Gerlach van Reenen

Gerlach Cornelis Joannes van Reenen was born in Amsterdam on 30 September 1818 and was not yet 32 when he became mayor. He came from a family of brewers, merchants and administrators: his father was a member of parliament and his mother a Van Vollenhoven. He studied law in Amsterdam and Leiden, became a lawyer and joined the city council in 1847, becoming an alderman in 1849.

The first mayor of a new era

A royal decree of 20 February 1850 made him mayor, and he was sworn in on 8 March. It was a moment of transition. The constitution of 1848 had shifted the balance of power, and in 1851 came Thorbecke's Municipalities Act, the law that still shapes Dutch local government. From 15 October 1851 Amsterdam's city council was officially called the gemeenteraad. Contemporaries therefore saw Van Reenen as the first mayor after the new law. When the forty-year-old Van Leeuwen was appointed in 1901, a magazine noted that Van Reenen had started even younger.

He did not stay long. On 19 April 1853 he became Minister of the Interior, in the cabinet formed after the April Movement, a wave of Protestant protest against the restoration of Catholic bishops. As minister he passed the Poor Law of 1854, among other measures.

A powerful man in The Hague

An impressive career followed. From 1858 to 1869 Van Reenen was Speaker of the House of Representatives, elected for Amsterdam. Three times he turned down a ministerial post. In 1876 he became vice-president of the Council of State and a jonkheer; he had earlier refused the title of baron. In the last years of King William III, when the king was ill, the Council of State acted as regent, and Van Reenen was more or less the vice-king of the Netherlands. After the king died in 1890 he chaired the board of guardians for the young Queen Wilhelmina.

Van Reenen married Clara Frederica van de Poll, a daughter of former mayor Fredrik van de Poll, and they had ten children. He died suddenly on 31 May 1893, inside the Council of State building itself.