Famous inhabitants of Maastricht

Here is a list of famous inhabitants of Maastricht over the course of history.

We didn’t include high visitors like Charlemagne, Charles the Fifth and other emperors, kings, popes and presidents. Nor present-day footballers, television personalities and prominents who may soon be forgotten.

The famous musketeer d’Artagnan died in Maastricht, and the well known biologist Jacques Thijsse was born here, but they can’t be counted as Maastricht inhabitants. Prime Minister Ruys de Beerenbrouck can’t, either. None of them lived in Maastricht long enough.

We chose twenty five people who are mostly known nowadays through the names of the streets, statues and institutes of Maastricht. We tried to select them from as many distinct fields of public interest as possible. Therefore, we chose to present Alexander Batta and not Joseph Hollman, even though both became illustrious musicians.

For similar reasons, we didn’t include, for example, baron Aylva, doctor Bak, paleontologist Dubois, bishop Hubertus, Edmond Jaspar, father Roothaan, governor Tilly, Aert van Tricht and master Ulrich.

We admit that our choice is rather arbitrary. Yet we think that the ten most famous Maastricht inhabitants over the past centuries must be found among our twenty five.
________________________________________
Batta, Alexander
Maastricht 1816 - Versailles 1902. Violoncellist and composer.

Alexander Batta first studied music with his father, who was a cellist and a teacher of singing, and later at the Brussels conservatory. He finally settled down in Paris.

His two brothers were gifted musicians as well. In 1829 and 1830, the musical family gave joint performances in Maastricht.

Alexander gathered a lot of distinguished awards, appeared before various kings, and was called the “Chopin of the violoncello”. In 1892, ten years before his death, Maastricht had already named a new boulevard after him.

Alexander left a fund for young violinists and cellists in his birth town.

________________________________________
Debye, Peter
Maastricht 1884 - Ithaca (USA) 1966. Physical chemist.

After his school period in Maastricht, Peter went to study mathematics, physics and electrical engineering in Aachen.

He received the 1936 Nobel prize for chemistry for his research in the field of molecular structure. Debye succeeded Albert Einstein as director of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. When the Institute was taken over by the German Nazi rulers, our hero departed for America.

He married, and had a son and a daughter. His son became a physicist as well.

Near the Academic Hospital in Maastricht, an avenue and a square bear the name of Peter Debye.

________________________________________
Dibbets, Bernard
Arnhem 1782 - Maastricht 1839. Military General.

After the Belgian revolution in 1830 and until the final separation from the Netherlands in 1839, general Dibbets and his garrison had the task to keep the fortified city of Maastricht in Dutch hands. Dibbets often had to act strictly. For instance, he took strong action against a group of “seditious” individuals from the area who tried to deliver the town to Belgium by “hatching attack plots in the dark”. He also expelled a recalcitrant chaplain, who subsequently strode out of the city in full pontificals.

The people of Maastricht hated Dibbets at the time, but nowadays they are mostly grateful for his steadfastness.

General Dibbets lived in the “generaalshuis” (or “house of the general”) where the Vrijthof Theatre is now located.

________________________________________
van Eyck, Jan
Maaseik around 1390 - Brugge 1441. Painter.

Jan van Eyck was a master in painting perspective and light. As a portraitist he was razor sharp. Jan and his elder brother Hubert learned the art of painting in Liège and Maastricht. Their joint masterpiece is the Lamb of God.

During the 1408 siege of Maastricht, both brothers followed John of Bavaria, the prince-bishop of Liège, to Maastricht. Later on, Jan van Eyck also befriended the duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, who became the godfather of one of the painter’s children. Van Eyck was part of the delegation who went to seek the hand of the infante Isabella of Portugal for the duke.

In 1948 the Jan van Eyck Academy for arts of design was established in Maastricht.

