Nicolaas van Wijk

Early life and education

Nicolaas van Wijk was born on 4 October 1880 in Delden, the only son of Aart Willem van Wijk, a liberal minister in the Dutch Reformed Church from Weesp, and Bregitta (née Bruin), the daughter of Weesp's burgemeester. The youngest of five, Aart and both of his brothers – Pieter and Nico – were all Reformed ministers, as was their father for whom Nicolaas was named. On 30 October, Nicolaas was baptized.

The family moved to Zwolle in 1886 following Aart's assignment as the new minister; Nicolaas shortly thereafter attended the local nutsschool. Following a successful entrance exam, he began schooling at the Zwolle Gymnasium in 1892. During his time at the gymnasium, Van Wijk studied Dutch and geography under the tutelage of Foeke Buitenrust Hettema, a Frisian linguist who taught Dutch from a descriptivist and scientific lens and was a key figure in the modernizing linguistic education. Known for his "unbridled energy and pig-headedness" in teaching this way – for which he was reprimanded by the scholastic board – he remained an important influence, correspondent, and confidant after Van Wijk's graduation. Van Wijk and his classmate Leo Polak became good friends and intellectual rivals. Van Wijk was a model student with exceptionally high marks in Dutch history, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Hebrew, although he struggled in High German. He struggled similarly in mathematics, but by the end of his schooling he had earned the highest score during the graduating exams. After completing gymnasium in 1898, Van Wijk began studying Dutch literature at the University of Amsterdam.

On 3 October, Van Wijk moved to Kloveniersburgwal and began studying under H. C. Rogge, C. M. Kan, and Jan te Winkel in history, geography, and Netherlandistics, respectively. Kan was particularly impressed with Van Wijk's work, writing that he had "given ample proof of serious study, insight and the gift of expressing himself clearly and succinctly." Van Wijk had made an impression with another professor, C. C. Uhlenbeck, then employed by the university as a buitengewoon hoogleraar though the following year he was promoted to a full professorship. Van Wijk recounted during his inaugural lecture in 1913: "From the first day that I heard a Wulfila lecture I have worked under your influence." He met Van Wijk regularly on Saturday afternoons to teach him Sanskrit. Following Uhlenbeck's departure from the university, his professorship was filled by his colleague R. C. Boer. During this period, Van Wijk kept a remarkably low profile; it is likely that he was an attendee of the Jacob van Maelant Association, a student's association for Dutch literature, but – outside of one essay lecture he gave on Völuspá, a poem in the Poetic Edda, in 1900 which ended in a debate with David Wijnkoop – he does not appear to have had any appreciable role in the association. It is possible that he assisted in inviting guest speakers for the Literarische Studenten-Vereeniging ('Literary Students Union'), a student organization for classicists and Netherlandicists.

Early career

Following his doctorate, Van Wijk attended Leipzig University, which had become a center for Indo-European studies and historical and comparative linguistics around this time under Karl Brugmann. On 24 September, he received word that he would receive a grant from the Amsterdamse Universiteitsvereniging; the grant, secured by Boer and Uhlenbeck, authorized him sixty guilders (ƒ) per month for up to ten months. At the time, the Netherlands had compulsory military service, but he shortly received an exemption from service; on 9 October, he received a letter from the provincial Queen's Commissioner informing him that he was "irrevocably exempted from service" on the grounds that he was his parents' "only legal son". Van Wijk registered his departure from Zwolle on 15 October and registered at Leipzig University ten days later. At the time, Van Wijk considered Karl Brugmann and Brugmann's pupil Hermann Hirt to be "representatives of the two mainstreams of thought" in historical linguistics and wrote that he considered himself more sympathetic to Hirt than Brugmann. While at Leipzig, Van Wijk attended the lectures and Übungen of three specialists: Brugmann, whose work focused on the Greek and Italic languages; Ernst Windisch, on Sanskrit; and August Leskien, on the Slavic languages. He was notably taken with Leskien and found his courses to be the most interesting and impressively condensed; Leskien had covered the grammars of Proto-Slavic, Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, and Ukrainian comprehensively – and Polish partially – in a single semester. He later recounted that:

Leskien's lectures and 'Übungen' were especially interesting, in fact more interesting than anything else I heard in Leipzig, not only for their content but, also for the clear manner in which everything was set out, for the vigor of the presentation, which made one listen to everything with interest and ensured that once heard it was not quickly forgotten. [...] I attribute to these lectures above all the fact that my studies tended more and more in the direction of the Slavic languages. I have to thank Leskien for the insight into the great value of this subject for the [Indo-Europeanist] [...]

Although Hirt advised Van Wijk not take his classes as they were aimed at novices to the field, the two commonly discussed their work at Hirt's home.

In 1903, Van Wijk left Leipzig for Moscow. He had opportunities to go to Budapest, Helsinki, and Lithuania, but chose Moscow in part because Uhlenbeck had spoken to him enthusiastically about Russia. Van Wijk considered it crucial to speak a language that was different than his mother tongue, a conviction that predated – but was encouraged by – his companionship with Hirt. He wrote that he had chosen Russian for three reasons. First, he considered it the most difficult and believed this would help him learn other Slavic languages more quickly. Second, he believed that Russian's preservation of Proto-Slavic accent would be useful in further study. Third, Russia in general – and Moscow in particular – gave him the best opportunity to make connections with other academics in the field and give him the opportunity to learn the language with the prestige dialect, rather than learning Russian in the Empire's peripheral territories.

Appointment as chair

In 1913, Van Wijk was appointed the first chair of the Baltic and Slavic languages at Leiden University. The move was preceded by a long fight by several scholars – including Uhlenbeck, J. J. Hartman, Anna Catharina Croiset van der Kop, and Reinder van der Meulen – to get a chair in either Russian or the Slavic languages at Leiden University. Croiset van der Kop in particular appears to have had significant influence in the development of the chair. In 1911, Abraham Kuyper publicly supported Croiset van der Kop as the obvious choice for the chairmanship in De Standaard, citing that she came "emphatically recommended [...] by Russian scholars" and later urged the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament to create the chair. Theo Heemskerk – then Prime Minister of the Netherlands – approved the creation of the chair, but postponed the official approval until a better candidate could be found. On 23 January 1912, Uhlenbeck and Verdam recommended either Van Wijk or van der Meulen to the chairmanship to the Leiden University faculty. Six days later, a letter was issued by the faculty to the government recommending Van Wijk to the position as their primary choice over van der Meulen, as "his studies do not have the universal character that so favorably distinguishes the work of Dr. van Wijk".

Croiset van der Kop was supported by myriad Slavists and linguists for the position – including a letter from Saint Petersburg which included ten prominent Slavists from the school such as Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Ivan Bychkov, Aleksey Shakhmatov, Alexey Sobolevskij, and Filipp Fortunatov – but her supporters had coalesced around her too late in the process; the letters of support only arrived after the faculty had issued their recommendations. When the government had received a massive volley of support for Croiset van der Kop, the Leiden faculty stood behind their recommendation for Van Wijk. Verdam and J. C. G. Jonker, with the help of Uhlenbeck, responded to a following government inquiry into why they should not also include Croiset van der Kop by arguing that, while her publications and research in Russian and Polish were numerous and sound, the scope of her research was too small for the chair, which was to encompass the whole of the Balto-Slavic languages. This response forced Heemskerk to accept Van Wijk as the official appointee and pass the appointment on to approval by royal decree. The decree was issued 25 July 1913, though the government of Leiden did not inform him officially until 9 August. He was officially sworn in at 1:30 pm on 8 October 1913 and immediately thereafter gave an inaugural lecture, Balties-Slaviese problemen ('Balto-Slavic problems'), in which he expounded the importance of the Balto-Slavic languages to Indo-European comparative linguistics, gave thanks to several of his teachers and colleagues, and professed support for his students. At his recommendation, the position was renamed to chair of the Balto-Slavic languages.

