Anda Kerkhoven

About this artwork.

As a tribute to Anda Kerkhoven, the city council of Groningen decided in November 2021 to name the civic hall after Anda Kerkhoven. Anda Kerkhoven (1919-1945) was a young woman who was killed in Glimmen at the end of the Second World War.

Anda grew up in a wealthy family of tea planters in the former Dutch East Indies. Her mother was Dutch, her father had a Dutch father and a Chinese-Indian mother. At a young age she was a vegetarian in principle, started studying medicine, but she definitely did not want to do animal experiments. That is why she moved to Groningen in 1938, where vivisection was not a compulsory component at the University. She was also an outspoken pacifist who wanted to improve the world. Her first flaming speech in the student magazine Der Clercke Cronike of 4 November 1938 was about the moral values ​​of science and the place of man in it. She ended with a sentence that would determine her later actions: "What is not allowed, is not allowed, whatever the price!"

It almost went without saying that Anda ended up in the nonviolent resistance. In 1942, during the occupation by the Germans, she came into contact with the resistance group De Groot. There she was involved in, among other things, the distribution of forged identity documents and accompanied people to their hiding place. In her pamphlets, which she also distributed herself, she called for charity and moral action.

At the end of 1944 she was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst. She endured severe interrogations and torture in the infamous Scholtenhouse without disclosing any information. Anda paid her silence with death. On 19 March 1945, less than a month before the liberation of Groningen, she and resistance fighter Gerrit Boekhoven were shot without trial by Dutch SD men on the edge of the forest in Glimmen.

Anda Kerkhoven testified of reverence and love for life.

She deserves our respect.

The painting by Anda Kerkhoven was painted around 1940 by painter Johan Dijkstra (1896 - 1978). Kerkhoven became a member of the female student association Magna Pete in Groningen. She came into contact with the Groningen painter through an associated drawing club. Judging by the large number of portraits of her in circulation, she was a popular model. Johan Dijkstra painted her three times.

This painting is a reproduction of the original from collection of the Groninger Museum.

Johan Dijkstra is considered one of the most important Groningen artists of the twentieth century. He was educated at the Academy Minerva as a student of, among others, F.H. Bach. In 1918 Dijkstra founded the Groningen art society De Ploeg with Jan Altink, Jan Wiegers and George Martens.

Besides De Ploeg-member, Dijkstra was also a member of The Independents and Arti et Amicitiae. He received the Willink van Collen Prize in 1925. From 1930 Dijkstra threw himself into the monumental arts. The preliminary study for the wall painting eventually led to the three wall paintings in the wedding room of the City Hall in 1938.

At the unveiling of the memorial windows in the Groninger Academy Building in 1951, Dijkstra was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau and in 1957 he received the Cultural Prize of the Province of Groningen. The Johan Dijkstrastraat named after him can be found in Ten Boer.

Facts & Figures.

• Artist(s)
  Johan Dijkstra

• Year of creation
  1940

• Dimensions (in cm)
  109x79

• Collection
  Town Hall Collection

• Floor
  Ground floor