author
C. V. (Carel Victor) Gerritsen
1850–1905
A Dutch reformer with a sharp political mind, he pushed for open government, fair wages, and birth control at a time when those ideas were far from mainstream. He is also remembered as an important ally of the women's movement and as the husband of pioneering physician Aletta Jacobs.
1 Audiobook
Brieven uit en over Amerika
by C. V. (Carel Victor) Gerritsen, Aletta H. (Aletta Henriette) Jacobs
About the author
Born in Amersfoort in 1850, Carel Victor Gerritsen became a prominent Dutch radical liberal politician and public advocate for social reform. Sources describe him as a forceful supporter of transparent government, better pay for workers, and neo-Malthusian ideas about birth control, placing him among the more progressive political voices of his day.
He was closely connected to the early feminist movement through both his own beliefs and his marriage to Aletta Jacobs in 1892. Together they built a major collection of books, pamphlets, and periodicals on women's history and women's rights, a library that later became known as the Gerritsen Collection and remained important to researchers long after his death.
Gerritsen died in Amsterdam in 1905. Though he is less widely known today than some of his contemporaries, his career links politics, social reform, and the history of feminism in a memorable way.