Wilhelmina van Wulfften Palthe-Broese van Groenou: Finding aid 1907–1950". archivesportaleurope.net. The Hague, The Netherlands: Archives Portal Europe Foundation, European Commission. Archived from the original on 16 January 2019. Retrieved 16 January 2019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Nwanazia, Chuka (30 October 2018). "The Fight for Women's Suffrage in the Netherlands". Leiden, The Netherlands: Dutch Review. Archived from the original on 17 December 2018. Retrieved 30 November 2018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Wiltsher, Anne (1985). Most Dangerous Women: Feminist peace campaigners of the Great War (1st ed.). London, England: Pandora Press. ISBN 978-0-86358-010-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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