Tour of Eastern Europe

Van Wijk moved from The Hague on 23 December 1913 to Leiden, near the Hooglandse Kerk. There, he planned a massive trip through the Slavic-speaking world and obtain books for the Leiden University Library, which was so lacking in books on Russia and its history that Uhlenbeck had called any effort to learn about Russia there "without exaggeration, impossible". Van Wijk secured funding from the minister of internal affairs and the Committee for the Administration of the Leiden University Fund and set off, traveling to Leipzig first, where he stayed for two days while he met with Brugmann, Leskien, Windisch, and Eduard Sievers. While there, he attended Gustav Weigand's seminars on the governments of the Tsardom of Bulgaria and Kingdom of Romania, and spent a significant time with Sievers and Leskien; Leskien in particular gave Van Wijk significant direction and provided him with several persons of interest that he later contacted during the travels. During the entirety of the trip, he maintained a written correspondence with the university librarian S. G. de Vries to whom he regularly reported.

From there, Van Wijk traveled to Prague. He reportedly enjoyed his stay and reported that the work being done there put Charles University among the "foremost centers of philology in the world". Van Wijk communed with Josef Zubatý and his student Oldřich Hujer, who gave him recommendations on where to procure books while he was in the area that later became the Czech Republic. While there, he met with several prominent scholars, including Josef Janko, Josef Vajs, and Reinhold Trautmann. From Prague, Van Wijk traveled on to Warsaw, then a part of Russian-occupied Poland, spending three days there and collaborating with several locals in search of books, most notably the Belarusian linguist Yefim Karsky. Van Wijk reported that he had enjoyed his time in Warsaw and was impressed by the robustness of Polish studies, which under Russian rule was entirely privately funded whereas Russian studies were state-funded.

Following Warsaw, Van Wijk proceeded to Saint Petersburg, where he was received by the Dutch envoy, Arthur Martin Désiré baron Sweerts de Landas Wyborgh. There, the environment was not as friendly as it had been in Czech and Polish regions; there was still significant pushback from Van Wijk's having been chosen over Croiset van der Kop. Still, Van Wijk was able to acquire several important pieces of Russian linguistic work during his trip, including an important Dutch–Russian dictionary which was presented to Van Wijk by a relative of the original author who had died. From there, he was guided by Lev Shcherba, who pointed Van Wijk in the direction of some recordings that Croiset van der Kop's will did not appear to have been changed from their original bequeathal to Leiden. Although his welcome was more harsh than his previous stops, Van Wijk reported that he was treated exceptionally well by at least three of Croiset van der Kop's supporters in Russia – Fortunatov, Baudouin de Courtenay, and Shakhmatov; Van Wijk gave particular praise to Shakhmatov, citing both his intellect and thoughtfulness. After meeting with Bychkov and Ernest Radlov, Van Wijk traveled onward to Moscow where he stayed for two weeks with the same widow that had held him up during his first trip in 1903. During this trip, he communed with several old and new contacts, most notably Fyodor Korsh and Dmitry Ushakov. This was followed by a day trip to Kharkiv, where he met both Stephen Kulbakin and Jānis Endzelīns which he later recounted as a "truly memorable" and "charming reception"; Endzelīns left a lasting impact following a reading from his native Latvian, as Van Wijk noticed a third intonation whereas standard Latvian only differentiates between two.