________________________________________
Franquinet, Guillaume Désiré Lambert
Maastricht 1826 - 1900. Lawyer, etc

After spending his childhood in Maastricht, Guillaume Franquinet studied law in Brussels. He settled down in his birth town as a lawyer in 1849 and began a many-sided life: he was a linguist, and wrote comical plays in the Maastricht dialect. He was secretary of the civil administration for the poor, and school inspector. He studied plants and flowers, and was also a miller. He was a member of the city council, and an alderman.

Together with Alphonse Olterdissen, he organised historical parades as a member of the Momus Society. He was co-founder of the Limburg Association for History and Antiquity. He was an archivist for both the town and the province.

Shortly after his death, Maastricht named a street after him in the new city district of Brusselsepoort. His son Edmond was the proud owner of a motorcar.

________________________________________
Herbenus, Mattheus
Maastricht 1451 - 1538. Humanist, etc.

Mattheus Herben was a canon of Saint John’s fraternity and a chaplain of the chapter of Saint Servatius. He was a teacher of the chapter school, and one of the first Dutch humanists. He was a musician and a poet as well.

His book “De Trajecto Instaurato” (About Restored Maastricht) is one of the oldest descriptions of a town in the Netherlands. He also wrote about the devastation of Liège by Charles the Temerary in 1467.

In 1880, Regout junior built workers’ dwellings along the new Herbenus Avenue where some of the old city walls used to stand.

________________________________________
Hermans, Henri
Nuth 1883 - Maastricht 1947. Musician.

Father Hermans was the first to teach Henri to play music. Henri was only fifteen years old when he became organist in the village church of Nuth.

Our young hero left the parental dwelling and settled down in Maastricht in 1902 after his appointment as organist and choral conductor of Onze Lievevrouwekerk (Our Lady’s Church). He went on to study in Liège and Cologne, but, meanwhile, became teacher at the music school of Maastricht and conductor of the city’s orchestra. He raised both institutions to a professional level, and as a consequence, the Maastricht City Orchestra eventually developed into the Limburg Symphony Orchestra.

It is only fair that the city’s park with the birdcage should bear Henri Hermans’ name.

________________________________________
Jonas, Henri Charles
Maastricht 1878 - 1944. Artist.

Henri Charles was first a house painter, like his father. When both his wife and his father died within one year, he went to Amsterdam and studied art. Then he settled back in Maastricht, where his talent began to flourish. He also painted beautiful leaded windows (for example in the Koepelkerk).

He wished to remarry a divorced woman he had met in Paris, but his ecclesiastical principles didn’t allow such a union. This brought him into a depression from which he never recovered. He ended up in a psychiatric clinic, first in Venray and then in Maastricht in Mount Calvary. There he still produced important pieces of art.

In the city district Caberg, a street bears his name.

________________________________________
Kemp, Petrus Johannes
Maastricht, 1886 - 1967. Poet.

As a young man, Pierre Kemp was a meritorious painter of ceramic art in Maastricht. His brother Mathias was a poet and a painter too.

It is only when he was nearly fifty years old that Pierre began to write poetry. He worked at the wages administration of the Laura coal mine in Eygelshoven near Kerkrade. Dressed in a black suit, he wrote numerous light and colourful poems during the train ride between the two cities: Overal zwerf ik, bloemen schetsend, op de twijgen waar er nog geen zijn: fragmentjes van gedichten zwetsend, oud-man-radeloos en kleuter-klein. (Everywhere adrift, sketching flowers, on the twigs which aren’t yet: blathering fragments of poems, old-man-desperate and toddler-small).

Pierre Kemp received important literary prizes. In the city park (Kempland), a monument has been erected in his memory.

________________________________________
van Kleef, Lambertus Theodorus
The Hague 1846 - 1928. Physician-director.

Lambertus van Kleef first worked as a health officer for the Red Cross. Prussia knighted him for his work during the 1870-71 war between France and Germany.

After 1880, he became a surgeon at the Maastricht hospital of Mount Calvary. He converted the hospital into a more modern institution, by performing X-ray experiments and pioneering stomach operations. He also implemented a strict application of hygiene. From 1897 till 1904, he worked as the hospital’s physician-director.

