Beel Commission 1956
The cabinet of Willem Drees banned the import of the edition of the German magazine and on 28 June 1956 appointed a commission of enquiry of former ministers Louis Beel and Gerbrandy and former governor-general of the Dutch East Indies A. W. L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, the Beel Commission. The outcome was the termination of Hofmans' contacts with the court and the reorganisation of the royal household.
Through the secrecy imposed on the official side and the self-censorship of the Netherlands press, the Hofmans affair took on a life of its own. Some have speculated that the affair was simply a mask for a looming divorce of the royal couple.
Hofmans retained until her death followers of the higher circles, who saw in her the personification of the ideal life: sober, peaceful, free of self-interest, and directed at the fellow man. Others viewed her however as a charlatan, an intrigante and a dangerous witch, or at best a naive figure. She was buried at Zorgvlied cemetery.
On 7 February 2004 Bernhard wrote in an open letter to the Volkskrant newspaper "with respect to the so-named Hofmans affair, I recall that the Beel Commission in 1956 conducted an exhaustive investigation. The report of this commission is for formal reasons still not public, therefore I express here my confidence that the eventual publication will place all those involved in this complex affair in the correct light".
Read more about this topic: Greet Hofmans
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“Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don’t want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them.”
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