1938 Netherlands Queen WILHELMINA 2 1/2 Gulden Large Silver Coin i45531

Item: i45531

Authentic Coin of:

Netherlands

Wilhelmina
– Queen of the
Netherlands: 23 November 1890 – 4 September 1948
1938 Silver 2 1/2 Gulden 37mm (24.89 grams)
0.720 silver, approximately 0.575 troy oz of pure silver
Reference: KM 165
WILHELMINA KNINGIN DER NEDERLANDEN, Her head left.
MUNT VAN HET KNOINGRIJK DER NDEDERLANDEN 1938 around crowned coat of arms
dividing value of 2 1/2 G across fields.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

Wilhelmina
(Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria; 31 August 1880 – 28 November 1962) was
Queen
of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands
from 1890 to 1948.
She reigned for nearly 58 years, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Her reign
saw World War I
and
World War II
, the
economic crisis of 1933
, and the decline of the
Netherlands as a major
colonial power
. Outside the Netherlands she is
primarily remembered for her role in World War II, in which she proved to be a
great inspiration to the
Dutch resistance
.

Early life

 

Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wearing her coronation robe in 1898;
painting by Thérèse van Duyl Schwarze

Princess Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria of the Netherlands, Princess of
Orange-Nassau
, was born on 31 August 1880 in
The Hague
, Netherlands. She was the only child
of
King William III
and his second wife,
Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont
. Her childhood was
characterised by a close relationship with her parents, especially with her
father, who was 63 years of age when she was born.

King William III had three sons with his first wife,
Sophie of Württemberg
. However, when Wilhelmina
was born, William had already outlived two of them and only the childless
Prince Alexander
and the King’s uncle
Prince Frederick of the Netherlands
were alive,
so under the
Semi-Salic
system of inheritance that was in
place in the Netherlands until 1887, she was third in line to the throne from
birth. When Prince Frederick died a year later in 1881, she became second in
line. When Wilhelmina was four, Alexander died and the young girl became
heiress presumptive
.

 

Queen Wilhelmina in the 1890s

King William III died on 23 November 1890. Although 10-year-old Wilhelmina
became queen of the Netherlands instantly, her mother, Emma, was named
regent
.

In 1895, Queen Wilhelmina visited Queen
Victoria of the United Kingdom
, who penned an
evaluation in her diary:

The young Queen … still has her hair hanging loose. She is slender
and graceful, and makes an impression as a very intelligent and very cute
girl. She speaks good English and knows how to behave with charming manners.

Enthronement and
marriage

Wilhelmina was enthroned on 6 September 1898. On 7 February 1901 in The
Hague, she married
Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
. Nine months
later, on 9 November, Wilhelmina suffered a miscarriage, and on 4 May 1902 she
gave birth to a premature stillborn son. Her next pregnancy ended in another
miscarriage on 23 July 1906.^[3]
During this time period, Wilhelmina’s
heir presumptive
was her first cousin once
removed
William Ernest, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
,
and next in line was his aunt (and Wilhelmina’s cousin)
Princess Marie Alexandrine of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
.
As it was assumed that the former would renounce his claim to the Dutch throne,
and that the latter was too elderly and sickly to become Queen, Marie
Alexandrine’s eldest son
Prince Heinrich XXXII Reuss of Köstritz
stood
in line to succeed Wilhelmina, assuming she had no surviving children. Heinrich
was a German prince with close associations with the Imperial family and the
military; and there were fears that were the Queen to remain childless, the
Dutch Crown “was bound to pass into the possession of a German prince, whose
birth, training, and affiliations would naturally have led him to bring Holland
within the sphere of the German Empire, at the expense of her independence, both
national and economic”, according to one contemporary publication. The birth of
Juliana
, on 30 April 1909, was met with great
relief after eight years of childless marriage. Wilhelmina suffered two further
miscarriages on 23 January and 20 October 1912.

Reign

Wilhelmina was well aware what was expected of her by the Dutch people and
their elected representatives. At the same time, she was a strong-willed and
forceful personality who spoke and acted her mind. These qualities showed up
early in her reign when, at the age of 20, Queen Wilhelmina ordered a Dutch
warship,
GelderlandHNLMS
,
to South Africa to evacuate
Paul Kruger
, the embattled President of the
Transvaal
.

