Pieter Jelles Troelstra

Pieter Jelles Troelstra (born April 20, 1860, Leeuwarden, Neth.—died May 12, 1930, The Hague) was a Dutch socialist statesman and poet, who founded the Social Democratic Labour Party and headed the Dutch labour movement from 1894 to 1924.

An attorney and newspaper editor, Troelstra joined the Social Democratic League in 1890. When a split developed in the Socialist ranks between Anarchists and a coalition of moderate Marxists and parliamentarians, he formed the Social Democratic Labour Party in August 1894 to reflect moderate views. By 1900 his party controlled the Socialist labour vote; it soon became the nation’s second largest political party.

As leader of the Social Democrats in the Dutch Second Chamber (house of representatives) since 1897, Troelstra supported unemployment insurance legislation, passed in 1913. He helped write the 1917 constitutional revision granting universal male suffrage, and he championed female suffrage in local elections and old-age insurance laws that were finally passed in 1919. His party was semi-revolutionary in policy but parliamentary in tactics. When he led a small left-wing faction in an abortive attempt to overthrow Prime Minister Ruys de Beerenbrouck’s government in November 1918, the majority of his party and the Socialist trade unions disavowed his actions; his control over the party was severely damaged, though he remained in nominal charge of it until his retirement in 1924.

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Poetry: First Lines

Throughout his career as a poet, Troelstra wrote not in Dutch but in Frisian, the language of his native province. His works included It jonge Fryslân (1881; “The Young Frisian”), Nij Frysk Lieteboek (1886; “A Frisian Songbook”), and Rispinge (1909; “Rhymes”).