Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp back at WTC Rotterdam

On Friday, November 17, the restored statue of the Rotterdam statesman will be unveiled Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1867) placed back at WTC Rotterdam on the Coolsingel. Around the centenary of his birth, Rotterdam entrepreneurs took the initiative to honor Van Hogendorp with a statue. Although he points a finger at the Constitution he designed, he is mainly remembered as an advocate of free trade.

New place

After wandering around, the work of art stood Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1867) by the Belgian sculptor Jozes Geefs since 1961 on the steps of the Rotterdam Stock Exchange. Due to a large-scale revitalization of the entrance, the four-meter-high statue will once again be given a new place, this time in front of the stairs on the terrace. The round plinth is made of Norwegian granite and has the same materiality as the granite that architect JF Staal selected for the platform, the stairs and the facade of the Beurs van Rotterdam (1940).

Publication

On the occasion of the relocation, a publication about the Rotterdam pensionary Van Hogendorp (1762-1834) was published. He is also the founder of the Kingdom of the Netherlands: the Constitution of 1814 is largely based on Van Hogendorp's ideas. In the book, Van Hogendorp also emerges as an opponent of slavery and the slave trade. The publication is compiled by journalist and writer Frank van Dijl (1951). He made his debut as a novelist in 2019 with Of stone. He published The evenings forever about Gerard Reve's debut and his reflections on Reve's travel letters are published by Fragment publishers. Van Dijl is editor of the biweekly opinion newspaper Argus.