Coenraad van Beuningen

Coenraad van Beuningen was born in Amsterdam in 1622 and became one of the cleverest diplomats of the Dutch Republic. His life ended in tragedy.

The diplomat

In his twenties he worked in Paris as secretary to Hugo Grotius, then the Swedish envoy. In 1643 he became Amsterdam's town clerk, although he did not feel up to the job. One mission followed another: to Queen Christina of Sweden in 1652, talks on access to the Øresund strait in 1654, Copenhagen around 1657, where he nearly fell into the hands of the Swedish king Charles X Gustav and escaped by boat, and France and England in 1660. Louis XIV offered him a post in France, but Van Beuningen declined and instead warned against French ambitions.

Mayor in the Disaster Year

He was one of Amsterdam's four burgomasters in 1669, 1672, 1680, 1681, 1683 and 1684. In 1672, the "Disaster Year" when France and its allies invaded the Republic, he was put forward as successor to the leading statesman Johan de Witt. He fell out of favour with the new stadtholder William III and survived an attempt on his life, which shook him so badly that he burned some of his furniture. From 1681 he was also a director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

The fall

In 1686 he married his much younger neighbour, the wealthy Jacoba Victoria Bartolotti. Two years later disaster struck: speculation in VOC shares cost him around half a million guilders. He became unstable; one source suggests he was probably bipolar. He was drawn to astrology, mysticism and dream interpretation, and wrote to church leaders about the coming apocalypse.

He painted Hebrew or Kabbalistic signs on the front of his house on the Amstel. The city became his legal guardian, and former colleagues, including burgomaster Johannes Hudde, had him placed in care. He died in Amsterdam on 26 October 1693.