Beatrix of the Netherlands

Biography

Her wedding on 10 March 1966 in Amsterdam is remembered for smoke bombs: they were thrown at the golden coach, and crowds in the streets demanded the return of the bicycles German soldiers had taken from the Dutch during the war. The groom, Claus von Amsberg, was a German diplomat who in his youth had served in the Hitler Youth.

The bride was then the crown princess.

Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard was born on 31 January 1938 at Soestdijk Palace in Baarn, the first child of Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Her second and third names came from her grandmothers, Queen Wilhelmina and Princess Armgard. She was baptised on 12 May 1938 in The Hague. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the family first went to London, and a month later Juliana and her daughters Beatrix and Irene moved on to Ottawa. They lived at Stornoway, and it was there that a third sister, Margriet, was born in 1943. In Canada Beatrix attended an ordinary primary school, where she was nicknamed “Trixie Orange”. Her father and grandmother stayed in London. The family returned home on 2 August 1945.

After the war she went to De Werkplaats, a progressive school in Bilthoven run by the educators Kees Boeke and Beatrice Boeke-Cadbury. From April 1950 she studied at the Incrementum, a branch of the Baarnsch Lyceum, and in 1956 she passed her final examinations. On her eighteenth birthday she became entitled to exercise the royal prerogative and joined the Council of State. In the same year she began studying at Leiden University: sociology, economics, parliamentary history and constitutional law, later international and European law, history, the Charter for the Kingdom, and the cultures of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. She visited international organisations in Geneva, Strasbourg, Paris and Brussels. She passed the preliminary examination in law in the summer of 1959 and received her degree in July 1961. In 1959 she bought Drakensteyn Castle in the woods near Lage Vuursche, where she settled in 1963.

In May 1965 photographers caught her at Drakensteyn holding hands with Claus von Amsberg. The engagement was announced on 28 June. Dutch society was divided: the war was still too well remembered. Three Jewish communities considered it an insult that the wedding was set for Amsterdam, from where Jews had been deported during the occupation. The historian Loe de Jong investigated the groom’s wartime past on his own initiative, and nothing that would discredit him was found. Parliament approved the marriage, Claus became a Dutch subject, and on the wedding day he received the title of prince. The civil ceremony was conducted by the mayor, Gijs van Hall, and the church blessing took place in the Westerkerk. In time Prince Claus became one of the most popular members of the royal family. The couple had three sons: Willem-Alexander (1967), Friso (1968) and Constantijn (1969). In November 1975 the couple represented Queen Juliana at the independence ceremony of Suriname in Paramaribo.

From the 1970s Beatrix prepared ever more seriously for her role as head of state and travelled abroad with her husband, including to the Soviet Union, a trip that caused controversy. The throne was not assured to her from the start: until 1983 the constitution gave priority to an eldest son, and only when it became clear that Juliana would have no more children was her place as heir secure. On 31 January 1980 Juliana announced that she would abdicate on 30 April. On that day Beatrix became queen: in the morning her mother signed the instrument of abdication, and in the afternoon, at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, at a joint session of both chambers of the States General, the new queen took the oath. The ceremony was overshadowed by street clashes: squatters, under the slogan “no home, no coronation”, fought with riot police.

In 1981 the family moved to The Hague, to Huis ten Bosch Palace, and since 1984 her working residence has been Noordeinde Palace. The queen met the prime minister every week, signed laws and decrees, and delivered the Speech from the Throne each September. For a long time she also took part in the formation of cabinets, appointing the informateur who leads the coalition talks; this procedure was changed in 2012. On 1 January 1986 Aruba left the Netherlands Antilles and became a separate constituent country of the Kingdom, and in 2010 the Antilles were dissolved: Curaçao and Sint Maarten appeared, along with three special municipalities. In 1985 Andy Warhol included her in his series of portraits of reigning queens. In 1988, on Queen’s Day, at a flea market in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam, a passer-by hugged and kissed her in front of the crowd; a historian who follows the Dutch royal family holds that the scene was arranged in advance, but that is hard to verify. Art was more than an official interest for Beatrix: in 2000 she was guest curator of an exhibition of contemporary Dutch artists at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in her free time she models and carves. Her name is linked with the anonymous “Unknown Sculptor”, whose works have been appearing in Amsterdam since 1983, but there is no confirmation.

On 6 October 2002 her husband, Prince Claus, died, and in 2004 her mother and father died. On 8 February 2005 Leiden University awarded her an honorary doctorate, which is rare, and in April of the same year the 25th anniversary of her reign was marked.

On 30 April 2009 in Apeldoorn, a 38-year-old man, Karst Tates, drove his car through the crowd towards the bus carrying the royal family and crashed into a monument. Seven people died, and several more later died of their injuries; the queen and her family were unhurt, and she spoke on television the same day.

On 28 January 2013 Beatrix announced that she would abdicate on 30 April, exactly thirty-three years into her reign: it was time, she said, to hand responsibility for the country to a new generation. She was the third monarch in succession to leave the throne voluntarily, after her grandmother and her mother. On that day her eldest son, Willem-Alexander, became king, the first man on the Dutch throne since William III. Beatrix again holds the title of Princess of the Netherlands, lives at Drakensteyn Castle and still carries out some official duties.