Wilhelmina had a stern dislike of the United Kingdom partly as a result of
the annexation of the republics of Transvaal and
Orange Free State
in the
Boer War
. The
Boers
were descendants of early Dutch
colonists, to whom Wilhelmina and the people of the Netherlands felt very
closely linked. In conversation with her former governess Elisabeth Saxton
Winter, she once teasingly referred to the Boer soldiers as “excellent shots”.
She was not amused to hear that a Dutch medical relief team was planning to
accommodate the needs of both Boer and British wounded soldiers. Nevertheless,
in 1940, King George VI sent the warship
HerewardHMS
,
to rescue Wilhelmina, her family and her Government and bring them to safety to
the United Kingdom, which offered the Netherlands facilities including
broadcasting time on the BBC.

Queen Wilhelmina also had a keen understanding of business matters and her
investments made her the world’s richest woman, as well as the world’s first
female billionaire (in
United States dollars
).

Before the First World War started, the young Wilhelmina visited the powerful
German Emperor Wilhelm II
. The Emperor thought
he could impress the queen of a relatively small country by telling her, “my
guards are seven feet tall and yours are only shoulder-high to them.” Wilhelmina
smiled politely and replied, “Quite true, Your Majesty, your guards are seven
feet tall. But when we open our
dikes
, the water is ten feet deep!”

World War I

 

Queen Wilhelmina and her daughter
Juliana
, circa 1914

The Netherlands remained neutral during
World War I
. However, the
Allies
included the Netherlands in their
blockade of Germany, intercepting all Dutch ships and severely restricting Dutch
imports to ensure goods could not be passed on to Germany.

Wilhelmina was a “soldier’s queen”; being a woman, she could not be Supreme
Commander, but she nevertheless used every opportunity she had to inspect her
forces. On many occasions she appeared without prior notice, wishing to see the
reality, not a prepared show. She loved her soldiers, and was very unhappy with
most of her governments, which were always eager to cut the military budget.
Wilhelmina wanted a small but well trained and equipped army.

In the war, she felt she was a “Queen-On-Guard”. She was always wary of a
German attack, especially in the beginning. However, the chief violation of
Dutch sovereignty was the Allied blockade.

Civil unrest gripped the Netherlands after the war, spurred by the 1917
Bolshevik revolution
in
Russia
. Socialist leader
Pieter Jelles Troelstra
wanted to abolish the
existing government and the monarchy. Instead of a violent revolution, he hoped
to do this by winning control of
Parliament
in an election, supported by the
working class. However, the popularity of the young Queen helped restore
confidence in the government. Wilhelmina brought about a mass show of support by
riding with her daughter through the crowds in an open carriage.

Furthermore the Russian revolution cost her almost 20% of her financial
assets, forcing her to entertain at a quite different level than before the war.

At the end of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm fled to the Netherlands, where he
was granted political asylum, partly owing to his familial links with Queen
Wilhelmina. In response to Allied efforts to get their hands on the deposed
Kaiser, Wilhelmina called the Allies’ ambassadors to her presence and lectured
them on the rights of asylum.

Between the wars

 

Queen Wilhelmina’s image on a stamp which was used between 1899 and
1926

 

Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld

in 1942.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Netherlands began to emerge as an industrial
power. Engineers reclaimed vast amounts of land that had been under water by
building the
Zuiderzee Works
. In 1934, both Wilhelmina’s
mother
Queen Emma
and her husband,
Prince Hendrik
, died.

The interbellum, and most notably the economic crisis of the 1930s, was also
the period in which Wilhelmina’s personal power reached its zenith; under the
successive governments of a staunch monarchist prime minister,
Hendrik Colijn
(ARP),
Wilhelmina was deeply involved in most questions of state.^{[citation
needed]}

In 1939, Colijn’s fifth and last government was swept away by a vote of no
confidence two days after its formation. It is widely accepted that Wilhelmina
herself was behind the formation of this last government, which was designed to
be an extra-parliamentary or ‘royal’ cabinet. The Queen was deeply skeptical of
the parliamentary system and tried to bypass it covertly more than once.

