Stamboom Van Koert » Louis Wilhelm "Louis" van Koert (1863-1923)

Persoonlijke gegevens Louis Wilhelm "Louis" van Koert 

• Roepnaam is Louis.
• Hij is geboren op 13 oktober 1863 in Den Haag.
• Beroepen:
• melkhandelaar.
• steen- en beeldhouwer.
• Feit: (functie) 2e penningmeester van de Centrale Raad van de Sociaaldemocratische Bond te Nederland.
• Woonachtig:
• vanaf 9 augustus 1893: Boston MA, V.S..
• september 1893: New York City NY, V.S..
• Hij is overleden op 5 januari 1923 in Mansfield MA, V.S, hij was toen 59 jaar oud.
• Een kind van Petrus van Koert en Cornelia Schroot
• Deze gegevens zijn voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 12 december 2022.

Gezin van Louis Wilhelm "Louis" van Koert

(1) Hij is getrouwd met Maria Elisabeth Stijger.

Zij zijn getrouwd op 14 februari 1883 te Den Haag, hij was toen 19 jaar oud.

Leonardus Franciscus "Nardus" Verheijdt was hierbij getuige.

Kind(eren):

1. Johanna Hendrika van Koert  1883-1960
2. Cornelia van Koert  1885-1968
3. Maria Elisabeth van Koert  1888-1978

(2) Hij is getrouwd met Jacoba de Meij.

Zij zijn getrouwd op 26 september 1919 te Boston MA, V.S, hij was toen 55 jaar oud.

Kind(eren):

1. Leonard van Koert  1893-1972 
2. Lena van Koert  1897-1920

Notities over Louis Wilhelm "Louis" van Koert

Louis werd 2e penningmeester van de Centrale Raad van de Sociaaldemocratische Bond te Nederland (Bron: Algemeen Handelsblad, onderdeel van de Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant d.d. 9 apr. 1890). Op 15 maart 1893 verhuisde het gezin naar Amsterdam, Vinkenstr. 48. Van hieruit vertrok Louis op 9 augustus d.a.v. naar Boston, Verenigde Staten, samen met zijn broer Cornelis Petrus. Hij probeerde afwisselend in New York en Chicago aan het werk te komen. Hij voerde in 1893 en 1894 uitgebreide correspondentie met Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuijs (Bron: ISSG). Hieruit bleken de slechte werkomstandigheden in de amerikaanse fabrieken en de uitbuiting van de arbeiders.