World War I

A few days before Van Wijk's return, the Netherlands began its mobilization for World War I. Following its outbreak, Van Wijk joined the Dutch Committee for the Philanthropic Support of Poland (Dutch: Nederlandsch Comité voor Philantropischen Steun aan Polen), becoming the organization's vice chairman shortly thereafter, and began making arrangements to provide humanitarian aid to Poland. In August 1915, the Austro-Hungarian embassy issued him a curfew pass (German: Passierschein) to travel there on behalf of the committee to assist "destitute Poles". Although his curfew pass only gave explicit permission to pass into Kraków, he pushed to assist Welfare Committee in Posnan (German: Wohlfahrtsausschuss in Posen) first; the Dutch ambassador to the German Empire recommended him to the proper authorities and the request was ultimately granted. In Van Wijk's first ever piece for a newspaper, writing for the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant on 15 September, he wrote a retrospective about his time traveling to Poland, providing a glimpse into the human toll of the war:

A year ago, Glów was a prosperous village with fine farmhouses built in stone below and wooden upper floor of the type that is tytpical of this region, but today Glów stands no higher than 10 centimetres [4 in] above the ground: the foundations of houses, nothing more. [...] The man [who spoke on behalf of the village] told us of the long nights when bullets and shrapnel and shells flew over the village; and when this hell had passed by, Glów no longer existed. And now? The horses are gone, the meadows are gone, the houses are gone, there is no corn, what there was had been rotted by hailstorm because there were no more barns to store it in. [...] Nothing has made a more sinister impression on me than the deadly silence in this village that had been wiped from the face of the earth, where a few hungry souls clad in rags remained to kiss our hand meekly (as is the habit in these parts) and tell us that they had nothing anymore. Faced with such dire misery all human love seems powerless!

As vice chairman, Van Wijk worked with chairman J. H. C. Kern of the Dutch committee and Henryk Sienkiewicz of the Polish committee to provide aid across the Eastern Front and oversee donations secured from the Netherlands. Some donors had expressed concern about how the funds were being used, but Van Wijk confirmed the funds were being used in a "thrifty, well-organized" manner and that no group was receiving preferential treatment. Following his return to the Netherlands, Van Wijk vigorously defended Poland from its critics, in one case going so far as to say that "the division of Poland is an offense against God". At one point, the Catholic Archbishop of Lviv, Józef Bilczewski, requested Van Wijk's assistance in getting twenty wagonloads of rice that were being held in Rotterdam released to Poland.

Interwar period

During the interwar period, Van Wijk returned to publications, writing in journals across Europe. Despite his long-standing interest in Russian literature and language, only three pieces of his were published in Russia after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. During the war, Van Wijk had developed a fascination with Slavic accentology culminating in his 1923 book Die baltischen und slavischen Akzent- und Intonationssysteme. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der baltisch-slavischen Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse ('The Baltic and Slavic Accent and Intonation Systems: A Contribution to the Study of Balto-Slavic Relationships'), which enjoyed wide readership and acclaim from the relatively small cluster of Slavists at the time, arguing that the Baltic and Slavic languages were once – however briefly – joined in a double-jointed proto-language. Van Ginnekin praised the book for "shin[ing] a pin-prick of light into the prehistoric darkness" and commended Van Wijk's tireless efforts.

Beginning in 1922, Van Wijk became the first president of the Dutch branch of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation founded by the League of Nations. The following year, Van Wijk began taking care of two brothers, Vladimir Zatskoy and his younger brother Leonid. The Zatskoy brothers were Russian refugees, the sons of Pyotr, a tanner-turned-mayor who knew Van Wijk. Vladimir was a Russian Revolution veteran who lied about his age to join the White Army. He achieved the rank of captain before studying law at the Sorbonne and the University of Prague, believing communism in Russia would quickly collapse and he could practice law there. The mêlée following the Revolution left him without official documents, forcing him to use a Nansen passport as a stateless citizen. Leonid, on the other hand, was able to retain Soviet citizenship. Van Wijk became close with the brothers, variously referring to them as "foster sons" or "nephews". Leonid suffered from some kind of respiratory disease; Van Wijk regularly visited him in Czechoslovakia, where the air was purportedly healthier for his condition, and when he was hospitalized in Leiden. Whatever the illness was, Van Wijk expected Leonid to recover from it, but he ultimately died following a surgery on 13 October 1927. His death devastated Van Wijk, who had hoped he would make a full recovery. Although Vladimir appears to have initially turned to fraud to support himself, Van Wijk gave him work first as a translator of Russian literature to be published in newspapers like Het Vaderland ('The Fatherland') before getting him work as a Russian-language teacher. He also served as Van Wijk's personal assistant before setting him up to sell medical equipment sometime in the 1930s.