Most of the 1930s were also occupied by the need to find a suitable husband
for Juliana. This was a difficult task since Wilhelmina was very religious, and
insisted that her daughter’s hand be given to a Protestant of royal birth.
Several prospects from the United Kingdom and Sweden either declined or were
turned down by Juliana. Finally, Wilhelmina found a suitable match for her
daughter in
Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld
, a German
aristocrat. The marriage initially drew some controversy due to rumours that
Bernhard was pro-Nazi.
It was subsequently confirmed that he had indeed been a member of the Nazi Party
and of the so-called
Reiter-SS
(SS Cavalry Corps), as was
proved by the Dutch national institute for war documentation,
NIOD
.

In 1939, the government proposed a refugee camp near the city of Apeldoorn
for German Jews fleeing the Nazi regime. Wilhelmina intervened, as she felt the
planned location was “too close” to her summer residence. If indeed spies were
to be among the fugitives, they would be on walking distance from
Het Loo Palace
. The camp was finally erected
about 10 km from the village of
Westerbork
.

World War II

 

Royal Monogram

On 10 May 1940,
Germany

invaded the Netherlands
. There is an ongoing
debate about the departure of the Queen and the royal family. Some say that an
evacuation to the
United Kingdom
of the royal family had been
planned some time in advance, since at least the end of 1939. Wilhelmina and her
family fled The Hague, and she boarded
HerewardHMS
,
a British destroyer which was to take her across the North Sea. Others say she
boarded the destroyer with the intent of going to the Dutch province of Zeeland,
which had not yet been conquered at the time. However, along the journey, it
became clear that due to advancing German forces, Zeeland was not safe either,
forcing the destroyer to sail for the United Kingdom. In any case, she retreated
to the United Kingdom, planning to return as soon as possible.

 

The Queen speaking to the US Congress, 1942.

 

Wilhelmina Bay
, Antarctica, is
named for Queen Wilhelmina

The Dutch armed forces in the Netherlands, apart from those in Zeeland,
surrendered on 15 May. In Britain, Queen Wilhelmina took charge of the
Dutch government in exile
, setting up a chain
of command and immediately communicating a message to her people.

Relations between the Dutch government and the Queen were tense, with mutual
dislike growing as the war progressed. Wilhelmina went on to be the most
prominent figure, owing to her experience and knowledge. She was also very
popular and respected among the leaders of the world. The government did not
have a parliament to back them and had few employees to assist them. The Dutch
prime minister,
Dirk Jan de Geer
, believed the Allies would not
win and intended to open negotiations with Germany for a separate peace.
Therefore Wilhelmina sought to remove De Geer from power. With the aid of a
minister,
Pieter Gerbrandy
, she succeeded.

During the war her photograph was a sign of resistance against the Germans.
Like
Winston Churchill
, Queen Wilhelmina broadcast
messages to the Dutch people over
Radio Oranje
.

The Queen called
Adolf Hitler
“the arch-enemy of mankind”. Her
late-night broadcasts were eagerly awaited by her people, who had to hide in
order to listen to them illegally. An anecdote published in her New York
Times obituary illustrates how she was valued by her subjects during this
period:

Although celebration of the Queen’s birthday was forbidden by the
Germans, it was commemorated nevertheless. When churchgoers in the small
fishing town of Huizen
rose and sang one verse of the Dutch
national anthem, Wilhelmus van Nassauwe, on the Queen’s birthday, the
town paid a fine of 60,000 guilders.

Queen Wilhelmina visited the United States from 24 June to 11 August 1942 as
guest of the U.S. government. She vacationed in
Lee, Massachusetts
, and visited New York City,
Boston, and Albany, New York. In the latter city she attended the 300th
anniversary celebration of the
First Church in Albany
, the city’s oldest,
established by
Dutch settlers
in the 17th century. She
addressed the U.S. Congress on 5 August 1942, and was the first queen to do so.

Queen Wilhelmina went to Canada in 1943 to attend the christening of her
grandchild
Princess Margriet
on 29 June 1943 in Ottawa and
stayed awhile with her family before returning to the United Kingdom.

