author
Frank van Gheel-Gildemeester
A Dutch writer and public figure whose life moved through literature, religion, and the turbulent politics of interwar Europe. His story is especially striking because it links children’s and moral writing with a controversial role in Jewish emigration efforts from Vienna in 1938.
1 Audiobook
Op de Levensreis
by J. A. (Jan Anthony) Cramer, J. H. (Jan Hendrik) Gerretsen, Frank van Gheel-Gildemeester, P. J. Molenaar, J. C. Schuller, Hendrik Anne Constantijn Snethlage, A. J. A. Vermeer, W. L. Welter
About the author
Born in 1881 in Kattendijke in the Netherlands, he came from a prominent Protestant family; his father, Francis van Gheel Gildemeester, was a pastor and court preacher in The Hague. Dutch literary sources list him as an author, and older book records connect his name with devotional, moral, and family-oriented writing.
During the First World War he lived in Vienna, where he worked as a Protestant pastor among the Dutch community. He later became widely associated with the "Aktion Gildemeester," an emigration aid organization active in Vienna and Rome from 1938 to 1940 that helped Jews leave Austria, though historians have also described the organization as deeply entangled with Nazi pressure, forced emigration, and property extraction.
He died in 1952. Because much of his historical visibility now comes from this controversial wartime chapter rather than from his books alone, he remains a complex and debated figure rather than a straightforward literary name.