Then he retired to the Hague. But his request to be buried in Maastricht was honoured when he passed away.

Maastricht named a street after him in the Brusselsepoort district.

________________________________________
Lambert, Saint
Maastricht 638 - Liège 706. Bishop.

Bishop Lambert was the last but one in a sequence of twenty five bishops in Maastricht. People in Maastricht know the exact place of his birth and the place of his first grave: he was born on the corner of Minckeleersstraat and Bredestraat, and was first buried at the Lambertus chapel along the Lage Kanaaldijk.

Legend has it that Lambert rebuked the Frankish majordomo Pepin of Herstal for conjugal infidelity and that’s why he was murdered. Anyhow, he was involved in a lot of political questions. His successor Hubert moved the Episcopal see and Lambert’s bones to Pepin’s Frankish residence where the bishop’s murder had taken place. The town of Liège rose next the grave of the holy martyr.

In Maastricht, an avenue in the Villapark and a monumental church bear the name of Bishop Lambert. In Liège, the central square is called Place Saint Lambert.

________________________________________
Minckeleers, Jan Pieter
Maastricht 1748 - 1824. Scientist.

Jan Pieter Minckeleers was a Maastricht Jesuit who in 1771 became professor of Science at the Belgian university of Louvain. He discovered how to use coal gas for gas lamps and air balloons. In 1789 he had to return to his birth city for political reasons. He worked in Maastricht as a pharmaceutical chemist. He was also interested in meteorology, geology and paleontology. He wrote down a description of the Mosasaur fossil that had been found in Mount St Pieter.

In Maastricht, Minckeleers’ statue stands at the Market side of the Boschstraat since 1904. The statue holds a gas pipe out of which burns an eternal flame. Furthermore, a street in the city centre bears the scientist’s name. There’s another statue of Minckeleers in Louvain-Heverlee.

_______________________________________
Olterdissen, Alphonse
Maastricht 1865 - 1923 . Artist.

Alphonse Olterdissen’s father came from Hannover in Prussia, and his mother from Veere in the province of Zeeland. They married within the Lutheran church, and began a small tobacco shop in the Boschstraat (now nr 107). Alphonse was only eight years old when his father died. He studied art in Amsterdam.

Back in Maastricht, Alphonse founded a school for artists. He was a co-founder of the social and cultural association “Maastricht Vooruit” (or “Maastricht Ahead”) and a member of the Momus Society. He wrote some comic operas in the Maastricht dialect to pay off the debts he made while organising four parades. The final song of his “Trijn de Begijn” comic opera became Maastricht’s official city hymn.

Alphonse Olterdissen was a city councilor and a school inspector. He also wrote about the history of Maastricht. In 1921, he converted to Catholicism. His statue stands in the Grote Looiersstraat.

________________________________________
Regout, Petrus Dominicus Laurentius
Maastricht 1801 – Meerssen 1878. Big industrialist.

Petrus Regout took over his mother’s glass and earthenware shop. After the Belgian Revolution, Maastricht found itself in economic isolation. But Regout didn’t give up. He developed in a short time a glass and earthenware factory in the Boschstraat. It was the first large scale industry in the Netherlands.

In 1851, he bought Vaeshartelt Castle, which he transformed into a pleasure ground. King Willem I often came to stay there. Regout built a villa for each one of his ten children. For his workers, he built the Cité Ouvrière, near the factory. The workers looked upon him as a father, but found the son who succeeded him hardhearted. The statue of Pierre Regout stands before the entrance of the factory.

________________________________________
Rieu, André
Maastricht 1949 - … Popular violinist and orchestra conductor.

André Rieu grew up in a musical family. His father was a conductor. André studied the violin in Liège, Maastricht and Brussels. He wanted to make classical music accessible to everybody. Therefore he first set up the Maastricht Salon orchestra, and later on the Johann Strauss orchestra. Nowadays, he plays to a full house everywhere in the world.

Of course, his story is not finished yet. So we’ll keep it short.

