Florentine Rost van Tonningen

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Florentine Rost van Tonningen
Florentine Rost van Tonningen-Heubel in 2003
Born
Florentine Sophie Heubel

(1914-11-14)14 November 1914
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died24 March 2007(2007-03-24) (aged 92)
Waasmunster, Belgium
Resting placeRheden, Netherlands
NationalityDutch
Alma materUtrecht University
Known forNazi collaborator
SpouseMeinoud Rost van Tonningen
Children3 sons
Parent(s)Gustav Adolph Heubel and Cornelie van Haren Noman

Florentine Sophie Rost van Tonningen (née Heubel; 14 November 1914 – 24 March 2007) was the wife of Meinoud Marinus Rost von Tonningen, the second leader of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) and President of the National Bank during the German occupation (1941–1945). Because she continued to support and propagate the ideals of Nazism after World War II and the death of her husband, she became known in the Netherlands as the "Black Widow".

Biography

Youth

Florentine Heubel was the youngest daughter of Gustav Adolph Heubel, banker at the firm Jan Kol & Co. and the aristocrat Cornelie van Haren Noman. There were three more children in the family, daughter Annie (born in 1906) and sons Dolf (1904) and Wim (1910). Florentine Heubel grew up in

University of Utrecht, showing a special interest in ethology
.

In connection with her studies, Heubel stayed for some time in

German invasion of the Netherlands
on 10 May 1940, Heubel was in Berlin.

Marriage

Marriage of Meinoud and Florentine Rost van Tonningen on 21 December 1940.

On 21 December 1940, the day of the

Winter Solstice, Heubel married Meinoud Rost van Tonningen.[1]

Upon request, Heinrich Himmler, the German SS-Reichsführer, had approved their genealogy, following which their wedding became the first SS marriage. The Rost van Tonningen family had three sons with the names Grimbert (1941), Ebbe (1943), and Herre (1945). Her children openly distanced themselves from their mother's political views in the 1980s.[2]

The youngest son was born on 28 April 1945 in Terschelling on the day her brother Wim Heubel fell in battle fighting with SS forces near Elst. She soon fled via Cuxhaven to Goslar in Germany, where her parents, who owned local property, were also staying. Her husband Meinoud was captured and imprisoned on 8 May by Canadian troops.[citation needed]

Immediately after the war, Meinoud Rost van Tonningen died in the

National Institute of War Documentation) employee, A. J. van der Leeuw, supported her version during the television show Het zwarte schaap (The Black Sheep) and suggested that her husband may have been driven to commit suicide in prison.[citation needed
]

In her book, In Search Of My Wedding Ring, Rost van Tonningen-Heubel accused

Prince Bernhard of bearing the main responsibility for her husband's death, as he had been head of the Domestic Forces, claiming that her private archive contained evidence of this. Her enormous archive is only accessible through her private secretary and archivist, F. J. A. M. van der Helm, who assisted her from 1980 by storing and managing the archive.[citation needed
]

Post-war period

The massive golden wedding ring with the life tree as symbol which Rost van Tonningen wore for 67 years. At her wedding this ring was kissed by Adolf Hitler. Since then she treated it as a "holy relic".

After the death of her husband, Rost van Tonningen-Heubel remained active in several far-right movements. Initially, she was placed under state supervision, like many former Nazis. Her supervisor, Clerk of the Senate Anton Leo de Block, put her three sons under the guardianship of her brother-in-law Nico Rost van Tonningen, who was in the service of Queen Juliana. Her son Grimbert later left his mother and moved in with the Fentener van Vlissingen family.

She denied the holocaust.[3]

In 1952, she moved from the Hague to Villa "Ben Trovato" in Velp. She considered the villa's name a sign "from above", as "rovato" would correspond to ROst VAn TOnningen. By now she had a private company making heating equipment. In 1968, she appeared in a documentary portrait of Anton Adriaan Mussert by director Paul Verhoeven, the first time she made a nationwide public appearance. Several times she was convicted of distributing Nazi literature and organizing Nazi meetings. The widow's home was repeatedly searched by the police, always without result, and was more than once targeted by arsonists. "House searches, broken windows and arson often took place", she writes in her book, In Search Of My Wedding Ring.

She maintained lifelong contacts with many prominent ex-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, such as the French professor

Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe-Biesterfeld; Paula Hitler; Richard Edmonds; Hanns Albin Rauter; Franz von Papen; Hjalmar Schacht; Ernst Zündel; General Otto Ernst Remer; Manfred Roeder; Colin Jordan; Udo Walendy; Horst Mahler; Alfred Vierling; members of the Vlaams Blok
; and many others.

Until her death in 2007, Rost van Tonningen-Heubel received a modest

VARA television program The Black Sheep. In her interview, the 85-year-old widow defended herself so fiercely that VARA considered dropping the broadcast. She planned to move from her villa to an apartment in nearby Arnhem, but legal objections prevented her from doing so. Shortly afterwards, she sought asylum in Belgium
, claiming that her life had become impossible in the Netherlands. Until her death, she defended the ideas of Nazism.

Death

Rost van Tonningen at her future grave in 1998. She had bought the grave in 1996 and was buried there in 2007.

Florentine Rost van Tonningen-Heubel died of old age on 24 March 2007 in her home in

right wing extremists
. This concern prompted the municipality of Rheden to lock down the area at the time of her funeral.

One of her sons, Egbert (Ebbe) Rost van Tonningen, published a memoir in 2012 about his childhood, In Niemandsland ("In no man's land").[5]

Literature

  • F.S. Rost van Tonningen, Op zoek naar mijn huwelijksring, Velp (NL): De Levensboom, Erembodegem (B): De Krijger, 1990
    ISBN 90-72345-14-2
    , transl. Triumph and Tragedy: Some Personal Remembrances of Dutch and European History in the 20th Century, Velp: De Levensboom 1998

See also

References

  1. ^ "Akte - CBG-Centrum voor familiegeschiedenis". www.wiewaswie.nl.
  2. ^ In memoriam my mother: personal weblog of Grimbert Rost van Tonningen Archived 28 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine, 24 March 2007.(in Dutch)
  3. ^ Nicolasen, Lidy (27 September 2012). "Ebbe Rost van Tonningen: 'Mijn moeder heeft ons min of meer opgegeten'". de Volkskrant. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  4. ^ "Bionieuws is het nieuwsblad voor biologen. Met interviews en artikelen over bedrijven uit de wereld van de levenswetenschappen". bionieuws.nl. Archived from the original on 31 May 2015. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  5. ^ Nicolasen, Lidy (27 September 2012). "Ebbe Rost van Tonningen: 'Mijn moeder heeft ons min of meer opgegeten'". de Volkskrant. Retrieved 30 September 2012.

External links

Media related to Florentine Rost van Tonningen at Wikimedia Commons

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