Final years

Following the outbreak of World War II, Van Wijk attempted to get a visa to extract his Jewish colleague Roman Jakobson from Czechoslovakia. Van Wijk tried, but failed, to get the Dutch Ministry of Justice to assist Prokop Maxa and his family in their extraction from Sofia, but they were able to escape for Paris, where Van Wijk visited them before they eventually found safety in London. The German army soon invaded and swiftly defeated the Netherlands, bringing the nation under a full occupation. The occupation led to serious financial trouble for Uhlenbeck, but Van Wijk was able to provide assistance for him. Following the start of the occupation, Van Wijk declined a visiting professorship at Columbia University in New York City, writing in English:

During the terrible days we passed this week I compared my present situation with that of a New York professor, but although it was very bad here, I think it is better to be at home at such a time of temptation. If I had accepted your invitation, I should have felt guilty for having run away from my country at a moment of national danger. [...] I think there will be so much work to be done that a good Dutchman should not leave his country. But I assure you that, if scientific and academic life should become impossible in Holland I should not prefer any other work to teaching Slavic languages in Columbia University.

Although the general atmosphere was bleak, his former student F. B. J. Kuiper reports that Van Wijk remained "basically optimistic", believing that the social order dominated by national borders would become less prominent in the post-war era. In 1940, Kuiper began planning a Festschrift in his honor and let Van Wijk know, but the plan was interrupted by the war and did not see publication until 1988.

On 22 March 1941, Van Wijk fell ill after a dinner with Eduard Meijers, a Jewish law professor whose dismissal caused the university to be shut down in protest. Van Wijk was taken to the Diaconessenhuis hospital on 24 March, but died on 25 March. Van Wijk's death was unexpected and news of his death was quickly publicized; his death was front-page news on the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant and the Leidsch Dagblad published a two-page biography. Etty Hillesum, a former student of Van Wijk's and later victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, wrote in her diary about the shock she experienced upon hearing of Van Wijk's death:

Personal life and views

Although Van Wijk was regarded as personable and extroverted, he was particularly reluctant to share details about his personal life. He was widely considered unconventional for the time, though highly regarded. He left a notably small archive following his death; he wrote very little about himself, writing nothing about his childhood and very little about his professional life. He wrote "nothing at all" about his life's work's importance to him. He never married. During his lifetime, Van Wijk published over 600 works covering a broad spectrum of topics; about fifty of these focused on Slavic literature, with all but three intended for a Dutch-speaking audience. Aside from his native Dutch, Van Wijk published work in German, French, Czech, Polish, and Russian. He preferred to write in German and found the linguistic nationalism of France to be a persistent annoyance. Along with Uhlenbeck, Van Wijk helped to establish Leiden University as a powerhouse of linguistics. Van Wijk was known as a teetotaler, though it is unclear how strictly he followed this belief during his travels in Eastern Europe. Aside from his profession, Van Wijk was an amateur pianist and served as a judge for final examinations at the university's academy of music.

Van Wijk spent a significant part of his life corresponding through letters; according to him, several hours a day were spent doing so. Only a handful of his letters have survived. Some of his work he had purposefully destroyed, namely the archive from his time with the Dutch Committee in Poland following the German invasion of the Netherlands. Jan Paul Hinrichs, Van Wijk's biographer, suggests that most of Van Wijk's letters were similarly destroyed since it appears that the majority of the surviving letters were for matters Van Wijk was dealing with shortly before his death.

At least two of Van Wijk's major works remain missing. The first is the second half of his Geschichte der altkirchenslavischen Sprache (Zweiter Band: Syntax, Wortschatz und Wortbildung) ('History of the Old Church Slavonic Language [Volume Two: Syntax, Vocabulary, and Word Formation]'), completed in 1927 but never published and likely perished somewhere in Germany during World War II. The second is Die Vokale i und y in den ostslavischen und den anderen slavischen Sprachen ('The Vowels *i and *y in the East Slavic and Other Slavic Languages') which was supposed to be included in a Festschrift for the Ukrainian linguist Ivan Zilynskyy in 1939 but appears to also have been lost during the war.