________________________________________
Romanus, Franciscus
Ghent 1647 - Paris 1735. Architect.

The Dominican lay brother Franciscus Romanus renewed the first arc on the Maastricht side of the old bridge across the river Maas. He also restored the fourteenth century Dominican monastery which later was closed under the French rule, but served as a Civil High School until late in the twentieth century. In 1685, Franciscus Romanus was summoned to Paris by the advisers of king Louis XIV to restore the Pont Royal and the Pont Neuf.

Around 1990, the houses against the Dominican wall (a part of the first city wall) were destroyed to make more room for the Theatre on the Vrijthof Square.

The photograph below shows the Dominican Church, which is now a bookshop. The Franciscus Romanus road runs on the eastern side of the river Maas.

________________________________________
Rutten, mgr Louis Hubert
Maastricht 1809 - 1891. Priest.

Louis Rutten was the son of a wealthy brewer. He was ordained as a priest and wished to become a missionary, but due to his poor health, he began instead to teach workers’ children in a hall of the Saint Servatius Church. He also gave them food and clothes. In the evening, he would teach adult workers.

In 1840, he founded the congregation of the brothers of Maastricht, who provided catholic education for boys. Meanwhile, the Ursulines sisters were in charge of catholic education for girls. Mgr Rutten invited the Sisters of Charity to come to Maastricht and run a home for unmarried mothers.

After 1860, his health was so weak that life became a burden for him. But he persevered for another thirty years.

________________________________________
Servatius, Saint
Armenia after 300 - Maastricht 384. Bishop.

Saint Servatius was bishop of Tongeren. He advocated the divinity of Jesus against Aryanism during two important Church synods. Finally, he fled with the Episcopal see to Maastricht, and thus became the first well known faith preacher within the present boundaries of the Netherlands.

After his death, many legends arose around the person and the work of Saint Servatius. His grave became a pilgrim’s resort where a large church gradually developed. Emperors and kings came to pray there. Henric van Veldeke wrote a biography of the bishop. Maastricht’s history is closely related to the history of the Basilica of Saint Servatius.

The old bridge across the river Maas bears the bishop’s name, too.

________________________________________
van Steffenswert, Jan
Maastricht circa 1470 - 1525. Woodcarver.

Jan van Steffenswert knew how to create beautiful three dimensional compositions out of a simple block of wood. The sculptures bearing his mark can be found in churches and museums all over the world.

Since 1990, we know from archive sources that Jan worked and lived in Maastricht. His workshop probably was located in the Mariastraat.

The sculpture of Saint Christopher (photograph) stands in Our Lady’s Church in Maastricht, close by the entrance, so it’s easy to go and greet it every day. According to tradition, nothing can harm you that day if you do so.

________________________________________
Strouven, Elisabeth
Maastricht 1600 - 1661. Pious woman.

Elisabeth was a shoemaker’s daughter who received a good education. She was a needlewoman and owned a boarding school. Meanwhile, she did spiritual exercises under the guidance of Jesuits and Franciscans. She wandered about with an epileptic girl whom people thought was possessed by the devil.

On Good Friday 1628, Elisabeth founded the convent Mount Calvary, which was to become the well known nursing home. She nursed patients who were suffering from the plague.

After the Dutch conquered the city from the Spaniards in 1632, Catholic life became very difficult in Maastricht. Elisabeth’s confessor Father Vinck was beheaded. She wrote a detailed autobiography.

________________________________________
de Stuers, jonkheer Victor Eugène Louis
Maastricht 1843 - the Hague 1916. Protector of art, top civil servant and politician.

It is thanks to the wilfulness of Victor de Stuers that we still have a large part of the Maastricht city walls. He is considered the most important pioneer of the Dutch care for Monuments. He was also closely involved in the construction of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum.

De Stuers, who moved to the Hague in 1870, was first a lawyer. Later on, he became referendary of the Department of the Interior. He was in charge, among other things, of the care for monuments, museums and archives. In Parliament, his obstinate character struck everybody too.

