Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (21 August 1801, Voorburg – 19 May 1876), was a Dutch politician and historian. Overview Groen's father, Petrus Jacobus Groen van Prinsterer, was a physician, and at adult age operated in aristocratic circles. He was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, the state church of the Netherlands and of its Royal Family, although he deemed it to be in a poor condition. He was influenced by a then leading evangelical renewal movement known in the Netherlands as the Réveil, the European Continental counterpart to the Second Great Awakening. He studied at Leiden University, and graduated in 1823 both as doctor of literature and LLD. From 1829 to 1833 he was a secretary to William II of the Netherlands. During this time he attended Brussels Protestant Church under pastor Merle d'Aubigné. After that, he took a prominent part in Dutch home politics, and becoming the leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, both in the Second Chamber of parliament, of which he was a member for many years, and as a political writer.