Geelkerken , Cornelis, born 19-03-1901 in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Belgium,

son of Wilhelm van Geelkerken, a railway servant and director of the labor purse in Zeist and Maria Joanna Lakerveld. He was the oldest of twelve children, seven boys and five girls, one brother died before his first birthday and one sister died four years old. On 15-12-1927 he married Johanna Dorothea Eschauzier and the couple had no children. He was co-founder of the Dutch National Socialist Movement, NSB

. In the 1920s he gravitated toward extreme nationalism. Proposing an authoritarian, anti-democratic movement to
Anton Mussert
Mussert was executed by a firing squad, age 51, on 07-05-1946 on the Waalsdorpervlakte, the Hague. Being the secretary of the party van Geelkerken became the substitute leader, second man, in 1937. He became director of their youth corps, the Nationale Jeugdstorm.

After the German invasion Van Geelkerken, her with the German Hitler Youth leader
Arthur Axmann,

was appointed Inspector-General of the Nederlandsche Landwacht, the Netherlands Paratroopers.

The Dutch government forbid all civil servants to join the NSB and van Geelkerken resigned from the provincial public works department in Utrecht. The Reformed Church disqualified him and his wife from the Last Supper. He greatest grievance was his interment on Mei 10
th 1940, as the Germans attacked our country.

The duo Mussert, van Geelkerken had to battle for the favour of the German occupiers with Meinoud Rost van Tonningen

who was much more radical. Rost van Tonningen died in the prison of Scheveningen, age 51, on 06-06-1945, probably suicide. (see
his wife”Florrie Rost van Tonningen)

The first wanted a “Great Netherlands” on the German site, but Rost van Tonningen was an advocate of the “Great German” thought.
Arthur Seyss Inquart

Van Geelkerken was involved in the intern organization of the Party and the Police management and he also was the Inspector General of the para military “Landwacht”, the Paratroopers. The complete break came as Leader Mussert around the turn of the year 1944/45 started to purge the Party. As well as Rost van Toningen as van Geelkerken were disbanded from their NSB positions and the later even expelled as member of the Party as he refused to lay down his leadership as commander of the Paratroopers. In the course of the war, Van Geelkerken became wild, says Leiden historian Bart van der Boom, who published a biographical sketch about Van Geelkerken. ,, He has landed in a world that he does not fit into. A toddler in the big human world. He has power and prestige, but his enemies cannot be counted. “He is sucked into the stream; he couldn’t go back, a family member says. Yes, Van der Boom acknowledges, but adds in one breath: ,, He was much too vain and too fond of his status than he would take his loss and step out. Within the organization, as a uniformed leader, he was someone, outside of that he would be a simple civil servant. ”After the break with Mussert, his star drops quickly. After a short suspension by Seyss Inquart he again was assigned as commander of the Dutch Paratroopers by SS Reichsführer,
Heinrich Himmler 
(
Did you know) himself. After the war in 1950 van Geelkerken was sentenced to life imprisonment but released in 1959.

His treason against the state was obvious but his involvement in the deportation of the Jewish people or other flagrant war crimes was not provably.
Death and burial ground of Geelkerken, Cornelis “Kees” van.
Until his retirement Geelkerken worked in the pharmaceutical industry and lived in Lunteren. After his retirement, the Van Geelkerkens lead a reclusive life in a house in Lunteren, far outside the built-up area. The self-chosen loneliness in no man’s land is very difficult for socializing people, so he is considering an emigration to Germany, where he can build a new life as an unknown person. But before he can implement the plans, he is struck by a heart attack. He died of this heart attack on 29-03-1976, age 75, and is buried with his wife Johanna Dorothea, born Eschauzier,

who died old age 88, on 02-06-1991, on the local cemetery of Lunteren, but his gravestone has disappeared. The grave at the Lunteren Municipal Cemetery was cleared in the spring of 2020. Closeby the grave of
Evert Jan Roskam 
he was the Boerenleider, Peasant leader of the Landstand, rural class, NSB.

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