Monarch Juliana Preceded by Ko Suurhoff Preceded by Ivo Samkalden Name Teun Struycken | Monarch Juliana Role Dutch Politician Monarch Juliana | |
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Preceded by Leonard Antoon Hubert Peters Died December 1, 1977, The Hague, Netherlands Succeeded by Albert Christiaan Willem Beerman | ||
Antoon Arnold Marie Struycken (27 December 1906 in Breda – 1 December 1977 in The Hague) was a Dutch politician and a member of the Catholic People's Party. He was among others Minister of Justice, Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, Minister of the Interior and a member of the Dutch Council of State. He was also alderman of Breda from 1938 to 1941, and from 1944 to 1950.
Biography
Struycken was interred in the Sint-Michielsgestel prison camp during the Second World War. After the war he was briefly Minister of Justice, in which capacity he commuted the death sentences of the "Four of Breda" (Franz Fischer, Ferdinand aus der Fünten, Joseph Kotälla, and Willy Lages) to life imprisonment.
While Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, Struycken came into conflict with the Council of Ministers of the Netherlands Antilles, who wanted to install S.W. van der Meer as Minister of Justice. Van der Meer, who had his own law practice in Curaçao, did not agree to give up his practice as a lawyer completely, prompting Struycken to refuse to install Van der Meer. The Dutch Antillean government complained to the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands about the governor's inappropriate involvement in government matters. The Netherlands government eventually agreed with the Antillean government. This affair resulted in a reorientation of the office of Governor of the Netherlands Antilles, which increasingly began to resemble the role of the constitutional monarch in the Netherlands.