During the war, the Queen was almost killed by a bomb that took the lives of
several of her guards and severely damaged her country home near
South Mimms
in England. In 1944, Queen
Wilhelmina became only the second woman to be inducted into the
Order of the Garter
. Churchill described her as
the only real man among the governments-in-exile in London.

In England, she developed ideas about a new political and social life for the
Dutch after the liberation. She wanted a strong cabinet formed by people active
in the resistance. She dismissed De Geer during the war and installed a prime
minister with the approval of other Dutch politicians. The Queen “hated”
politicians, instead stating a love for the people. When the Netherlands was
liberated in 1945 she was disappointed to see the same political factions taking
power as before the war. Before the end of the war, in mid-March 1945, she
travelled to the Allied occupied areas of the south of the Netherlands, visiting
the region of Walcheren
and the city of
Eindhoven
where she received a rapturous
welcome from the local population.

Following the end of World War II, Queen Wilhelmina made the decision not to
return to her palace but to move into a mansion in The Hague, where she lived
for eight months. She travelled through the countryside to motivate people,
sometimes using a bicycle instead of a car. However, in 1947, while the country
was still recovering from World War II, the revolt in the oil-rich
Dutch East Indies
saw sharp criticism of the
Queen by the Dutch economic elite.

Around the same time, Wilhelmina’s health started failing her, forcing her to
cede her monarchial duties to Juliana temporarily towards the end of 1947 (14
October through 1 December). She considered abdication, but Juliana pressed her
to stay on for the stability of the nation, urging her to stay on the throne
until 1950 so she could celebrate her
diamond jubilee
. Wilhelmina had every intention
of doing so, but exhaustion forced her to relinquish monarchial duties to
Juliana again on 12 May 1948. The timing was unfortunate, as it left Juliana to
deal with the early elections caused by the ceding of the Indonesian colonies.

Dismayed by the return to pre-war politics and the pending loss of Indonesia,
Wilhelmina abdicated on 4 September 1948.

Later years

 

Statue of Queen Wilhelmina in
Noordwijk

As of 1948, Wilhelmina was the only survivor of the 16 European kings and one
queen who were sitting on their thrones at the time of her coronation in 1898.
The
Dutch Royal Family
was also one of seven
European royal houses remaining in existence.

On 4 September 1948, after a reign of 57 years and 286 days, Wilhelmina
abdicated in favour of her daughter
Juliana
, because of advancing age and illness
which had already caused two
regencies
, and the strain of the war years. She
was thenceforward styled “Her Royal Highness Princess Wilhelmina of the
Netherlands”. After her reign, the influence of the Dutch monarchy began to
decline but the country’s love for its royal family continued. No longer queen,
Wilhelmina retreated to
Het Loo Palace
, making few public appearances
until the country was devastated by the
North Sea flood of 1953
. Once again she
travelled around the country to encourage and motivate the Dutch people.

During her last years she wrote her autobiography entitled Eenzaam, maar
niet alleen (Lonely but Not Alone), in which she gave account of the
events in her life, and revealed her strong religious feelings and motivations.

Wilhelmina died in Het Loo Palace at the age of 82 on 28 November 1962, and
was buried in the Dutch Royal Family crypt in the
Nieuwe Kerk
in
Delft
, on 8 December. The funeral was, at her
request and contrary to protocol, completely in white to give expression to her
belief that earthly death was the beginning of eternal life.

Titles and styles

• Her Royal Highness Princess Pauline (1880–1884)
• Her Royal Highness Princess Wilhelmina (1884–1890)
• Her Majesty The Queen (1890–1948)
• Her Royal Highness Princess Wilhelmina (1948–1962)

Wilhelmina’s regnal title from her accession to her marriage was:
“Wilhelmina,
by the Grace of God
, Queen of the Netherlands,
Princess of Orange-Nassau,
etc, etc, etc
.” She adopted her husband’s ducal
title upon marriage as customary, becoming also a Duchess of Mecklenburg.

Ancestry

See also

Netherlands portal

• Dutch monarchs family tree
• List of heirs to the Dutch throne
• Continental, Arizona