In September 1949, then eighteen-year-old Dries van Agt started studying law at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. He was one of approximately four hundred students at the faculty that year. The young university, which had celebrated its 25th anniversary the previous year, had more than four hundred students at the Faculty of Arts, about a hundred at the School of Political and Social Sciences (part of a mixed faculty of law and liberal arts), and about fifty at the Faculty of Theology. All in all, just under a thousand students. In 1949, the teaching staff was still modest in size, with only a few dozen professors and lecturers.
Many of the student monks and nuns lived in study houses provided by their congregations, of which there were about thirty in Nijmegen at the time. Most of the other students lived in private rooms, and some with family or friends. This was the case for Dries van Agt, who lived on St. Annastraat 170, the home of attorney and professor J.W.G.P. Jurgens, a family friend who young Dries called ‘Uncle Joop’.
For many families in Nijmegen, housing a student meant both extra income and more liveliness. This was the case for Theo Jacobs’ parents, who always housed a few students in the spacious apartment above their milk shop in the 1950s. “My mother was a well-known landlady. She liked having breakfast in the morning with the girls who lived in our rooms, feeding them rusks with cheese and butter. It also allowed her to keep an eye on things. They became a second set of parents to those girls, who came from all different parts of the country.” Theo was expected to address the female students as ‘miss’, and the male students as ‘mister’. When he was in secondary school, the lodgers were happy to tutor him in chemistry.
Jan Roelofs also grew up with students in his home; their board was a welcome addition to the family income. He described the relationship between the landlady and the students as a family bond. “One time, a student who came home drunk knocked on my mother’s bedroom door: “Moeke, moeke, I’m so drunk, can you please fry me an egg?” They called my mother ‘Moeke’, which is Dutch for mum. And she really was like a mother to them.”
Hazing at Phocas Rowing Association, 1956
Apart from the family-like contact with their landlords and landladies, the Nijmegen students of the 1940s and 1950s lived in a world of their own. “Students back then weren’t focused on society at all, were they?” said Dries van Agt. “They kept their distance and spoke with some contempt about society. It wasn’t very nice, but back then, that was how everyone else behaved. So you went along with it.” Many male students spent their spare time at the Roland social club on Oranjesingel 42, while many female students were members of the Girls Club. Both social associations fell under the umbrella of the student union Carolus Magnus, of which almost all students were members.
New arrivals at the student union had to undergo a period of initiation, but that was nothing compared to the intense hazing that candidates had to endure to become a member of Roland. Dries van Agt still shudders at the memory. “If you didn’t make it through, never started, or quit, you weren’t admitted to Roland. This was, of course, the heart of student life. I struggled through it, but it was terrible. You were yelled at all day long. No beatings, nothing like that, but definitely verbal humiliation. And that went on until I got home late at night and fell into bed in my little room at Jurgens. It took several weeks, three I believe. Every evening you had to go to the social club and jump around like a frog. You couldn’t walk, they called it ‘frogging’. And there was a wooden block to sit on, a piece of a tree trunk, which you had to take with you, and you had to leapfrog holding the log. The last night was Donder Jool (Thunder Jool). They’d blindfold you and you’d have to leapfrog around the club blindfolded on command. You had to follow the commands, doing the best you could. Donder Jool was the hardest part of all. It lasted for hours and it was incredible mental torture.”
In 1953, when Van Agt himself was chair of the senate, he replaced hazing with an introduction period at Carolus Magnus. He opened a meeting centre on Oranjesingel where all students were welcome. At the Roland Club and the Girls Club, the hazing continued, but the student associations had to compete with other alternatives in the years that followed: the cultural student association Diogenes (1958) and the associations Telemachus (1960) for male students and Dynamene (1962) for female students.
In addition to the union and the social club, students could also join one of Nijmegen’s debating societies. In Van Agt’s days, there were approximately twelve such societies. Van Agt himself joined G.I.L.D.E. towards the end of his studies, after the society succeeded in attracting the famous professor Willem Asselbergs, better known by his pen name Anton van Duinkerken. “Van Duinkerken was an unbelievable fellow. He’d arrive at the club at night and he’d join the G.I.L.D.E. members. He’d be wearing his G.I.L.D.E. hat: a skull-cap with a tail. And even when he was three sheets to the wind, which happened very often, van Duinkerken had so much to offer; his insights were so valuable.”
The speeches by Van Duinkerken on debating nights made a big impression on Van Agt. He still remembers one of them very clearly. “Of course, he started off by telling jokes and everyone was laughing hysterically, the whole table. The laughter kept going, it wouldn’t stop. At some point, he saw an opportunity to turn his attention to the Last Supper. The Last Supper: with all these drunk people at the table. The room went completely quiet. He talked about the Last Supper in words that I cannot repeat. But I still remember it was an awe-inspiring experience. And how he effortlessly changed gears five or ten minutes later, shifting back to his light-hearted tone. It was all done so seamlessly and smoothly. Fantastic.”
Dolly Verhoeven (1959) was professor by special appointment of Nijmegen History at Radboud University from 2008 to 2019. Since 2014 she has also worked as professor by special appointment of the History of Guelders and will continue to hold this position. Het Nijmegengevoel. Een naoorlogse stadsgeschiedenis will be released by Vantilt on 28 August.