Views on Russian politics

During his time at Leiden, Van Wijk was suspected of being a communist by the Leiden Police due to his charity towards impoverished Eastern Europeans. In reality, he was a strict liberal; he criticized autocracy under the tsar and – once the Russian Revolution had begun – found himself unsympathetic towards any side, finding both intolerably unrepresentative of the Russian people. Despite his strong opposition to the Bolsheviks, Van Wijk remained friendly with those who were sympathetic to the movement, most notably his students Jan Romein, Annie Romein-Verschoor, and Francis de Graaff. Following the Revolution, Van Wijk never returned to visit Russia.

Sexuality

Some scholars have speculated that Van Wijk may have been homosexual. An article in Van Wijk's 1988 Festschrift by Ton van den Baar appears to be the first discussion of this possibility. Van Wijk lived with other single men – mostly notably Cornelis van Arendonk and W. H. Strassers, who together with Van Wijk formed "an inseparable trio" – for the majority of his life, never married, held an extremely close relationship with Leonid Zatskoy, and no information about his relationships with women have been found. These have all been cited as cause for speculation. He does not appear to have been considered such during his lifetime or after his death and there does not appear any evidence to suggest he was.

Religious tolerance

Although raised by a family of Reformed preachers, Van Wijk did not hold any strong feelings of animosity towards people of other religions. In 1915, his attempt to get Van Ginneken, a Catholic priest, to succeed Verdam as professor at Leiden University failed and, when he informed Van Ginneken, he wrote: "You know of course as well as I do that in all such cases being a Jesuit is for many a latent source of antipathy! For me personally it does not count in the least". Similarly, his first doctoral student, A. E. Boutelje, was Jewish and many of Van Wijk's Jewish friends and students were killed in the Holocaust; Jacob Ginsberg, Leo Polak, Etty Hillesum, and Boutelje all died in concentration camps.

Honors

– Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion

– Commander of the House of Orange

– Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature (Poland)

– Commander of the Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia)

Selected works

Van Wijk, N. (1904). "De Hamlets van de Russische letterkunde" [The Hamlets of Russian Literature]. De Gids (in Dutch). 68: 442–487.

——— (1907). "Over het Russische volkskarakter" [On the Character of the Russian People]. De Tijdspiegel (in Dutch). 64: 155–180.

——— (1908). "Russische indrukken" [Russian Impressions]. De Gids (in Dutch). 72: 463–502.

——— (1912). "Over dialektgrenzen" [On Dialect Boundaries]. De Nieuwe Taalgids (in Dutch). 6: 113–126.

——— (1912). Franck's Etymologisch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal [Franck's Etymological Dictionary of the Dutch Language] (in Dutch). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

——— (1918). Altpreussische Studien: Beiträge zur baltischen und zur vergleichenden indogermanischen Grammatik [Old Prussian Studies: Essays on Baltic and Comparative Indo-European Grammar] (in German).

——— (1923). Die baltischen und slavischen Akzent- und Intonationssysteme [Baltic and Slavic Accentual and Intonational Systems] (in German). Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen.

——— (1931). Geschichte der altkirchenslavischen Sprache. Erster Band: Laut- und Formenlehre [History of Old Church Slavonic. Vol. 1: Phonology and Morphology] (in German). Berlin und Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

——— (1934). "Rukopisni paterik manastira Krke" [The Manuscript Patericon at the Krka Monastery]. Magazin Sjeverne Dalmacije (in Serbo-Croatian). 2: 108–110.

——— (1939). Phonologie: Een Hoofdstuk uit de Structurele Taalwetenschap [Phonology: A Chapter on Structural Linguistics] (in Dutch). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.