Louis van Koert, The Hague emigrant who found work as a stonecutter and painter writes home to his friends of the socialist movement of the Netherlands that in Chicago, thousands are still working ten to twelve hour days, not including the early morning and late evening hours they must devote to travelling to and from the workplace, "For them, the situation is more than unbearable".
Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis. Algemeen, Correspondentie, 127, Koert, L.W. van. 1893-1894, August 10, 1893.
The fact that unions were prone to exceptional violence made them especially unworthy in the eyes of the pious Dutch Reformed. Socialist immigrant Louis van Koert writes of the unions that "the Irish have all the power, and these Catholic gangs are hostile to all progress".
Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis. Algemeen, Correspondentie, 127, Koert, L.W. van. 1893-1894, June 1, 1894.
Through The Hague anarchist Louis van Koert’s 1893-1894 correspondence, it is clear that Hugenholtz’s denomination indeed upheld an undogmatic and unorthodox Protestant character within the Dutch Reformed faith. Koert relates that many of the members of the socialist organization he wasa part of were members of Hugenholtz’s church and "where their religion is concerned, their church is very radical, and their Reverend Hugenhols (sic) is the pioneer for socialism here, better yet, he is a socialist. Hugenhols himself is a very good person I think, and is helpful towards everybody and anybody, and according to differing friends he must have sown the socialism present in the city. "
Koert relates that this church opened its doors to the strikers numerous times, and that the socialist organization to which Koert belonged was free to hold their weekly meetings there as well. Van Hinte relates that this "‘modern’ minister" took action in bringing change among the Dutch working class and announced in the church’s periodical that it was "a gladdening sign" that Dutch had laborers initiated a branch of the Furniture Workers Protective Association in Grand Rapids in 1890.
Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, December 17, 1894.
The only religious organization the anarchist Koert is positive about, Hugenholtz’s church unquestionably differed dramatically from those Koert had experienced elsewhere in Chicago. Hugenholtz’s church remained a small movement, however, with only 316 member in Grand Rapids in 1889 and even fewer in the efforts at Kalamazoo, Michigan and Chicago.
Jacob van Hinte, Nederlanders in Amerika II (Groningen, the Netherlands: P. Noordhoff, 1928), 384.
Louis van Koert, a bricklayer from The Hague, writes in his correspondence that he could simply not afford to join the union right away. I went to New York to look for work because I did not have the 17 dollars
to take me to Chicago. In N[ew York], there was not a lot of work for the bricklayers, and you have to join the Union which costs 50 dollars, 10 directly and every 14 days another 10. This was of course not an option for me.
Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, May 3, 1893.
In his correspondence with the Netherlands, Dutch Socialist Louis van Koert suggest that he would not be surprised if it turned out that the Catholic church was running all the unions in Chicago: "They know that a union in inevitable here, so they accept this fact, but do everything is being done to keep them away from socialism". Koert also goes on to suggest that the clergy of the Dutch Reformed were just as guilty. Koert relates that while he was still free to speak at Patrimonium, he met many members who, like him, wanted nothing to do with the church. "The boys that have been born there [in America] are done with the church, and the pastors are scared to death because their fellow believers are the ones who must sustain them, their income is indeed gradually dwindling."
Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, June 1, 1894 and January 22, 1894.
Most of the Dutch immigrant correspondence revealing active participation in the American labor movement was penned by socialist and anarchist emigrants previously involved in similar organizations in the Netherlands. Most of these men were not religiously inclined and so their experiences have been excluded from this research. However, a valuable collection of letters written by the emigrated social - anarchist Louis van Koert is worthy of mention as they provide insight into the immigrant socialist/anarchist movement in America applicable to this research. Penned from May 1893 through December 1894, Koert’s letters were addressed to his friend and partisan, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, leader of the SDB and the Netherlands’s first socialist in parliament. Koert had clearly been an active and informed party member, but he found it difficult to feel at home in the American scene where, according to him, the people were revolutionary enough, but there was a clear lack of organization standing in the way of success. In Koert’s opinion, the lackluster socialist movement in America could also be traced toa lack of decent propaganda. His correspondence relates a serious effort to assist men in Grand Rapids with the publication of a socialist bulletin "because it was otherwise impossible to endure those damned lying religious papers". Similarly, an American branch of the Netherlands’s first and revolutionary socialist party, the Social Democratische Bond (Social Democratic League), known from 1894 onwards as the Socialistenbond (Socialist League) emerged in Paterson, New Jersey but no mention of such a league was found in any of the bulletins studies in this research. In the words of Koert, "much effort and work will be necessary to bring some life into the rusty heads of the Hollanders here, the church is so dirty, even meaner than the Catholics, and the Dutch publications that are printed here are just the same".
Koert’s depictions of the crossroads of religion and labor were unquestionably biased and, as such, do not merit any foundation on which to base an all-encompassing description of the Dutch blue-collar
men and the extent of any compromise between their religious convictions and economic and social mobility.
Likewise, the individual testimonies discussed are simply too scattered and lacking in depth to draw any valid mono-ethic conclusions on the state of the religious Dutch working class. The ethnic publications Koert makes reference to, however, provide a stable resource on which the affairs of the immigrant community as a whole can be analyzed over both time and place. The events of the Pullman strike and national boycott in 1893 and 1894, for example, were readily documented in Dutch language press and form the basis of the case study to follow. By investigating the content and nature of news bulletins applicable to the Dutch during the Pullman affair, a more comprehensive description can be made about the religious.

Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, May 3, 1893.
Dutch working class Louis van Koert, a Dutch social - anarchist employed, for the most part, as a bricklayer in Chicago relates in correspondence with the Netherlands that "the first eight or ten days of the strike were the happiest of my time spent here [in America]." "Chicago stood on the verge of exploding," he continues, and "there was so much joy in my once sad mood when I saw the heaven-bound flames rising from the rail cars and buildings that were lit on fire by the workers."
Bron: Archief Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, September 26, 1894, ISSG, Amsterdam.

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