De Stuers married when he was 49, and got a daughter. He was buried in Maastricht. A street in the city district Brusselsepoort bears his name.

________________________________________
Tapijn, Sebastiaan
…. - Maastricht 1579. Garrison commander.

After troubles with the Spanish garrison that had kept quarters in the city since the 1566 iconoclasm, Maastricht decided to admit a Protestant garrison. The duke of Parma (photograph) came to besiege the fortified town. Sebastien Tafin defended Maastricht in an exceptionally brave and stubborn way, but eventually got the worst of it. After the city’s surrender, the furious Spaniards executed the commander. They plundered Maastricht and killed thousands of citizens. This disaster is known as the 1579 Spanish fury. Three years earlier, there had already been a similar disaster on a smaller scale.

Nowadays, the Tapijn barracks in the city parc bear Tafin’s name.

________________________________________
van Veldeke, Henric
Born before 1150 at Veldeke near Maastricht or between Hasselt and Diest - deceased before 1210. Poet.

Henric van Veldeke was a noble man at the service of countess Agnes van Loon. He became a many-sided and influential poet both in the Middle Dutch and the Middle High German languages. His work has a post-Carolingian character. He wrote, among other things, thirty love songs and the Legend of Saint Servatius:

… All daer hij noch is, te Triecht, In eynen dall scoen ende liecht … (… He is still there in Maastricht, in a valley full of light and beauty …)

His statue stands between the churches of Saint John and Saint Servatius at the Henric van Veldeke square. There’s a statue of Veldeke in Hasselt too.

Furthermore, the Veldeke college and the Veldeke circle for students of dialect bear his name.

________________________________________
Vinck, Servatius
… - Maastricht 1638. Franciscan.

Father Vinck was a kind-hearted Franciscan friar and a good preacher. The people of Maastricht loved him. However, he was a bit too naive.

In 1632, Frederik Hendrik conquered the fortified city of Maastricht from the Spaniards. As a result, Catholic life became almost impossible in the town. In 1638, the new Dutch rulers chopped off the heads of five “traitors” who wished to surrender the city back into the hands of the Spaniards. Father Vinck was one of them.

Their heads were exhibited on the round bastion which nowadays bears the name “the five heads”, near the little tower of father Vinck. Vinck’s portrait (below) hangs in the treasure room of Our Lady’s Church. The only thing he could be “reproached” with, is that he refused to violate the secret of the confessional and to reveal to the Dutch what his fellow “conspirator” had told him in confession.

________________________________________
Vliegen, Willem
Gulpen 1862 - Bloemendaal 1947. Journalist and politician.

As a young man, Willem Vliegen was a typographer in Maastricht, and the editor of the Volkstribuun (People’s Tribune). He admired Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, an inspiring pioneer of Socialism, whom workers used to call “our Redemptor”. However, Vliegen was much more down to earth. He was one of the founders of the Socialist party SDAP, and became a parliamentarian, party president, and alderman of Amsterdam. He didn’t support Troelstra’s revolution, either.

Willem Vliegen was a self-taught man. He grew from a simple worker into an eloquent parliamentarian.

His bust stands on the Brandenburger square in the Maastricht city district of Blauwdorp.

________________________________________

By Hennie Reuvers

Dr Reuvers (1951) is a retired teacher of mathematics from Maastricht. He likes to solve math problems, but is also interested in history. He is married and the father of four children. Check his website at http://www.petericepudding.com

Sources (mainly Dutch): Maastrichtse straatnamen tot 1 jan. 1997; Bert Lejeune, Bisschopsmolen. Furthermore, Wikipedia and many other sources on the Internet.

Related articles:

• Famous in Maastricht
• The visit of the ladies of Charity, a short story by Alphonse Olterdissen
• The five heads
• Rebels from Liège besiege Maastricht in the late Middle Ages
• Selexys Dominicanen opens in Maastricht
• Charles V and Guus van Eck in Maastricht
• Religious legends in Maastricht