Reina Prinsen Geerligs (7 October 1922 - 24 November 1943) was a member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II. After the war the literary Reina Prinsen Geerligs Award was created in her memory.

Biography

Reina Prinsen Geerligs was born in 1922 in Semarang, Dutch East Indies, the daughter of the chemist Johan Prinsen Geerligs and his wife Helen Carolina Zon. She had a brother who was two years younger. They moved to Amsterdam when she was still very young. In the Netherlands, Prinsen Geerligs was a member of the Youth Organisation for the Study of Nature, and she started writing poetry and prose. But when the war started, she mostly stopped writing and concentrated on her work with the resistance, initially mainly as a courier. Her house became the meeting place for resistance group CS-6, and Reina Prinsen Geerligs became involved with at least two assassination attempts. In 1943 she and Louis Boissevain tried to kill police officer Pieter Kaay, but stopped the attempt when they saw Kaay seated with a child in his lap. Another group executed him the next day. Prinsen Geerligs was arrested on 23 July 1943, and confessed to her work as a resistance fighter. In November 1943 she and some other members of the resistance group were transported to

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...

, where they were executed the next day. Her parents only learned of her death in 1946. With the money they had set apart to finance her studies, they created a fund for a literary award in her honour, the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Award, given to a young writer between the ages of 20 and 25, and which was won by some of the most prominent Dutch writers at the start of their career, including

Gerard Reve Gerard Kornelis van het Reve (14 December 1923 – 8 April 2006) was a Dutch writer. He started writing as Simon Gerard van het Reve and adopted the shorter Gerard Reve in 1973. Together with Willem Frederik Hermans and Harry Mulisch, he i ...

and

Harry Mulisch Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch ( ; 29 July 1927 – 30 October 2010) was a Dutch writer. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. Mulisch's works have been translated into over thirty languages. Along with Wi ...

. It was last awarded in 1979.

Reina Prinsen Geerligs Award

*1947:

*1948:

Mies Bouhuys Mies may refer to: People * Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), architect *Maria Mies (born 1931), German feminist * Richard W. Mies (born 1944), U.S. Navy admiral and fourth commander in chief of the United States Strategic Command *Mies Boi ...

*1949: Willem Witkampf *1950: Jan Blokker *1951:

*1952: Kees Stempels *1953:

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*1953: Ellen Warmond *1954: Henk Meijer *1955: W.G. Klooster *1956: Winny Pendèl *1959:

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*1960: A.P. van Hoek *1961:

Peter van Gestel Peter van Gestel (3 August 1937, Amsterdam – 1 March 2019, Amsterdam) was a Dutch writer. Career Writing Van Gestel made his debut in 1962 with ''Drempelvrees'', a collection of stories. He received the Reina Prinsen Geerligsprijs for ...

*1962: Steven Membrecht *1964: Kees Holierhoek *1965: Henk van Kerkwijk *1967: Eddy van Vliet *1968: Hans Vlek *1970: Arie van den Berg *1972: Willem Jan Otten *1973: Frans Kusters *1976:

Oek de Jong Oebele Klaas Anne (Oek) de Jong (born 4 October 1952 in Breda) is a Dutch novelist. He debuted in 1976 with ''De hemelvaart van Massimo'', a collection of short stories for which he received the Reina Prinsen Geerligsprijs. In 1980 he won th ...

*1976: Jotie T'Hooft *1979:

Leon de Winter Leon de Winter (born 24 February 1954) is a Dutch writer and columnist. Early life Leon de Winter was born on 24 February 1954 in Den Bosch, in the southern Netherlands. He grew up in a Jewish orthodox family and attended City Grammar Schoo ...

Biography

Reina Prinsen Geerligs Award

Notes

Further reading